First Lego League

An Adventure in Thinking

Contact: MAJ Michael Woodruff,

Director of the Center for Integrated Studies, at 434-432-2683.

CIS 8th graders participate in the First Lego League which is aimed at teaching students math and engineering. A collaboration between FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and the Lego Toy Company, the program’s aim is to motivate young people to pursue opportunities in science, technology and engineering.

Hargrave embraces the program as a great opportunity to teach via an reoccurring robotics theme.

Student teams research, build and program a robot based on the given challenge topic which varies from year-to-year. Then, they test their designs, engineering, programming and organizational skills in competition with peers.

Beginning at the regional level, teams compete with other schools in Virginia and beyond, and have the opportunity to qualify for both state and national level competition. Each team is judged on teamwork, robot design, research, presentation and robot performance.