Saint Catherine’s Middle School Robotics Team Travels to State Competition

Saint Catherine of Siena Catholic School’s Middle School Robotics Team traveled to Georgia Tech on February 9th to compete in the First Lego League State Tournament.

The team placed 19th out of 49 schools at the States finals. They learned many great lessons through competing at the States Finals and look forward to begin preparing for next year’s projects and competitions! In the competition each team is scored in four categories: Robot Design, Research Project, Teamwork, and Team Spirit.

The theme of this year’s event was energy conservation. The team set out to prove in their research that it would be more energy efficient to have a 4-day school week as opposed to a 5-day school week. The team calculated how much money and energy would be saved with the shorter week by dividing into an audit team and a survey team. The audit team interviewed staff at Saint Catherine’s and the survey team created a parent survey.

In the parent survey the students collected data on miles driven each day to calculate the average cost of fuel per family. The students also added a water conservation element due to the ongoing drought in our area. They timed each automatic faucet in the school to see how long the water would run. The robotics team placed 1st in research in the regional qualifier held at Roswell High School in January giving them a 5th place overall finish in the regional event. Way to go, Blazers!

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Saint Catherine of Siena Students Win Awards

Saint Catherine of Siena Catholic School is pleased to announce that two of its students won awards in the 2007-2008 Martin Luther King Jr. Essay and Poster Contest, sponsored by the Archdiocese of Atlanta. Kennesaw fourth-grader Lauren Bohling’s poster won 3rd place in the 1 – 4 grade contest. Woodstock seventh-grader Patrick Connolly’s essay won 2nd place in the 5 -8 grade competition. The theme of this year’s contest was “How I Can Spread Peace Throughout the World.” The students’ work will be published and distributed throughout the archdiocese by the Atlanta Archdiocesan Office for Black Catholic Ministry. Congratulations Lauren and Patrick!.