With a record 135 teams and over 2,000 students participating this year, School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc. (SBPLI) has announced that another round has been added to its FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO League (FLL) Qualifying Tournaments.

The three-day tournament will take place on January 24-25 at Central Islip High School, which is located at 85 Wheeler Road in Central Islip and January 31, 2015 at Mineola High School, located at 10 Armstrong Road in Garden City Park. Each tournament begins at 9 a.m.

This year’s challenge is FLL World Class, in which children in elementary and middle school will work on ways to improve the learning experience of others on a topic of their choice using technology.

The FLL Tournament is an international, annual sports-like challenge for children ages nine to 14 to test their creative robotic skills by using science and technology with the help of adult mentors. The competition is similar to the FIRST® Robotics Competition (FRC), where high school students design robots to compete on an intricate playing field. Currently, there are 23,000 teams from 80 countries worldwide that participate in FLL tournaments.