Past Missions
                                                                                                                    2003 Mission to Mars
                                                                                                                    2004 No Limits
                                                                                                          8th Grade Team Page

Scroll down to the bottom of the page for Tournament Results!

   FIRST Lego League   

What is it?

This is Prince of Peace Catholic School's third year participating in the FIRST Lego League. Sponsored by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) in conjunction with the Lego Corporation, the FLL's goal is to get students ages 9 - 14 interested in science and technology. Every year FIRST issues a challenge, and then gives students 8 weeks to design, build, and program a robot that can fulfill as many elements of the challenge as possible. In the process students learn problem-solving, science, math, engineering design, and critical thinking skills, using real-world applications. More importantly,  robotics teaches students the skills and teamwork necessary to be part of tomorrow's technical workforce.

This Year's Challenge

FIRST LEGO League travels into the depths of the ocean to explore the mysteries that  lie below. The oceans are of vital importance to the health of the Earth and to everyone that lives on this planet; yet only 1% of these magnificent bodies of water have been studied.

Oceans provide inspiration, fun, and food. They absorb carbon and generate oxygen, profoundly affecting the global environmental system. A distress call has been issued to FIRST LEGO League teams around the world to find solutions that will sustain the health, biodiversity, and productivity of the world’s oceans for present and future generations.

For more information on the challenge visit the FLL 2005 Ocean Odyssey web site.

Meet This Year's Robots!

Grade 5's Robby the Robot Grade 6's Bob Grade 8's TICO

     This was quite a productive year for the Prince of Peace Lego Robotic teams. This year we had three teams: The Grade 5 P.O.P. Panthers, Grade 6 P.O.P. Aquabots, and the Grade 8 team Black Water. As in past years the teams worked on building strong structures, learning how to program in Robolab, and researching the Ocean Odyssey project. For the first time this year we had a team that created their own web page. As a part of their project the 8th grade team learned to use Microsoft FrontPage, and made their own team page, as well as posted their research project online (see the link at the top of this page!).

     Research projects were a varied lot. Grade 5 researched preventing plastic pollution in the Ocean, by preventing litter from getting into the Little Duck Creek to start with. Grade 6 researched whether or not sonar causes whales to beach, and the 8th grade developed a technological solution for leatherback turtles being caught in gill nets.

     The tournament was even more gratifying, as all 3 teams received one sort of recognition or another. Grade 5 received the trophy for 1st place Teamwork in the Junior division (grades 4 & 5). Grades 6 & 8 received certificates for receiving all "Excellent" ratings in one of the 4 judging categories (Teamwork, Technical, Research or Table), and Grade 8 was chosen to be an alternate to the State Tournament in January!  Our teams have certainly made our school proud! We are looking forward to next year's challenge, and we've been warned that a hint is to "think small". Hmmm, I wonder what that means....?