Avon Students Participate in Junior FIRST Lego League Challenge

For the past three months, 153 elementary-age students from Farmington, Burlington, Harwinton, and Avon were hard at work developing new and innovative tools to change the way students of the future learn. Through classes hosted by the Farmington EXCL program, these students had the opportunity to participate in this year’s Junior FIRST LEGO® League challenge – THINK TANK! Rising to the challenge, teams comprised of five or six students each, and led by volunteer parent coaches, explored the concept of simple machines as they built a model made of LEGO® elements with a motorized part and presented information through a “Show Me” poster.

Each team was excited to learn how science, technology, engineering, and math impact our everyday lives through a fun and meaningful process. They were even more excited to showcase their efforts. Upon completion, teams were then able to demonstrate their ideas and achievements through the Regional Expo held at Farmington High School on Saturday, January 31, 2015. Twenty six teams brought their STEM projects to exhibit and share. Aside from Farmington, Region 10, and Avon, teams from Glastonbury were also on hand to display their work and participate in many fun engineering and theme-based activities. Farmington’s FIRST Robotics Team, The 2nd Law Enforcers, organized the event and was assisted by members of Avon’s Uberbots, Mercy High’s TechTigers, and Ethel Walker’s Wirecats. Area educators, FIRST mentors, Enforcers alumni, and robotics students from CCSU served as reviewers and interviewed team members. These reviewers assigned each team an award based on their work.

We are so proud of the achievements of all who participated, and look forward to what next year’s challenge has in store!

-Contributed by Karen Marino and Lisa Nollman