FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge (IRL/UK)

The Programme

FIRST® LEGO® League shows young people what it means to be an engineer and work with STEM skills and subjects, but focuses on practical, hands-on learning, so they are doing, not watching. FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge is designed for 9-16 year-olds and develops key skills that are crucial for their future careers. Young people work together to explore a given topic and to design, build and program an autonomous LEGO® robot to solve a series of missions.

Robot Game - Teams build a robot using a LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Prime kit that they program to autonomously complete a series of missions on a specialised field to score as many points as possible.

Innovation Project - Teams research the annual theme as detailed in the Challenge documentation pack. After exploring different ideas, they identify one problem related to the theme, design a solution to solve it, and develop a presentation to communicate that solution.

Robot Design - Teams explain the process of designing, building and programming the LEGO® robot they are using in the Robot Game.

Core Values - Teams work together constantly to solve problems and create solutions.

The six Core Values that run through each programme are Discovery, Innovation, Impact, Inclusion, Teamwork and Fun. These Core Values are integral to the programme, and whilst they are working towards an end goal and have many objectives, developing these skills is the most important part of the programme for participants. The programme gives all children in a team equal opportunity and each team member must contribute in order for the team to be successful.

What you can do

Teachers and coaches are fully supported with comprehensive resources available to download on the Learnit and IET websites, training videos, digital assets and support.

You can sign up here, and if you're in a location with funding, complete the 30 Day Challenge to get grant funding to cover all the costs associated with delivering the programme in your school or community group. The team at Learnit (Ireland) or the IET (UK) will support you through the process.