8 August 2022

Year 5 and 6 students from Mother Teresa School, Mount Ridley (Nth Craigieburn), have triumphed with a robot designed to display an emotion that best fits your mood.

The 2022 SPIKE Prime Challenge (exclusively for entry by teams using the LEGO SPIKE platform) challenged groups of students to develop and build a new robot based on the theme ‘journey’. The challenge required teamwork and careful planning, with students documenting their robot’s construction from concept through to the finished product.

Five teams of students from Mother Teresa School participated, with the school’s HACCK team taking out second place for the state with their Emotion Changing Robot. ‘The different emotions that we coded were sad, angry, happy, crazy and boredom’, said one of the student designers. ‘We coded each of these emotions to act a certain way and overall we had lots of fun deciding on the actions, and coding the colours and emotions.’

Collaboration doesn’t always happen easily, but the students were able to channel their enthusiasm to bring about success. ‘We were collaborators and communicators, and we had to build on each other’s ideas and extend our own thinking. Looking back, it’s funny remembering how much we all argued and changed our minds on so many things. But in the end, it turned out great and we’re all happy.’

LEGO SPIKE is one of many LEGO learning opportunities at the school, where students are able to draw on the skills they have developed as inquirers.