On Thursday, March 9, a team of Year 6 pupils from Darite Primary Academy — the Darite Culdrose Coders — were crowned champions in the First Lego League Robot Game at RNAS Culdrose.

The team of seven competed against 14 other primary schools and 25 teams in a whole day competition. This year’s theme was “Superpowered”.

The day included the children having to invent, develop and present an “Innovation Project” that would support the generation, storage or transport of clean and renewable energy. The team went through several ideas such as turbines that sit in exhaust pipes and solar tiles for roofs until they settled on “Solar Paint”.

They developed an initial idea into a finished product; were the idea to be put into production, anyone would be able to buy a tin of paint, use it on any surface and generate and store clean energy. The judges were very impressed with their ideas and teamwork (and so were the teachers).

Along with this aspect of the competition, there was a science show, interactive exhibits such as electric art, rocket making and coding. The Navy personnel were only too happy to help and the children were very impressed with the jets and drones on display.

The second aspect of the competition was the “Robot Game”. This was a coding competition - the participants had to build and code a robot from a set number of Lego pieces to move around a mat, interacting with Lego obstacles and scoring points. The children had all shown incredible amounts of dedication, voluntarily coming in for extra practise sessions before school, at lunchtimes and after school.

The team were assigned the final slot of the day and at lunchtime, the high score was 240 - a huge target to beat. The children didn’t let that put them off, and worked amazingly as a team to run the codes. In the end a crowd gathered to watch the last run. You could cut the tension with a knife! In the end they scored 245 points! The team were so proud to win the coding phase of the competition and were awarded the trophy for the “Robot Performance”.

Parents of the children commented on how engaged with the whole project the children were and one of the children said “It was the best day ever!” Mr Whipps, Head of School, said, “We are so proud of all the children on their achievement. After coming second last year, they have worked so hard to improve their skills and fully deserve the victory. They were a credit to themselves and the school.”