On another Thursday afternoon, four eighth-grade students named Zhang Rongyu, He Chengjun, Ren Hongjin, and Geng Yuhan gathered around a colorful mission map in the robotics activity room at Jinhu Foreign Language School, carefully tuning a LEGO robot. Their coach, Zheng Shihai, stood silently to the side, deliberately letting the children explore on their own.
This robotics club was only formed during last summer vacation. This year, on its very first appearance at a provincial-level competition, it brought home a provincial first prize in the LEGO FLL category at the "Linghang Cup" Jiangsu Provincial Primary and Secondary School Students' Artificial Intelligence Literacy Competition. The FLL category updates its map and mission scenarios every year, and competitors must build a robot from scratch and write programs based on the new map, completing tasks such as lifting, pushing, and transporting within 2 minutes and 30 seconds, with scores awarded according to how many tasks are completed.
Speaking of the final round in Yangzhou, Zhang Rongyu was deeply impressed. "After we took the field, something unexpected happened, and we all got very nervous at once, since it was our first time competing in the Linghang Cup." After a brief moment of panic and mental blankness, the four team members quickly adjusted their state, exchanged a glance, and calmed down to tackle each mission one by one. Relying on their steady mindset, they successfully completed the remaining challenges and secured this hard-won provincial first prize.
Coach Zheng Shihai remarked that when competing at the provincial level for the first time, it is inevitable to feel nervous when surprises arise. What enabled the children to keep their rhythm and persevere to the end was precisely the teamwork and stress resistance honed through day after day of training.
This rare chemistry came from long-term refinement. Since the club was founded last summer vacation, the school has added a batch of hands-on equipment so the children can personally disassemble and personally test things to figure out the principles behind the robots. The club regularly holds activities on Thursday afternoons and adds intensive centralized training sessions before competitions. The preparation period happened to coincide with the eighth-grade geography and biology exam review, so the children made the most of classroom review during the day and, whenever they had time at night, plunged into the activity room for training.
He Chengjun also fell deeply in love with science and innovation through repeated disassembly, assembly, and testing. "At first I just thought building blocks were fun, but after learning more I realized there is so much knowledge hidden inside." This passion also planted a seed in his heart, as he hopes to work in a robot-related field in the future.
One medal is a vivid result of the school's deep cultivation of well-rounded education. In addition to the robotics club, Jinhu Foreign Language School has also opened a rich variety of specialty clubs and built experimental bases, allowing learning to break out of textbooks and land in hands-on practice.
Vice Principal Qiu Xiangjun introduced that artificial intelligence is a future development direction and has profound significance for cultivating students' overall competence. The school is actively working to become a provincial STEAM specialty school, integrating the interdisciplinary concepts of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics into daily teaching. Next, the school will continue to improve teacher training, organize teachers to study outside the school, invite experts from within the province to guide on campus, and persist in promoting learning through competition and teaching through competition, so that more children can encounter passion and harvest growth through hands-on practice.
Comments