8th Grade - Congrats to the Robotic Olympics Winners

 To the 8th Graders

Congrats to the medals winners: Gold, Silver, and Bronze. 

Gold Winners

Silver Winners

Bronze Winner

Update - 3/17/26 15:51:16

8th Grade - Congratulations to the Robotics Sumo Competition

 Congratulation to Team...

RICE and BEANS

The winner from the first half of the year had to wait until the second half determined their winner. Then it was the best of 5 matches to determine the overall winner. Which they did in 2 straight wins, lost one and then another win to end 3-1.

Congrats!!!! Job Well Done. 

8th Grade - Sumo Competition will occur next week.

 To all 8th Grade students

As you can see from the pictures showing only some of the qualified robots, teams are ready for next weeks Sumo Competition. Good Luck to all. 

8th grade - Winners of the Sumo Competition!!!!!

 Congratulations to the team of .....Guff123

They won by beating  Team Roomba in a very close best of 7 match 4-3. 

8th grade Lego Mindstorm Sumo Sectional Winners

 The following teams should be congratulated for a job well done winning their class sections. Below you can see the Tournament Schedule for the sectional finals. Pictures of each winner is also below.  

Sectional Finals Round Robin listing

8 - 11

8 - 12 

8 - 13

8 - 14

8th Grade - Lego Mindstorm Sumo competition live updates

 To everyone interested in watching the Sumo competition live:

The following links will be updated as the competitions occur. Each class will have their own Ranking Table and the Round Match Ups link. 

8-11

8-11 Ranking Table

Round Match Ups

8-12

8-12 Ranking Table

Round Match Ups

8-13

8-13 Ranking Table

Round Match Ups

8-14

8-14 Ranking Table

Round Match Ups

As classes are set up this post will be updated along with announcing the actual dates for competition. Stay Tuned. 

Sumo Competition Winners

 Today's competition allowed many different configurations which allowed the students to see how the different design had their own pros and cons. 

In First Place Team Eric  

Team Eric's strategy was to play it safe but then push the opponent around using their positional advantage. 

In Second Place Team Matt

Team Matt's strategy was one of aggression but also pausing before going for the win to make sure. 

In Third Place Team Ruby

Team Ruby's strategy was "Hug the Edge" then attack if you find the opponent. 

Hour Of Code comes to SMS

During the Week of Dec 9th through the 12th all students will be taking part in Hour of Code. 

Here is a short description from the Hour of Code website: 

“The 'Hour of Code™' is a nationwide initiative by Computer Science Education Week [csedweek.org] and Code.org [code.org] to introduce millions of students to one hour of computer science and computer programming.”

Mr. Falcon's Per Grade Projects: 

6th - Will be working on their Scratch Maze Project

7th  - Will be on the Hour Of Code site. 

8th - Will be working on their Robotics Projects using the Lego EV3 software. 

Mr. Medeiros' Projects: 

All grades will be using the Hour of Code site.


For more information regarding this nation wide initiative head over to their website: LINK  

Grade 8 - Robotics project 1 is underway.

To all section 1-2-3-4 8th grade students.

All 8th graders should have a working robot and should be working to complete all four driving challenges.

If you have any questions, please speak with your teacher on getting the help you need during Raider Time. 

Grade 8 - Robotics Sumo Competition Winner

To all 8th grade students.

The finals for the EVEN cycle produced a winner after some exciting matches. That winner then met the winner from the ODD cycle. After 5 hard fought matches the winner for the 8th grade was....

From 8-3

Congratulations to Matt and Jack from Team Better Dan Them,

8th Grade SUMO Robotics competition covered by local media

It's always nice to see students hard work covered by the local media so when I learned South Coast released a story about the ODD section winners of the Lego SUMO competition I had to post it here.

South Coast Today - Students Advance in Robotics Tournament

Please head over to the comment section and show your support.

Please note: Photo is the property of South Coast and only used here for educational purposes. South Coast retains all rights.

Grade 8 - We have a Lego SumoBot Winner!!!!

Congratulations to all 8th grade students who competed in this years Lego SumoBot competition

Here is how the day played out.

To start, we had to determine a winner for 8-2 and four teams showed they were the teams too beat.

Block
ASADA
Circuit Breakers
Todd

The top two teams, Block and ASADA ended up tied after 9 round robin rounds so a single elimination ti-breaker was held with Block taking the win. That meant the EVEN cycle finals could begin.

The teams who qualified were

8-2
8-6
8-8

8-2 beat 8-6
8-6 beat 8-8
8-2 beat 8-8

Making 8-2 the winner of the EVEN cycle. That left only two teams, The winners from the ODD and EVEN cycle.

The team of Kyle and Megan from 8-1 proved too strong for 8-2,  winning three straight games in a solid fashion. Here is the winning match.

Congratulations To Kyle and Megan Winners of the 2018 SumoBot Compeition!!!!!!

Grade 8 Lego Sumo competition Results So Far

If you are interested in seeing how your favorite team(s) are doing, follow this link to see all the rankings.

Tournament Schedule - Round Robin for Section 8-2

The above photo shows the craziest moment of the competition for far, how neither team went off is a miracle.

When 8th graders return from their trip we will conclude this competition.

Stay Tuned

Grade 8 - EVEN cycle Sumo Competition Schedule

To all EVEN section 8th grade students.

Here are the competition dates for the Sumo Competition.

Section 8-2   June 5th  (E day)
Section 8-4   June 5th  (E day)

Section 8-6   June 6th  (F Day)

Section 8-8   June 6th  (F Day)

Section 8-10 June 4th  (D day)

EVEN Section finals date TBD. 

Overall Finals - Winners of ODD 
and EVEN cycles will compete
on June 18th. Winner to be
announced at 8th grade
assembly on June 20th.

Your robot must pass inspection prior to your competitions. 

If you have any questions see Mr. Falcon ASAP to get them answered .  

Robotics Week 8th Grade Activities

The 8th graders began National robotics week with a quick inventory of their Lego Mindstorm boxes. Once completed they started building their first robot to complete a series of driving tests. 

Engineering / Technology Dept now has a YouTube Channel

To all students, parents, and staff

Unfortunately our current set up with blogger  has a file size limit which our SuGo Competition is breaking. In order to get around this limitation we got ourselves our own YouTube channel to highlight student work.

A few things of note, any student can contact the teacher directly and obtain any video they are in. Also we have turned the comment moderation feature on so we won't have to put up with people who are less then positive.

At this very moment we are uploading SuGo competition videos. We hope you like them.

Here is but one of the many videos we are working on.

Grade 8 - We have a Sumo Bot Winner

They say football is a game of inches...

Well I say Robotics is a game of centimeters because that's how close the overtime final of the Sumo Bot competition turned out to be.  

Congratulations to .....

The Magical Walrus' who pulled out what can only be described as a down to the wire win. 

After 5 rounds of round robin play two teams ended up tied. 8-1 and 8-3. 

So we went to a tie-breaker. Each team then won a match so that meant it would all come down to one final match. We ran the clock but quite honestly we were going until someone won. When this did occur the difference between both teams were separated by mere centimeters. 

The ODD section has their winner and will now await the winner of the EVEN section winner some time towards the end of the school year.

Work has already begun on getting all the finals matches online for all to see.

Grade 8 - Congrats to our Sectional winners, now for the Sumo Finals

Here are your Grade 8 Sectional winners for the Sugo Competition.

If you can't make it and would like to follow along we have a live scoring page that anyone with net access can watch the scores as they come in.

http://tournamentscheduler.net/schedule/NTA2NDEwNDE4MQ

You can also watch ranking page to see who is currently leading:

http://tournamentscheduler.net/schedule/NTA2NDEwNDE4MQ/results




Section 8-1

Section 8-3

Section 8-5

Section 8-7

Section 8-9

Grade 8 - Sumo Competition Inspection dates

To all ODD section 8th grade students.

Here are the inspection dates for the Sumo Competition.

Section 8-1 Jan 11 (E day)

Section 8-3 Jan 11 (E day)

Section 8-5 Jan 12 (F Day)

Section 8-7 Jan 12 (F Day)

Section 8-9 Jan 10 (D day)

Your robot must pass inspection prior to your competitions. 

If you have any questions see me to get them answered ASAP.  

Grade 8 - Robotics is now in full swing

All 8th graders know what the final project is - SumoBots. But to get there they need to build a strong foundation in both hardware design and software development. To help them with their learning the students must complete three projects each with different parts. 

Project 1 - Driving Test

They must drive for a certain period of time and then stop

They must drive forward for a period of time, stop for a period of time, and then backwards for a period of time. 

They must start on a line and stop on another line without using sensors. 

Finally they must program their robots to navigate a slalom course without touching any of the cones. 

Project 2 - Looping Line Detector

Students will learn how to use a color sensor to control their robot's action depending upon if the robot sees the line or not. They will also learn how to make decisions based upon what the sensor sees and how to make the program loop indefinitely. This will help them to remain on the playing field. 

Project 3 - Looping ultrasonic detection

Students will learn how to use the ultrasonic sensor to "sense/see" another object within a certain distance and react to it.

So far the students have really taken to the challenges presented to them. Sometimes things work great and sometimes things go wrong.... very wrong which leads to alot of learning and laughing. The video below shows one such example. Both students were not present for the filming since they couldn't stop laughing. 

 

To prove just how much these students are using their robots the picture below shows how many dead batteries there are from all the usage. And that's just one table, there are two others off camera. 

 

Stay tuned for more updates.