The Valley Catholic May 26, 2015 | Page 13

The Valley Catholic cAtholic schools Sacred Heart Robotics reaches the Top 50 at the 2015 VEX Worlds Robotics Championship The Sacred Heart School middle school robotics team “The Daleks” saw their hard work come to fruition last month when they became one of the Top 50 robotics team in the world at the 2015 VEX World Robotics Championship, in the middle school category. The 2015 VEX World Competition took place in April in Louisville, Kentucky. It is the highest in its class and gathered the best 800 robotics teams over 25 countries, including China, Germany, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Canada, and Japan. The Daleks qualified to the worlds competition last March by winning the “Robotics Excellence Award,” the highest award at the VEX State Competition in San Jose. VEX is the premier robotics organization, and through robotics, the students deepen their knowledge and make real-world connections between science technology engineering and mathematics. The Sacred Heart middle school team, led by science teacher Rachel McKenna, and supported by parent June 27 On Our Campus 13 A Day You’ll Want To Be A Part Of! volunteers, consists of boys and girls from sixth to eighth grade. The robotics team has been competing at the high school competition level for the last three years with great success, culminating this time as one of the best in the world in their category at the worlds competition. The school’s robotics program is part of the schools extra-curricular class offerings and it is offered to students as early as third grade who are interested in expanding their STEM knowledge. Sacred Heart’s success in robotics is a great reminder that our Catholic schools can compete with the best of the best. Planting for the Future On April 28, 8th grade students at Resurrection School in Sunnyvale spent the morning working with Our City Forest, a Silicon Valley nonprofit organization, to plant four purple autumn ash trees on school grounds. If the 8 Ѡ