Pier School Students Win Robotics Award

Bristol, RI, January 16, 2016:

Roger Williams University hosted the 2016 First Lego League State Championships this past Saturday for students aged 9 – 14 from across Rhode Island. Out of over 70 teams participating in FLL this year, 40 qualified for the State Championships. 3 local teams from the Narragansett Pier Middle School qualified for and competed at this tournament.

Sixth graders Tate Costa, Krystal Flint, Lillian Duquette, Anne-Mieliu Hoaglund, Maxwell Cute, and Brian Rocchio from team “Sunny Composting Adventure Team,” or S.C.A.T. received the Innovation and Design award for their robot (pictured below). The Strategy & Innovation award recognizes a team that uses solid engineering practices and a well-developed strategy to design and build an innovative, high performing robot. These sixth graders are enrolled in robotics courses at the Pier School: Robotics II offers students a Carnegie Mellon based curriculum on using sensors (color, ultrasonic, gyroscopic, and touch). Robotics III is the competitive program in which students participate in FLL: The FIRST LEGO League (also known by the acronym FLL) is an international competition organized by FIRST for elementary and middle school students (ages 9–14 in the USA and Canada, 9–16 elsewhere). In September each year, a new challenge is announced that focuses on a different real-world topic related to the sciences.

This year’s real-world topic was “Trash Trek” where students were asked to develop a solution that will help people make less trash or improve the way people handle the trash we make. In addition to building an original robot design to complete missions on a game board and this research project, students are also asked to uphold the FLL Core Values throughout the season: We are a team. We do the work to find solutions with guidance from our coaches and mentors. We know our coaches and mentors don’t have all the answers; we learn together. We honor the spirit of friendly competition. What we discover is more important than what we win. We share our experiences with others

The Pier School offers robotics as part of the 6th grade Unified Arts curriculum and as part of the after school enrichment programming for grades 5- 8. For more information about FLL, please contact RISF Board Chair, Rebekah Gendron at Rebekah.gendron@risf.net or for more information about the Pier School’s robotics program please contact Enrichment Teacher Vanessa Miller at vmiller@nssk12.org.