Engineering the future with LEGO In 2019, Scotch established our FIRST LEGO League with an excited team of Junior School students. The LEGO League Challenge is an international competition for primary and middle school students organised by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). After a highly successful first year, our Challenge groups have grown to include students from Pre-Primary through to Year 8 for the 2022 competition. Since its establishment, we have had several original members who have participated each year since joining. The popularity of this Co-Curricular club and all it offers students has also seen its inclusion into the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curriculum across all year levels in Junior and Middle School. Students are engaged and empowered in these handson, authentic learning experiences where they are inspired to experiment and grow their critical thinking, coding and design skills. The international competition is highly regarded and encourages students to think globally in response to the year’s LEGO Challenge. Working together, students research and provide a solution to a theme-related problem and work through robotics challenges on the challenge board. The Challenge’s core values are key to the team’s success, encouraging collaboration, recognising team members’ skills and talents, and sharing ideas. In 2022, we look forward to inviting teams to participate across all year levels:
FIRST LEGO League Discover This playful introductory STEM programme ignites their natural curiosity and builds their learning habits with hands-on activities in the classroom and at home using LEGO Duplo bricks.
FIRST LEGO League Explore In Explore, teams of students aged 6–10 focus on the fundamentals of engineering as they explore real-world problems, learn to design and code and create unique solutions made with LEGO bricks and powered by a LEGO education robot.
FIRST LEGO League Challenge Friendly competition is at the heart of this challenge, as teams engage in research, problem-solving, coding and engineering to build and program a LEGO robot that navigates the missions of a robot game. As part of the Challenge, teams participate in a research project to identify and solve a relevant real-world problem. “Over the past three years that Scotch College has competed, we have won multiple awards at both a regional and national level. Last year we got second overall in the state and will be representing Australia and the College at the Asia Pacific Championships, held remotely over three days. We are keen to finish this season off and have another go next year.” – Zachary Blakey, Year 8 From top: Year 6 students Lucas Kwan and Zachary McManus; James Christensen (OSC 2007) helped our Year 6/7 Challenge team with their research into natural disasters; Year 7 2021 students Guillaume Daoud, Luca Regli, Leon Hugo, Zachary Blakey and James Stephan celebrate their overall runner-up trophy at the Nationals; Year 5 2021 students Hugh Twaddle, Saxon Clout, Lucas Kwan, Lachlan Gillett, Jacob Ferguson, Oscar Seaburne-May, Benjamin Roberts and Zachary McManus celebrate their overall win at our regional qualifying event
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Mr Andrew Wells STEM Teacher
