R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press At Rapid River School, fourth and fifth grade students work from blueprints to build LEGO creations that will form the “missions” of this year’s FIRST LEGO League Challenge.

RAPID RIVER — A new season has just begun for the team of fourth- and fifth-graders coached by teacher Carla Meyer and engineer Jake Denkins in the FIRST Lego League Challenge. Four returning students out of this year’s ten members were on the team last season, when Rapid River placed seventh out of 726 teams in Michigan and progressed to a world invitational event in Massachusetts.

FIRST LEGO League Challenge, designed for children from fourth through eighth grade, is a program meant to encourage critical thinking and teamwork in an engaging setting — like its affiliated FIRST Robotics Competition for high schoolers. There are two other LEGO League divisions in addition to Challenge: Explore, which is suggested for grades two through four, and Discover, for pre-kindergarten through first grade.

Different themes and problems are presented to participants from year to year. This season’s competitions across FIRST at multiple levels are ocean-related. In the Challenge division, the name is “SUBMERGED.”

By the time the fourth- and fifth-graders at Rapid River enter the season’s first competition in December, they will be prepared to perform in four areas.

The first involves the autonomous driving of robots — preprogrammed using SPIKE Prime, a kit from LEGO Education used to help kids learn how to code — on a mat to complete as many missions as possible in a series of two-and-a-half-minute matches. The mat, the playing field, is a map on a table containing destinations with 15 possible missions — representing things like growing coral, tracking a shark, restoring a shipwreck and setting up a sea creature habitat — all models made of LEGO, of course. The objectives may be achieved by pushing, pulling, lifting or carrying things on the map. Teams can identify which missions they want to target, strategize how to build and program their robots, and consider where they might accumulate or lose points.

The other three-quarters of a team’s total score is not as publicly visible as the game play.

Players are expected to demonstrate the core values of FIRST, which are teamwork, inclusion, fun, discovery, innovation and impact. These are summed up as “gracious professionalism” and “coopertition,” meaning that ideal team members are respectful and helpful even towards those they are competing against.

As important as its performance, the design of a robot is another 25% of a team’s total score. During a private session with judges, students communicate their process through a presentation, which can take a number of forms. Many choose to use slide shows or posters, but Meyer, who is in her eighth year of coaching, said one of her past teams acted out a play.

The fourth and final element to be scored is a very open-ended “innovation project.” Students are tasked with coming up with a solution to some sort of problem, which can come from a list of suggested sparking ideas, or the kids can create their own question to answer — but it is expected to be consistent with the marine theme. This year, for example, teams may choose to address issues faced by marine biologists, submarine pilots, oceanographers, divers or underwater researchers.

During a visit from the Press last week to the very first meeting of the season for Rapid River’s team — number 43816, playing under the name Cookie Bots this year — returning veterans Colin Denkins, Ethan Lippens and Tristen Leadman, all in fifth grade, took a few minutes to discuss and show off what they had worked on last season. The question they had been seeking to solve with their innovation project in 2023 was how to make an activity more interesting and inclusive to others.

“We were thinking of ideas like, how could somebody not be able to play with LEGOs. So we thought of hand dexterity and colorblindness and blindness. There’s Braille bricks…” Lippens began.

Coincidentally, LEGO actually released their own colorblind products just as the team at Rapid had begun down that path, so the kids pivoted and began trying to develop inventions that would allow for children with different types of disabilities to play with LEGO.

“We had nine prototypes,” said Leadman. With each step, they learned more and more, and talked to experts who clued them into different problems.

One of the first prototypes involved magnetic LEGO bricks and a glove with magnets on the fingers. When the team learned from a physical therapist that some people have webbed hands or fingers that are closed in a fist, they realized that magnetized gloves wouldn’t help in those cases and designed a new type of brace. After speaking with a prosthetist, they designed a prosthetic finger.

“We can’t just depend on what we see online; we have to consult,” said Meyer. “So then we’ll talk about some opportunities and who we can contact. (Northern Michigan University) has been absolutely wonderful for getting us more information… the Seaborg Center has been fantastic in supporting us,” she said, explaining that when she calls and asks if NMU has a professor who can speak on a particular subject, she usually gets a response within a day.

“It’s great to get the kids off the campus into other labs, talking to other people if we can. It’s supposed to be very immersive,” Meyer said. “I can’t teach them everything. I’m not an ocean expert, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go find some people.”

The Cookie Bots will participate in a regional competition on Dec. 7 at NMU. It’s open for the public to attend.

In January, after the Challenge level finishes their competition, Meyer will begin the Explore program with younger students in Rapid. The kits are already on hand, thanks to donors in the community. Support from local businesses and other generous donors is also what enabled last year’s team to travel to the East Coast for the world invitational.

Presently, Rapid River does not have teams at the middle or high school level, and their students in those age groups can potentially join in Gladstone if room is available. Meyer said that Rapid River will be looking to expand to the higher grades soon, but volunteers, mentors, parent support, and other action may be needed to make that happen. People can contact cmeyer@rapidriver.k12.mi.us or (906) 474-6411 ext. 6543 for more information on how to help.

A FIRST LEGO League coaches’ workshop will be held at NMU’s Seaborg Center on Sat., Oct. 5, for coaches, mentors, parents and other adults interested in getting involved with robotics at the upper elementary level.