Speed Meets Strategy at the Year 5 CrumbleBot Challenge
On Tuesday 24 February, we were delighted to hold our annual Year 5 CrumbleBot Challenge Day. The girls worked in collaborative teams in a scaled-down, in-school version of the RoboCupJunior UK National Primary Robotics Championships, using an even greater variety of coding skills to program their CrumbleBot robots.
RoboCupJunior is an international organisation that runs national and international coding and robotics competitions across a range of age categories and leagues. St Mary’s girls have been both past finalists and champions in the RoboCupJunior Primary Rescue Simulation at both national and international level.
The day was led by Mr Severy, our Computer Science Coordinator, with the girls participating in a series of timed challenges, using monochrome, ultrasonic and light sensors to enable their CrumbleBots to navigate autonomously around a variety of environments. They had a strict time limit of 15 minutes for each challenge, but were allowed as many practice runs as needed within that time to refine their code and achieve the fastest possible course time. However, a five-second penalty was incurred each time a robot left the course or crashed into an obstacle, so the girls quickly discovered that accuracy could be more important than overall speed, as penalties soon added up. The times (including penalties) for each team’s fastest runs on each challenge were combined, and the team with the quickest overall total was declared the champion.
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| Certificates were awarded to the Class and Overall Year 5 Champions, as well as for ‘Fastest Individual Challenge Time’ in each challenge, ‘Best Technical Ability’, and ‘Best Teamwork’. Special congratulations go to ‘The Crumble Crunchers’ (Juliette and Olivia), who were crowned St Mary’s Junior School Year 5 CrumbleBot Challenge Champions 2026. |
We would like to congratulate all of our girls for their determination, perseverance, sporting attitude and enthusiasm throughout a very intense, and thoroughly enjoyable, highly productive day. We also extend our thanks to former Junior School pupils, Tuppence K. and Youshan H., now in the St Mary’s Sixth Form, and to our Junior School Year 12 prefects, Mina S., Elisheva C. and Jemima T-S., for giving up their day to assist so ably in running the competition.
Our extremely successful approach to STEM in the Junior School sees girls in their early years growing in familiarity and confidence with coding, at the same time they are happily and confidently learning to read and write.
Finally, sincere thanks go to Mr Severy for organising this incredible day for our girls.
February 2026