Middle School Programs and Competitions

 Congratulations to our 2020 Calvert Cruisers Next Generation (CCNEXTGEN) Ten80 team for their 1st place win in the NSBE Ten80 Points Race and 1st place in the Ten80 National Points Race in the middle school division!

 The MATHCOUNTS competition is a fun and challenging math program designed for middle school students to increase their academic and professional opportunities.

The competition builds math skills, promotes logical thinking and sharpens students’ analytical abilities. MATHCOUNTS motivates and rewards students by fostering teamwork and a competitive spirit. 

It involves students and teachers in year-long coaching sessions and helps students at all levels improve their critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.

 The Math Video Challenge
is an innovative program that empowers middle school students to be math teachers, video producers, actors and artists — all at the same time! 

Working together in teams, students create their own videos about math problems and the concepts associated
with them. The Math Video Challenge is designed to get students excited about math while giving them the opportunity to hone their creativity and communication skills. 

During the year, students create a video that teaches the solution to one of the problems from the MATHCOUNTS School Handbook and also demonstrates the real-world application of the math concepts used in the problem.

 The KidWind Challenge
is an annual event that allows students to explore the power of wind by building and testing wind turbines and then competing against other teams in their age division (4th-8th or 9th-12th). 

 The core of participating in a KidWind Challenge is the construction of a small, functional wind turbine or solar device. Teams often repurpose junk they already have, but you may need a few specialized parts like generators, solar panels or water pumps to help in building your machines. 

 The KidWind Challenge is a hands-on design celebration that engages students through the lens of wind and solar energy. Student teams design, construct, and test small scale wind turbines and solar structures at events all over the world. 

Future City Competition is a national competition that focuses on improving student’s math, engineering and science skills. The program is open to students in grades 6-8  who attend a public, private or home school. Our team is directed by Coach Keisha Capers.

The aim of Future City is to provide an exciting educational engineering program for students. It combines a stimulating engineering challenge with an inquiry-based application to present their vision of a city of the future.

 
Middle-school students will be tasked to imagine, design and build cities of the future. After designing a virtual city (using SimCity), researching, designing and writing up their solution to a city-wide issue and building a scale model of their city, teams will present their vision to a panel of judges. 

NSBE’s Future City Competition will take place at the Annual Convention.

 FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) is a program that introduces children to science & technology in a fun, energized atmosphere of sportsmanship. Our team, MegalaBrains, is directed by Coach Annette Johnson.

FIRST LEGO League participants gain real-world problem-solving experiences through a guided, global robotics program, helping today’s students and teachers build a better future together. 

In FIRST LEGO League, students engage in hands-on STEM experiences, building confidence,

growing their knowledge and developing habits of learning.  The program works to inspire youth to experiment and grow their critical thinking, coding and design skills through hands-on STEM learning and robotics.

Each year a theme based Challenge is released which involves research, problem solving, coding, and engineering. The program is based on FIRST Core Values which include teamwork, discovery, and innovation. The team will complete all parts of the challenge and present the results to judges on tournament day.