“Remember, you’re not racing to see who can build a robot faster, you’re trying to build it smarter.”

This is what Jill Cooper told her class, a group of about 30 kids who were eagerly tinkering with wheels, axles and all manner of additional parts.

Cooper and her son, Andrew, are teaching VEX IQ as part of the Fountain Hills Unified School District’s summer school program this year.

It is a four-week course tasking students with building and fine-tuning a robot with set objectives to compete in various activities.

Students in the class range in age from eight to 14 and, according to Cooper, VEX IQ is a robotics program perfectly targeted at that age range.

“Andrew has been on the VEX team at the high school since he was a freshman,” Cooper said.

“Going to all of his matches and seeing how robotics and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) stimulate critical thinking, I knew it would be really good for this younger age group to take part in.”

At the high school level, Andrew Cooper and his fellow VEX robotics students have earned quite a reputation for themselves, earning awards and winning competitions throughout the season.

VEX IQ, on the other hand, is in its second year of gearing a robotics program at a lower level, giving participants a stronger foundation for robotics and the various STEM areas that are applied in its practice.

Before this year, the summer school robotics classes have revolved around a LEGO program. By moving to VEX IQ, students will now be exposed to the same tools and programs they can continue to utilize at the high school level.

When asked why she thought robotics would be a good fit for young students, Cooper laughed.

“Kids love technology,” she said. “They’re inherently motivated by it. Building things and taking them apart, that’s just what kids do.”

Cooper said she was nervous about the course at the onset, unsure how she would be able to get the ball rolling for her new students.

“And that was not necessary,” said the local second grade teacher.

“Andrew tried to tell me, no, they’re just going to go and do it, and that’s exactly what they did. They dove in and they’re already coming up with their own ideas and being very creative, using that critical thinking that’s so important.”

The course began with students learning about simple machines — such as the inclined plane —and how they work.

“Engineering, physics, problem solving, following instructions,” Andrew Cooper chimed in.

“Right now they’re learning how the different parts work together.”

Similar to the high school VEX program, students will build their initial robot in the hopes of creating a machine that can push, pull and/or stack color-coordinated cubes. Once the initial robots are completed, students will spend the remainder of their time refining their machines and determining ways to make them work even better than before.

“Teams will compete with each other to perform these tasks in a series of trials and errors,” Jill Cooper continued.

“Try it, fix it, try it, fix it. That will take us through the rest of the summer program, and they’ll even start to learn about simple programming, writing simple code to make their robot move autonomously.”

One of the Coopers’ students, Cody Gollon, said he is really enjoying this unique summer school experience.

“I really like the robots and the fact that you can build something, put a motor on it and it moves,” Gollon said.

“It’s like building a car, but not as complex.”

Gollon said that he never expected to be able to dive into robotics in a classroom, so he was excited to get the chance with VEX IQ.

“My favorite part has been just building the robot,” he added.

“It’s fun. We’re trying to get them to build a tower of cubes. At first we’re all building a claw robot, which is the basic robot, and then we get to use our imagination to build whatever we want to complete the challenge.”

Cooper said that she and Andrew make a good team working with the students, as she can provide the teaching piece of the puzzle while he provides the engineering piece.

In the end, she said her goal is that students leave the class confident that they can build a robot and apply what they’ve learned to other facets of life.

“If something doesn’t work the first time, you can take it apart, fix it and make it better,” she said.