The Wise School LEGO robotics teams and Wise School debate teams have kicked off their competition schedule, and will head into Winter Break with quite a bit of hardware.

Led by teacher Mandy Snyder, the Wise School fifth and sixth grade debaters hosted the six other schools of the Golden West Debate League for a tournament right here on the Wise Campus this past Sunday. The tournament consisted of 107 debaters and 37 teams, with Wise winning second place overall for percentage of wins as a school.

The Wise team of Daniel, Jayden, and Kaitlyn took home a seventh-place team award, and another Wise trio of Eitan, Liam, and Rachel took home ninth place. Individually, Wise’s Leah won the fourth-place speaker award, and Kaitlyn earned the 16th-place speaker award.

Wise School LEGO robotics team members work on their project at the Regional FIRST LEGO League Explore Festival on Dec. 4, 2022.

On Dec. 4, Wise School’s third grade boys’ FIRST LEGO League Explore robotics team, coached by Judy Hoffman, participated in the Ventura Regional FIRST LEGO League Explore Festival. Team 1890, comprised of Wise School third graders Hunter, Oree, Leo, Sebastian, and Jacob, took home the Top Coder Award and the Robot Game High Score.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO League is a fun STEM program that introduces students to robotics with exciting hands-on learning. Participants gain real-world problem-solving experiences through a guided, global robotics program. Each year, teams are presented with a new theme. This year’s theme is “Super Powered,” which challenges teams to find out how energy is used in our community and how renewable energies could be beneficial. During the season, team members use critical thinking, coding, and design skills to best solve the real-world problems that come along with the challenge. Each team must create a model that shows how energy is used in the community, a Show Me poster that shares their research, a presentation, and they complete six challenges of a robot game using autonomous programming.

Wise fields four teams, including the second-grade and the third-grade girls. They all will see action in 2023.