Grade 6 English reading comprehension: The robot that lost its way

On Saturday morning, the hall in Centurion buzzed like a beehive. Forty teams had come with their robots, and the long tables were covered with wires and tools. Kabelo, the captain of the Jacaranda Primary team, stood beside their robot, Bolt, and tried to look calm. His stomach felt as if it was full of butterflies.

Bolt was a small robot on four wheels, with a metal arm at the front. For three months, the team had worked on it every afternoon after school in Mrs Reddy’s classroom. Kabelo had written the program, Fatima had built the arm, and Ruan had joined the wires together. Nandi, the youngest, kept the notebook and tested everything twice.

Bolt had to follow a black line across a white track, pick up a small block and drop it into a box at the end. A sensor under its front end looked at the line and told the wheels when to turn.

In the first round, everything went wrong. Bolt rolled forward, wobbled, and then turned sharply off the line and bumped into the wall. The judge wrote on his clipboard. “Zero points,” whispered Ruan. Kabelo’s face grew hot. “It is the sensor,” he snapped. “My program is perfect.”

Fatima was not looking at Bolt but at the track. Tall windows ran along one side of the hall, and bright sunlight lay across the track in a golden patch. Bolt had gone wrong at exactly that spot.

“Kabelo, the sensor reads light,” she said. “In our classroom the blinds were down. Here the sunshine is flooding the sensor, and it cannot tell the black line from the white track.” Kabelo folded his arms. “That is silly,” he said. But Nandi had already opened the notebook. “When we tested next to the window last month, the readings were strange,” she said quietly. “I wrote it down.”

Kabelo stared at the page for a long time. “I was wrong to blame the sensor,” he said. “We have ten minutes before the second round. What can we do?”

Ruan dug into his bag and pulled out an empty cereal box. Fatima cut and bent it into a little shade, and Ruan taped it above the sensor like the peak of a cap. “Now the sun cannot reach it,” she said.

When the second round began, the hall went quiet. Bolt rolled forward, followed the black line through the patch of sunlight without a wobble, picked up the block with its metal arm and dropped it into the box. The team leapt up and hugged each other, and even the judge smiled.

At the end of the day, the judges read out the results. Jacaranda Primary came third and took home a small bronze trophy.

On the bus home, Kabelo held the little shade in his lap. “I nearly lost us the day because I would not listen,” he said. “Thank you, Fatima and Nandi.” Mrs Reddy, their teacher, smiled at him from the front seat. “A good captain listens, Kabelo,” she said. “Today, you did.”