EKIS Montessori School, one of the most prestigious basic schools in Ghana in March 2021 won a world robotics competition.
EKIS participated in the just-ended CoderZ League Sprint Challenge, this is an international virtual competition designed to engage students with exciting challenges and opportunities to work collaboratively in teams. The teams play against other teams to get the highest score by completing a series of missions and challenges. The goal of each team is to get the highest score possible on all missions and challenges to accumulate the most points.
CoderZ League is comprised of Novice division, Junior division, and Pro division based on estimated grade levels. EKIS MONTESSORI SCHOOL competed in the Novice division which is meant for Grades 4 to Grade 7. As part of the strategy of the school, it presented two teams: EKIS STARS and NYANSAPO.
The challenge was in two separate stages, the mission and challenge stages. Each of these had its own set of dynamics and expectations. Under the mission module, teams play the tutorial and later start going over every mission in both games.
Each individual team member contributes points to their team by completing a mission with a maximum point pegged at 100. The interesting and challenging aspect of the competition is that completing a mission multiple times is permitted. However, points obtained for each time a specific mission is completed are not accumulated.
Rather, a team member’s highest score for that mission is contributed to their team. Stage two which is dubbed “challenges” are available and teams can start working together to create the best possible solution for each challenge, as well as complete missions they have not finished yet. All team members may participate in the challenges.
However, unlike missions, only the highest-scoring team member contributes their score to the team. Challenges may be attempted any number of times and only the highest score counts. The highest scoring student in a team is always the one who is placed on the leaderboard.
In all, sixty-seven (67) teams from all over the world took part in the competition with EKIS winning first two places at the end of the competition under the Novice division. As part of the winning package, EKIS will have access to CoderZ course training platform and materials for 3 months. This is to offer further learning opportunities to the students.
EKIS is well-respected for its academic excellence and successes, its strict disciplinary and moral standards, and strong Christian upbringing. The global competition occurred in March 2021.
The school is located at the outskirts of the capital, Pokuase, Mayera Dunyo in the Ga West Municipality. The school commenced operation in September 2017. It a technology-savvy school that currently runs a bilingual academic module in English and french.
EKIS prioritizes the teaching and learning of coding (programming) and robotics which is a departure from the normal school syllabus. This is inspired by the new trend in identifying talent in young school children and the desire to prepare them for the future and the labor market.
The school also teaches extra-curricular programmes like chess and taekwondo lessons as a subtle means of tapping into the unlimited potential of their students.
The proprietor of the school, Mr. Elvis Boateng, expressed his delight at winning the competition. He said this poses a huge challenge for the school to win more competitions in the coming years. He was full of appreciation for the teacheRs who prepared the studentS for the competition especially Mr. Joseph Amegatcher the ICT teacher, who he said played a very instrumental role in helping the school to achieve this recognition.
“We will continue to position EKIS Montessori as a first-class institution of learning and as the school of choice for basic education in the country”, he said. He emphasized that plans are underway to enrich the content by introducing other learning modules which will further help in harnessing the potential of the students whiles the teachers have also trained adequately for the task.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM
