By Press release from John Winthrop Middle School
•
12/15/2021 11:20 a.m. EST
On Nov. 13, the John Winthrop Middle School (JWMS) 7th- and 8th-grade LEGO robotics teams competed in Elmfest, the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Robotics regional competition in New Haven. Students from all over Connecticut competed at this regional competition. JWMS’s 7th-grade team won one of the “golden tickets” and will advance as one of the finalists in the state championship competition.
Each year FLL offers a unique challenge based on a real-world problem. This year’s theme is “Cargo Connect,” focused on exploring the future of transportation. From the shipment of packages in rural and urban areas to disaster relief delivery and high-tech air transit, students are to re-imagine faster, more reliable, and sustainable transportation innovations that better connect and grow communities and economies around the world. Each team identified an issue in transportation and came up with a proposed solution and model of their design. They then had to reach out to an expert in the field and incorporate the expert’s feedback into their solution. The 7th-grade team designed a robot that would make sorting packages more efficient and reached out to the post office while the 8th graders designed modifications to highway lanes to accommodate cargo trucks and gleaned feedback from the Connecticut Department of Transportation chief of highway design.
In addition to this innovation project, students must design and build a robot as well as learn to code programs to complete missions in the robot game. Most significantly, students learn the importance and must demonstrate FLL’s core values, which emphasize respect, teamwork, inclusion, and innovation.