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FIRST® LEGO® league regionals at the Nissan skills foundation

Last week we were extremely excited to be back working with the Nissan Skills Foundation, Sunderland, hosting the FIRST® LEGO® League regionals event where students, aged 9-16 in up-to teams of 10, competed against other schools over the course of 3 days in order to proceed through to the UK National Finals.

FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge is a friendly competition, with groups of kids working in teams to build and programme a LEGO® robot that completes a series of tasks in a robot game. The overall goal of this event was to inspire young individuals by introducing them to engaging and fun programs that help them to build on their science, technology and engineering abilities ultimately helping them to grow strong communication and leadership skills for their potential future roles in the industry of STEM. They are also encouraged to use their imagination in the building of their LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Prime vehicles, and think critically when solving any technical problems.

“It was so heart-warming to see the kids not only supporting and cheering for their friends, but also helping their competitors and even providing advice on challenges they have mastered.”
— Heather CorriganFLL/VEX Co-ordinator at the Nissan Skills Foundation

What happens during the tournament?

Every morning we began with a warm up, in the art of dance, to start the thrill of the day and get the teams prepared for the competition ahead. Competitions are divided into four competitive areas: core values, innovative project, robot design, and the robot game challenge. Each team was required to complete a number of STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) coding & robotics challenges all to which inhibited this year’s theme ‘Superpowered’, chosen by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). This encouraged the students to discover, research, find solutions, and programme their way through each mission.

They were also given the task to conceptualise a future promoting sustainable/renewable energy and the teams had to prepare their own innovation project on how they can contribute to this idea. They had 5 minutes to present this to the judges and we had 3 superb winners over the course of the event!

How did the students do?

It was down to the CreativeHUT team to score each mission successfully completed by each team. Our judges, this year, were all employees/engineers of the Nissan Plant who all kindly volunteered and dedicated their time to listening and scoring the team innovation projects. One volunteer said,

“Every team was so outstanding in their presentation. We were all so impressed with the research behind the solutions and the execution of the ideas. The confidence and passion in the kids is truly admirable and it even brought me to tears. I have no doubt we’ve met the brains of the future today”.

This year, our 3 Champions competing in the UK Nationals are:
- Kinetic Karrots (Blue Coat School)
- Caps and Capes (Wardley Primary)
- Sustainable 7 (St Benet's RC Primary)

Some honourable mentions for the various other awards were:

The Core Values Award marks how each team conducted gracious professionalism and cooperation with their team. The winners were:
- Wessy Blocks (Wessington Primary)
- Project LEGO League (Eppleton Primary)
- Technically Charged Bananas (Emmanuel College)

The Innovation Project Award is scored on the effectiveness of their innovation project and how well the students can present to the judges. The winners were:
- Rhyopeans (Rhyope Junior School)
- SpinBob (Longridge Towers School)
- Hareside LEGO Legends (Hareside Primary School)

The Robot Design Award reviews the physical engineering and design the students used to accomplish their missions and focuses on the programming, attachments range and overall functionality. The winners were:
- Bill Quay Primary
- QEHS Robotics (Queen Elizabeth)
- Cragside Coders (Cragside Primary)

This program is supported by The Reece Foundation, who are aware of the benefits of FLL and how it has a valuable impact on young people to further their career skills and get into STEM. We were absolutely delighted to be a part of this, and in the style of CreativeHUT - we all had a fun time!

“CreativeHUT truly have the best job in the world”.
— Heather CorriganFLL/VEX Co-ordinator at the Nissan Skills Foundation

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