Schools
Patch Whiz Kids of the Week
Two Lego teams from Oxbow Elementary win honors at Saturday's competition at Lakeland High School.
Who: Oxbow Elementary Lego Teams
Team Full of Bologna: Jake House, Jessica Snell, Lily Bagby, Courtney Verbick, Hailey Cook, Carsyn Johnson, Nick Hunt, Jacob Cales, Brooke Fraser, Brennan Surman
Team Caliente Capsicums: Ava Gizoni, Hannah LaFramboise, Sierra Roque, Ben Fisher, Maddie LaCroix, Aurora Fitch, Marielle Bowen, Isaac Berry, Jonathan Madak, Rachel Linkhorn
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Accomplishment: This week, White Lake Patch is honoring two fifth grade Lego teams from . Team Caliente Capsicums and Team Full of Bologna competed on Saturday at in the FIRST LEGO League State tournament.
Each team brought home honors with Team Caliente Capsicums winning second place in Inspiration and Team Full of Bolongna winning first place for Team Work and ranking in the Top 5 for research and Top 10 for robot.
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The theme this year was food with each team researching ideas and working together to solve problems in innovative and creative ways.
“They had to pick a food, trace it from its origins to your plate and then look for ways it gets contaminated along the way,” Chris McAuliffe, fifth grade teacher and Lego coach for Oxbow Elementary School said.
McAuliffe, who has been involved with the school’s Lego competitions for ten years, said he originally started doing it because of the technological aspect.
“I thought it would be good for them to be using the robots and the computers,” McAuliffe said. “It starts with the robot. That gets them in, that draws them in, but once they get into it, they find out about the teamwork and research.”
The two Oxbow Lego teams were divided into researchers and builders with one side coming up with a topic and presentation and the other side building and programming the lego robots. Both sides, however had to learn to work together during the months leading up to their competitions in order to be successful, according to McAuliffe.
“It was interesting this year ‘cause our research was so strong and our robot was so strong, they found out the only thing holding them back was the teamwork,” McAuliffe said. “When we went to Regionals we did very poorly, so that was our big focus, teamwork. And then we took first at States.”
A great group of students, according to McAuliffe who said he saw their confidence growing each day. And the lessons they learned from Lego League, especially teamwork, McAuliffe said, are now being applied in the classroom along with other valuable life lessons, as well.
“They’re not afraid to try new things,” McAuliffe said. “And they learned its ok to fail. ...They kind of figure out that, ok, we failed, but we can figure out how to fix it from here. It’s very cool.”
Key to Awesomeness:
Team Full of Bologna, coached by McAuliffe, received three awards including: Top 5 in Research, Top 10 in Robot and 1st place in Team Work.
Team Caliente Capsicums, coached by Aimee Nardell and Jason Rehnlund, received 2nd place in Inspiration.
