Local elementary school students to compete in robotics world championship

Local elementary school students to compete in robotics world championship

(Jayna Frost)


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NORTH OGDEN — Four local elementary school students will compete against children from all over the world next month in the VEX Robotics World Championship.

The fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade students at Green Acres Elementary School qualified for the world championship by competing in the VEX IQ Challenge Highrise, where they designed a robot whose objective is to transport a set of colored cubes from one side of a plastic field to the other, according to Jayna Frost, Green Acres robotics coordinator and fourth grade teacher.

Each cube is worth one point, but same-colored cubes can be stacked on top of one another to act as a multiplier, Frost said.

The competition was judged on five components: the Teamwork Challenge, the Robot Skills Challenge, the Programming Skills Challenge, STEM Action Research Project, and the design notebook they used to draw what they’ve done, Frost said.

While the game always requires the robots to obtain points by transferring the cubes across the field, the Teamwork Challenge involved two teams working collaboratively with their robots, the Robot Skills Challenge involved one “driver” controlling their robot, and the Programming Skills Challenge was autonomous and based off the student’s programming skills, Frost said.

“I love that they have to work in teams, because it was a struggle for some of the kids that have a hard time working in groups and very easy for some of the other ones,” Frost said. “This team that won, they work so well together.”

The team, which is called Grizzly 640X, is currently ranked 18th in the world for their robot skills and 22nd for programming, Frost said.

The students also conducted a STEM Action Research Project, where they studied the engineering done on their school’s chrome lab, Frost said.

The students competed on a local level at both Windridge Elementary and Wilson Elementary School. They then competed against 22 teams on a state level on campus at Utah State University, where they won the Excellence Award, which qualified them for the world championship, Frost said.

The world championship will take place in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 15-18, according to its website.


I love that they have to work in teams, because it was a struggle for some of the kids that have a hard time working in groups and very easy for some of the other ones.

–Jayna Frost


The team won the Teamwork Champion Award, the Programming Skills Champion Award and the Robot Skills Champion Award, which qualified them for the Excellence Award. One other Green Acres team also won the Teamwork Champion Award, according to Robot Events.

Through a national engineering program called Project Lead The Way, Green Acres students are involved in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) program, which is “all about solving real world problems,” Frost said.

The VEX IQ Challenge is designed to have the students solve an engineering challenge in the form of a game, Frost said.

"One of their awesome aspects of their team is they all know their place, what they’re good at … so they’re really fun to watch,” Frost said.

The VEX IQ Challenge was a weekly after-school program for the kids. Seven coaches came in to help the students with their engineering and design skills so they could determine things like the math involved in a 90-degree turn or how they could get their robots to push more blocks, Frost said.

The team needs $8,000 to pay for travel, a hotel, food, a car rental, registration, and t-shirts for the competition. The team has sold candy to fundraise and local businesses have made generous donations, but the team is still $3,000 short. To donate to the team, click here. Donations are tax-deductible, Frost said.


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