Many elementary classrooms are silent during the summer, but for a week in mid-July, one buzzed with activity at Clearview Elementary School. For the first time ever, the school hosted a robotics camp courtesy of Herndon High School students.

There was excitement in the room as the younger students worked on their challenge for the day: programming a LEGO robot to navigate a complex maze. From one side of the classroom, sixth grader Moises Geynoods set his robot down on a mat covered in obstacles including glass panel walls and recycling bins as well as possible guides: lines drawn from colored tape. He pushed a button and his robot whirred to life. Motors screamed as the wheels turned. Light from a front sensor shined as it tracked the floor. When the light touched a red line, the machine turned right. After traveling some distance, it turned right again before traveling halfway down a glass wall corridor.

When the robot stopped, Moises’ partner, sixth grader Kevin Ayama, looked on in amazement. “Bro!” he exclaimed. 

Their volunteer instructor, Spencer Allain, looked on with a knowing smirk. Allain, a software engineer by trade, explained the team’s robot may be able to solve this maze, but not any maze: “Their code works, but they’re brute forcing it,” he explained, reminding the boys: “If the maze changes, it won’t be successful.”

Allain is a volunteer mentor to Herndon High School’s robotics team. He and the team, plus a student from South Lakes High School, volunteered to run the week-long summer camp. Herndon senior Addison Thompson said she started the effort to launch the new camp after talking with a Clearview teacher.

“Something our team is really big on is giving back to the community and finding ways to provide affordable, accessible STEM education to schools around us,” Thompson explained.

Clearview’s robotics camp is one of many ways students across FCPS are keeping up with their lessons over the summer break. Here, they gained useful experience in STEM (science, technology engineering, and math) learning. The students used LEGO Mindstorms, an educational tool that teaches how to design, build, and program robots in the familiar context of the classic building toy, using tools such as color and touch sensors, and gyro sensors that track direction and orientation.

Fifth grade student Arieanna Davenport described her method for solving the maze: “It’s about the gyro because there’s lots of walls so you don’t want to crash into any of them,” she said, “and I feel like it’s also the color sensors because of the tape, you have to make it stay on the line and follow the path of a certain tape.”

Instructors taught that there is no single solution. “Everybody has a different idea of what they have to do,” said Allain. “The problem is very small, but the solution space is very large and they’ve chosen different ways to solve the same problem.”

Organizers stressed that the main focus of the camp is teaching students how to work together, aligning with two of the five goals in FCPS’ Portrait of a Graduate: Communication and Collaboration. Twice a day, the students rotated, forming pairs with new partners each time.

“The goal of switching everybody up is to expand their horizons, to work with a diverse group of people,” Thompson explained. “They’ve gotten along so well that the partnerships have been really easy to make.”

Students also learned persistence. In designing robots, coding often doesn’t work as planned, but trying again almost always leads to something better. “They’re going to fail a lot,” Allain cautioned, “but there’s knowledge in learning these things.”

Kevin and Moises learned that lesson in real-time. “When we’re done with lunch, we’re gonna learn how to code it again, just so we can finish it,” said Moises.

Kevin shared what he learned from this experience, an inspiring lesson: “Don’t give up! Never back down!” 

Thompson thinks the Herndon High School Robotics Team has the potential to grow this camp come next summer. “We’d love to reach out to Title I elementary schools and feeder schools,” she said, hoping that developing STEM education at a young age will lead to future Robotics Team members.

“It took a lot of weeks of planning, but it was incredibly worthwhile because I really believe that this is the start of something sustainable that we can do every summer for many years to come.”

Contact the Herndon High School Robotics Team at [email protected] for outreach inquiries.

Learn more about summer learning at FCPS.