Aurora students win first-ever Canada Cup

July 22, 2021 · 0 Comments

Grade Five and Six students from École élémentaire catholique Saint-Jean won the first ever FLL Canada Cup this past year.

The team, named Équipe Francobotique, won the national robotics competition in their second year as a team, in the First Lego League Challenge Program.

The program is offered to children from grades four to eight and each team may have up to nine to ten members. Last year, 318,000 students participated.

Each year’s competition has a theme and the 2020-2021 season, entitled Replay, focused on helping people become more physically active.

Équipe Francobotique designed a multi-challenge rewards-based motivational program called COVID BUSTER. Participants of all ages from all over Canada completed the challenge in one of four age groups in order to earn badges in both a winter and spring edition.

After creating a robust plan for their innovation project solution, the team pitched their COVID BUSTER project to Franco De Marco, Supervisor of the Recreation and Community Programs at the Town of Aurora. The Town loved the team’s idea and helped spread the word on social media.

The team partnered with the Aurora Public Library to distribute the program materials to their participants and used donations, and a $1,000 Culture and Recreation grant from the Town of Aurora, to provide their physical activity program to participants free of charge.

Instead, patrons were asked to donate to a local food bank.

“It was amazing to see these six young students work together to identify a problem in their community, and then not only develop but also implement their solution to their chosen problem. Their hard work and creative problem solving impacted so many people.” said Renée Northrup, head coach and teacher at École Secondaire Catholique Renaissance.

The team then designed and programmed their robot fully out of Lego while simultaneously helping the community. Their robot had to complete 16 missions in 150 seconds. The robots compete against one another at FLL Challenge tournaments and the teams present the design to the judges.

“The game mat and missions change every year. The students must look at the missions critically, decide which missions to complete and in what order, and then build and program their robot to do it. Time is tight, so every second counts,” explains Northrup.

After participating in the Ontario Remote Practice Event, the North Bay Qualifying Tournament, and the Ontario Provincial Tournament, Équipe Francobotique earned the top score in the robot game at the Canada Cup. The finished their challenge with 550 points.

They also won the Champion Award at the national tournament, awarded to the team that earned the best results overall in all four categories: Innovation Project, Robot Game, Robot Design and Core Values.

With this victory, this gives École élémentaire catholique Saint-Jean their first ever national title.

“I have to tell you that it’s pretty remarkable and it’s quite an honor! They worked very hard throughout the year and they were able to surpass themselves and achieve their goals. What a great accomplishment!” said Principal Melanie Lafreniere.

“In addition, they have represented the Francophone community in the region very well. The Saint-Jean school community is very proud of these young innovators.”

Suzanne and Danielle Northrup, Kaiah Sanderson, Amelie Heng, Claire McWhinnie and Thomas Patterson celebrated together in Aurora. They also gave the name Kevin to their robot.

By Robert Belardi