The Lego Legends, from left, Mary Arevalo, Miranda Lipetz, Mateo Fuentes and Stephen Lehren, with their coaches Laurie Tarkan and Andy Lehren, are heading to the state robotics championships.
SOUTH ORANGE — A South Orange Middle School robotics team is heading to the robotics state championships.
The Lego Legends, made up of SOMS eighth-graders Mary Arevalo, Mateo Fuentes, Stephen Lehren and Miranda Lipetz, earned the Project Award at the Montclair Society of Engineers’ robotics qualifying event on Saturday, Nov. 22, and will go to the North New Jersey First Lego League state championships on the strength of their extensive research to help middle school students concentrate better in class.
The Project Award is for best solution to a real-world problem. This is the second year in a row that the team has won the award.
The team researched “calming manipulatives” that could be used to help students with ADHD and others who fidget in class and designed a textured pencil case to keep fidgety hands busy.
Judges said their informative presentation “took into consideration both teachers and students, and is a clever, inexpensive solution to the problem of wandering student concentration in classes.”
The competition is part of the international First Lego League robotics competition, where students ages 10 to 14 demonstrate skills in designing robots as well as researching real-world problems and proposing innovative solutions.
This year’s theme, “What is the future of learning?” asked robotics teams around the world to redesign how we gather knowledge and skills in the 21st century. The goal was to teach adults about the ways kids need and want to learn.