Students in Branson Lawrence’s 5th-grade science class have been putting their programming skills to work by engineering Lego robots to perform various space-themed tasks – a bridge to their upcoming Astronomy unit.
The students have been building and programming the rover-like robots since returning from winter break, and this week they were given a set of seven missions that their robots needed to perform to achieve points. The points system was ranked gold, silver and bronze, and each ranking corresponded to the level of difficulty in programming and use of sensors on the robots.
“One group completed 6 of the 7 tasks using a sensor in all of their programs,” said Mr. Lawrence. “This tied the all-time record and the two boys very nearly completed the 7th mission on the final day.”
The group members who tied for the record were Trevor Gatz ’26 and Gabe Weaver ’26.
This was the conclusion of a trimester-long unit dedicated to computer science, coding, computer programming and robotics.
“Our hope is that this experience will encourage some students to join one of MICDS’ FIRST Lego League teams this Fall and develop these skills even more!” Mr. Lawrence added.
