First LEGO League - Year 3

Yesterday I finished up my third First LEGO League season.  My goal with the school's First LEGO League (FLL) team has always been to provide students with the opportunities the competition provides.  The competition is made up of different components.  It can be summed up as two components, a project and the robot missions.  The FLL Core Values are used to guide the team and help them complete the competition while having fun.  The teams have to present in three different sessions at the competition tournament, project, robot design, and core values.  The experience with presenting is a valuable one for the students.  The project is also valuable for skills it teaches.

The team this year was all first time participants a team of fourth grade students.  The amount of work to be done is difficult to accomplish from late August to early December.  Many teams meet multiple times per week including weekends.  As a school team, it is difficult to require that significant of a time commitment.  However, my goal is to share the opportunity with as many students as possible and not to just strive to win.  I want students to develop existing strengths and discover new ones as well.  This goal does not require students to give up all their free time or choose FLL over other activities.

Each year my experience with the team has been different, much as classroom dynamics change with each new group of students.  I have enjoyed all three years but each year consider not doing it again.  At the same time, perhaps oddly enough, I recommend it for both students and coaches.  Again, I think the experience for both is invaluable.  I have tried each year to improve a different aspect of the school's FLL team to make it work better for students and myself.  I always ask coaches that I meet how they organized their team.  How often did they meet?  How did they design their robot?  How did they distribute the work?  What I have finally come to realize is that it does not matter how other teams are organized.  I have to find what works to help my team achieve our goals.  Our goals may not be the same as other teams.  As I watched many of the team members literally bouncing with excitement before our last round, I realized I had achieved my goals.  The team members and discovered new strengths and developed existing ones.  They had found an interest in something they did not know anything about.  There was talk of plans for next year's tournament that may or may not come to fruition, but they were there.  The team of eight had experienced a brand new opportunity and whether or not they participate again, they have grown from it.

I have grown from my experiences over the last three years as well.  I have grown in many professional ways and enjoyed the excitement and youthful enthusiasm of my teams.  It is a tough challenge to take on, coaching an FLL team, but well worth the time and effort.

http://www.firstlegoleague.org/

First-time First LEGO League (FLL) Coach

There was a change of plans for coaching an FLL team over the summer.  Therefore, our school was not going to have a team.  I had been interested in coaching a team, but the teams had previously been led by parents.  I had never participated in FLL in any way.  However, I felt this was a fantastic opportunity to get my feet wet and provide students with the opportunity to do the same.

In years past, FLL participation had only been available to the middle level students at our K-8 school.  As the K-5 engineering teacher, I opened it up to students in 4th through 8th grades.  I did not send the signups home for all students but advertised on the school announcements for students to "apply" to be on the team.  The application process involved submitting information, in any format, about why the students wanted to be on the team, how they would be able to make the time commitment, and what made them a good team member.  I received six applications and was impressed with them all.  One of the applications that really made me reflect on why I was crazy enough to start a FLL team in October, before the mid-December competition, involved a student telling me he wanted to learn to be a better group member.  That was very powerful for me and very motivational as a coach.  

If you have not participated in FLL before, you may not realize that many teams begin in the spring around May or so.  They work through the summer and have ample time for the various aspects of the competition.  I did not realize this and it is a good thing since I probably would have thought the challenge before the team impossible or too daunting.  However, I am very proud of what the team produced in a matter of eight weeks with a novice coach.

It took some time to register as a team and order the field setup kit for the robotics game.  This gave us time to work on the project and begin preparing a poster for the team's implementation of the Core Values.  Once the field setup kit arrived, the team built the various components for the missions in the robotics game.  Once we analyzed the different missions, the team built robot models that they thought could handle the majority of the missions.  They voted on the best design based on performance on turns and stability.  The chosen design was then modified to include an arm needed for some of the missions.  They did get a little carried away making modifications to the design for the arm addition.  Also, the original arm was more complex than we had time for given that the team was building the robot two weeks before the December competition.  I did encourage them to look for a more simplistic arm design so that they could start programming.  I truly believe in the FLL values that the coach is simply a mentor and facilitator.  I helped by providing to-do lists, and assisting with the group dynamics.  They had approximately two weeks to program and had difficulty with the first mission they had decided on.  In retrospect, I probably should have had them move on to another mission as recommended in the coaching manual.  The team practiced their presentations and running the robot prior in the days prior to the competition with the team parents.  This also gave me the opportunity to organize lunches, snacks, and the responsibilities for the materials arriving at the competition.

The competition was a fantastic experience!  It reminded me of times in the past when my own children had competed in Future Cities and National History Day events.  Although the organizers made the robotics competitions very fun with the help of an announcer, I felt the most valuable part was the presentations and interactions with the judges.  The judges were fantastic in asking good questions and interacting with the students.  For many of the team members, this was one of the most challenging aspects of the competition.  The event was so fantastic that I found myself planning for next year.  Normally, after an involved time commitment such as this, I might have been second guessing whether there would be a next year.  Nevertheless, I am planning to start a team in spring of 2015, and I recommend to all who have the funding to participate.

http://www.firstlegoleague.org/challenge/thechallenge