T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY - Members of the Lenihan Intermediate School Ghostly Goobers First Lego League Team watch their robot take off during a First Lego League (FLL) competition at the MHS Roundhouse on Saturday.

The MHS Roundhouse was full of competitors on Saturday morning and afternoon as First Lego League teams — including five from Marshalltown and one from BCLUW — put their skills to the test and gained valuable knowledge of how robotics technology is used to map oceans and other major bodies of water through this year’s theme of “Submerged.”

Among the local contingent, the Marshalltown Community School District had two teams: the Ghostly Goobers from Lenihan Intermediate and the JellyMappers from Miller Middle School. Vanessa Engel, who serves as a Talented and Gifted teacher at Lenihan and coaches the Ghostly Goobers along with Aaron Dickey, said kids are excited to learn about the possibilities of coding and work collaboratively on their FLL projects.

“It’s all building blocks. It all builds upon one another. The wonderful thing about Lego League is (that) it coincides with our district curriculum in regards to Scratch programming through our computer science courses that we take. And with Lego League, they have updated their programming to reflect that very much so, so it’s all block programming,” Engel said. “I’m not teaching the kids from scratch how to do Scratch because they’re already doing Scratch, so it’s been really wonderful.”

She added that FLL compels students to think “in patterns” in ways that can prepare them for future engineering careers and also provide valuable insight on website design. The gist of the competition is that each team programs a robot before putting it to the test on an obstacle course of sorts and trying to complete it as quickly as possible.

T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY – The full Lenihan Ghostly Goobers First Lego League team poses for a photo along with coaches Aaron Dickey and Vanessa Engel during a competition at the Roundhouse on Saturday morning.

“It’s not about playing with Legos. It’s about being able to plan to design a computer program and build a robot in order to accomplish as many obstacles as that are on the robot game board in under 2 ½ minutes,” Engel said. “There’s some avoidance, but there’s also interaction.”

Beyond that, the teams must complete an extensive research project connected to the theme. This year, it relates to problems under the ocean surface and how they can potentially be solved in new or innovative ways. They give a five-minute presentation before a panel of judges at regional events like the one on Saturday in hopes of advancing to state and nationals down the line.

Ann Jackson coaches the JellyMappers and noted that while school starting later than usual this year put all of their work on an expedited timeline, they met weekly and even held some Saturday practices to make sure they were ready.

Finley Judge, a member of the team, said the experience has improved her time management skills, and Levi Reynolds, whose father works at MARSHALLTOWN Co., felt it coincides well with what he has already learned about coding at home.

“I love just being able to learn about a new topic. I like learning about new stuff, and I’ve always been into coding a little bit because my dad’s a software engineer,” he said.

Because of the Submerged theme, Jackson said the students got the opportunity to conduct interviews with a longtime oceanographer and an MIT graduate student using live jellyfish as robots to map the ocean floor.

While FLL competitions begin at the fifth grade level, the MCSD also offers a discovery program for elementary students. Jackson was happy to report that the JellyMappers earned the Breakthrough Award on Saturday.

“This award celebrates a team that made significant progress in their confidence and capability in both the Robot Game and Innovation Project and are a shining example of excellent Core Values. They demonstrate that they understand that what they discover is more important than what they win,” she said.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.