Press Release

Schoolhouse parent, Paul Fitzgerald, of South Burlington, started the first Jr. First Lego League (Jr. FLL) team in Vermont.  The “Lego Bolts” is based at The Schoolhouse, which has embraced a five year vision to blend its 40 year tradition of academic excellence with a 21^st century emphasis on science and engineering. Lego First League is an international organizing that promotes engineering through local, regional, national and international competitions. Jr. FLL is the level of competition for children enrolled in grade 4 or less. The students meet for 6-8 hour sessions. During that time, students selected a project, researched the project, designed and tested a solution and presented their work to an authentic audience. This year’s task was “Body Forward”, which challenged students to work with a biomedical engineering problem of their choosing.

Seven year olds Luke Fitzgerald (South Burlington) and Zoe Boray (Winooski) joined forces with 8 year old Miro Gohacki (Hinesburg) to fix the main problems with casts: they stink and are itchy. Students interviewed people who had been in casts and used the internet to watch videos of doctor’s placing casts on a patients body. The students also used a variety of model casts so that they could better understand how a cast effects how someone feels.

The students then built prototype casts both using lego bricks and with the 3-D modeling program, lego digital designer, which is a free download from Lego. The students easily recognized the limits of building with actual bricks versus an unlimited supply and variety of virtual bricks.

During all sessions, the builders engage in a variety of “quick” builds, where the builders make a lego project for a specific goal, such as something that is scary or strong. The students have five minutes to complete the activity before they share their designs with one another to get positive feedback and suggestions for improvements.

Paul Fitzgerald believes that projects, such as Jr. FLL best meet the needs of students because the project integrates students with the larger world, which requiring students to use all of their literacy skills. The students hope to present their work later this spring at the UVM Medical School. A blog of the entire process can found at http://logobolts.blogspot.com/.