March saw the final of Concord’s own ‘FIRST Lego League Challenge’. The challenge is usually a regional and then national event that aims to guide youths through STEM learning and exploration. Since September, Concord College has been running its own version of the competition. Every Thursday, Lego and Robotics club has been attended by teams of both Concord students and Year 6 pupils from two local primary schools, Longnor C of E and St Lawrence C of E.

This year’s Lego League Challenge drives a focus towards energy; where it comes from, how we can best distribute it, store it and use it. After learning more about this, the teams came together to reimagine the future of sustainable energy and what they could do to best develop it. Across their sessions, the teams worked together to build and code their Lego robots, as well as prepare presentations about how they work and what the aims of the robots were- in regard to sustainable energy. In Concord’s Lego League Challenge finals, which were held on Wednesday 8^th March, the four teams conducted presentations about their projects to the judges, before competing in a number of robot games. The games each lasted 2 and a half minutes, where two teams went head-to-head, demonstrating both their robots and their coding skills, collecting points along the way. Toby, from St Lawrence Primary School, reflected fondly upon his experience in Concord’s Lego League Challenge: “I loved the Lego league because I love Lego and remote control things. The robots were like remote control cars. It was just so much fun coding and playing with the Lego”. His teammate, Jacob, added: "The Lego League sessions and competition were really good, so good that I want to do it again! I also liked that it was at Concord College because the school is impressive. I really like Lego and I am interested in coding, so that made it even more enjoyable". Here are the results from Concord’s FIRST Lego League Challenge: Longnor C of E Primary School: Winners of the Best Presentation award. The Longnor team wowed the judges with their enthusiasm and model of ground source heart solution for their school. St Lawrence C of E Primary School: Winners of the Core Values award for demonstrating outstanding teamwork in both the presentation and robot game. Concord College F4 Team: Winners of the Best Innovation Project award to capture wave energy. Concord College F5 Team: Winners of the Best Robot Design and Best Overall Robot Game awards. This team will go forward to represent Concord College at the regional FIRST Lego League tournament in Birmingham at the end of the month. Concord College would also like to extend a warm thank you to local consultant engineer, Mr Richard Tibbott. Richard was kind enough to visit Concord for the final of the competition. He was helpful in sharing his expertise with the pupils- having worked on several renewable energy start-ups himself- and even assisting in judging the presentations.