Dunottar Warriors Win Special “Judges Award”
29th February 24
On Thursday 8th February, the “Dunottar Warriors” – a team of pupils from Year 7 to Year 9 – participated in the First LEGO League Regional Tournament at the newly built STEM Centre at Gatwick Airport. First LEGO League is a global science and technology challenge for teams of pupils. Teams are required to work together to build a robot to tackle a series of missions and create an innovative solution to a real world problem.
During the day, teams are given three attempts to complete as many robot missions as they can in rounds lasting two and a half minutes. The pupils did a marvellous job in the first two rounds and were delighted with their score – a huge 200 points! Markus and Anna were confident and calm under pressure and did a fantastic job of handling the robot and attachments whilst being hugely encouraged by all the team. Before the final round, one of the organisers informed us that we were jointly in the lead on robot points which then resulted in a frenzy of activity, with the team managing to code a new mission in order to achieve more points. Unfortunately, in the end, we were just pipped at the post by another team. We are extremely proud of their tenacity, determination and cheerful lively spirit. To achieve second place in the robot game where the majority of our team are Year 7 students, with no prior experience, is awesome!
As the day progressed the teams were whisked off to various judging sessions to be quizzed about their robot design, team working values and to present their project. The feedback we received was that the pupils presented confidently, spoke clearly and with enthusiasm during the judging and should be proud of the way they conducted themselves.
As the day drew to a close the time came for the trophies. We all applauded teams as awards were announced…and then, to our delight, we won one! Dunottar Warriors were winners of the special “Judges Award” for consistency and doing well in all aspects of the competition – the robots, presentation and working collaboratively as a team. This award came with a private behind-the-scenes tour of Gatwick Airport which we are all very excited about and proud to have won. The pupils had a wonderful day, taking home a large yellow trophy made of LEGO, of course!
Everyone worked very hard leading up to the day, coming in before school and during lunch to work on their robot programming and presentation. In a time when we are encouraging more women into STEM, it was also lovely that half of the team were girls. A special mention and thank you goes to John in Year 10, who did not attend on the day but came to all sessions and gave up a lot of his time to encourage and coach the younger students.
Dunottar Warriors:
Evie, Markus, George, Oscar, Alice, Eleanor, Anna, Harriet, Will, Aidan, John (coaching).
