For the third year in a row, one of PS 8’s Robotics teams – the “Mission Masters” – will advance to the citywide finals of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO League. The team, coached by third grade teacher Brandie Hayes and English as a Second Language teacher Tracey Posluszny, received a “Judges’ Award” and was among the 23 top-scoring teams in the FIRST LEGO League’s 12th annual Brooklyn qualifying round earlier this month. The team’s success at the tournament is all the more impressive given members’ ages: while PS 8’s teams include second through fifth graders, most other students at the competition range in age from 9 to 14.
Check out the photos and a short video below (click on any photo for a larger image). And continue reading the story (below the photos) of our very own, award-winning PS 8 Robotics team.
PS 8’s “Mission Masters” and “AstroKnights” were among more than 40 teams of Brooklyn elementary and middle schoolers competing at Polytechnic Institute of New York University on Saturday, January 14. Each team had four chances for its pre-programmed LEGO robot to navigate a complicated course and complete tasks related to this year’s theme, food safety. Using kits purchased from the FIRST LEGO League, PS 8’s teams practiced twice a week throughout the fall and winter building and programming their robots, managing their robots through tasks, and reviewing strategy. Teams score points for each task completed successfully and lose points for handling their robots when they should be functioning independently. Teams receive awards for their robots’ performances, as well as their mechanical design, programming design, and strategy and innovation in their design (among other things).
As part of the FIRST LEGO League competition, teams were also required to present a research project based on the year’s theme. Together PS 8’s team decided upon the topic of oysters. Team members researched how oysters end up on our plates and may become contaminated in this process, and then developed a potential robotic solution to prevent contamination in oysters to be eaten – a truck that was able to detect and separate contaminated oysters from edible oysters. The team will work more on this research project and present it again to judges at the citywide competition.
In addition to practicing for the FIRST LEGO League’s citywide finals in March, the Robotics team hopes to organize an assembly later in the year to introduce the PS 8 community as a whole to some of their robotics work. Details remain to be worked out, but the assembly might involve a demonstration of the team’s robots at work on the FIRST LEGO competition course as well as its oyster research project. The team holds tryouts every September and is planning on balancing the genders of the team by accepting more girls next year. For more information, you can read about the Robotics team.
For more information about the recent FIRST LEGO League competition in Brooklyn, you can read a press release from Polytechnic Institute at New York University, and you can read an article in the New York Times.
By Ansley Samson
