Saint David's Boys Program Mars Rovers

Sixth graders recently honed their coding and engineering skills using LEGO Mindstorms as they built, programmed, and operated model Mars rovers. Working with partners, they completed a series of challenges that rovers would have to perform on Mars: collect rock samples, launch a satellite, and gather astronauts from one base to transport them to another.

This project harnesses boys' natural intellectual curiosity in active, collaborative, and creative ways. They are free to take risks as they test and revise their designs through the iterative engineering design process. It is challenging and the boys love it!

Here are excerpts from some of their robotics journals:

"I learned how to make the robot follow a line and stop at certain colors. This was very challenging at points, but my partner and I persevered through all of the challenges."

"You have to trust your partner; you can't be afraid to ask for help. Once we asked for help, we were able to fix our problem and keep on going."

"The coding for our rovers is getting more complex, harder to figure out, and more fun!"

"This week was a very difficult week in way of coding. All of the new learning missions were much harder than the ones preceding them. It was very challenging, but it was worth it."

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OLIVER!

This morning our fifth graders continued a great year-end tradition at Saint David's, The Fifth Grade Musical. The boys performed Oliver! and they were fantastic, providing impressive performances and demonstrating great vocal ability. They have been mastering the dialogue and musical numbers for weeks, and clearly gave it their all. Congratulations to the cast on a job well done, and to their Producers/Teachers James Hubbard and Jamie MacNeille, Director Phyllis Clark, Musical Conductor Jeff Moore, and the Parent Committee of Cynthia Chapman, Susan Kissane, Tara Neumann, Joyce Restituto, and Ann Roberts. Musical theater is alive and well at Saint David's!

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