Green Acres Elementary—Jayna Frost finds herself during just her 2nd year teaching at Green Acres, and already she is working as the coach of the brand new Robotics team. She says everything is new and they are all learning as they go. She adds, "We couldn't do it without the 7 volunteer coaches!"
Practicing weekly the school's 7 small teams consisting of 4-5 students each are learning that math and science can be fun, but that's not all. During the VEX sponsored competitions teams are judged on project management, the contents of their engineering notebook, their design process, team members' ability to explain their robot development, game strategy, and robot design. Other contributing factors to winning the competition are teams' use of management skills, time, materials, and resources, and how well they work together to design, build, and program their robots.
In December, the team competed at Wilson Elementary in the VEX IQ Challenge: Highrise. Each team brought a programmable claw-robot they had built, and they use them to compete in various games that include using their robot on a playing field to move and stack colored blocks in just 60 seconds. The functionality of the robot and the capabilities of the 2 drivers must be exceptional in order to earn points. Three of Green Acres' teams won trophies at the competition.
Team 640X won the trophy for best overall performance. Their coach, David Fernilius said, "Math is very scary to a lot of kids—especially programming, but when you can apply it to Legos and games, it becomes do-able. All of this is very applicable in a career in any field. They learn about team building, project management, and roles. It's not scary, it is fun, they were all really engaged."
Students at Green Acres want to come up with money to purchase accessory kits for their robots, allowing them to use the new parts and make modifications. To do so, they themselves are preparing to apply for further grants. Independence and problem solving are two main goals many of the adult volunteers are hoping the kids will attain from their involvement.
Principal Lisa Gilstrap is enthusiastic about this new opportunity. She is grateful for a grant from the Weber School Foundation and donations from local businesses like JD Machines, VEX IQ, Broadbent Orthodontics, and the Kiwanas Club. This exciting new program is operating under the S.T.E.M initiative designed to get kids to focus on learning science, technology, engineering, and math. More information on the initiative is available at stem.ut.gov.
Caption for the small group is:
Caila Sassi, Simon Smith, Amy Frost, and Symon Fernelius celebrate their First Place Overall trophy with coach David Fernelius
Caption for larger group: Students from Green Acres new Robotics Team gather around their playing field during practice
