Our students are fortunate to have access to the latest technology for Robotics and circuitry. Programming starts in Year 4 and continues to develop throughout their Secondary schooling, where students can participate in Robotics club.
Primary Robotics
The journey with programmable Lego starts in Year 4 where students program their SPIKE creations to conquer a variety of challenges from artificial hands to reliable and speedy grasshoppers. Students enjoy the challenge of using sequential programming, a scientific investigation skill to develop their knowledge of the world.
In Year 5 students utilise EV3 Lego to compete in the Lego Olympics, designing long jump machines and accurate 100m racers. The robots also tie in nicely into the Gold Rush HASS topic as students building a mining robot that can detect real and Fools Gold while staying safe from long drops into chasms. The Year 6 students can continue with Lego in an afterschool club which targets the RoboCup competition in Perth. Every year we have representation in the select finals on the Saturday. Students enjoy the experience of competing against other schools while saving a victim from a lethal toxic ooze.
In Year 6, students also get the opportunity to utilise circuitries thanks to Western Power and their Circuit Breaker program. Students create physical motherboards and solve problems through teamwork and ingenuity producing creative results. These engaging programs help students connect to the real world as they explore many aspects of robots in our society and how they can work in teams to plan, create and test, through trial and error, to produce something to be proud of.
Mr Benjamin Duff :: Deputy Head (Primary)
Secondary Robotics
2021’s robotics team included Year 7 students Adam, James, Vinnie, Oliver, Chris and Harry from Year 8, along with the wonderful Ms Claassen. It was an exciting experience, and we gained a lot of skills as well as valuable friendships and developed our coding and engineering knowledge.
On the first day for Robotics Club most of us joined had never coded or built a Lego robot before, so we partnered with those who had. This provided a great working environment for all of us. We worked on building the bot, trying several designs until we found the right one. At the beginning of Term 3, with only a week before the competition, we were coding the robot intensely. There were many trials and fails before we found the right code. We were all excited to attend the Robo Cup competition in Perth and had not trouble getting up early for the long bus ride.
At Robo Cup, all of us ran into problems with our codes, however, we persevered, and two teams made to the finals. Although neither of us won, we loved the opportunity to learn from Ms Classen, work in teams and have a fun experience. After RoboCup, we started preparing for a new competition, the First Lego league. We are very excited to see how we do in this new challenge!
Vincent O’Malley and Oliver Barrett :: Year 7
