Category: First Lego League

FLL Regional Tournament

Rob

img_4354This past weekend my team, the RoboTigers, competed at the NEOFRA Warren Delphi First Lego League Regional Tournament. I must first say that the team of people who run this particular event hit a homerun! The event was incredible. Everyone was very professional and well prepared.

With that said, if you are thinking about starting a FLL team, here are some things that I learned after my first competition.

  1. Be prepared for a LONG day. (The day was great and busy, but long.)
  2. You get way more points for your presentations than you do for the robot games. (You do have to score high enough in the robot games to move on, but having the highest score doesn’t guarantee you move on to regionals.)
  3. You really need to do well on ALL of the presentations. We focused more on the research project. The other presentations (Core Values and Robot Design) are very important also.

Overall we did great. We didn’t have the highest score, but we were in the top 7 and advanced on to the regionals next month. For a first year team of 4-5 graders who have never programmed a robot before, we did incredible. I am so proud of them!

If you are thinking about starting a team, GO FOR IT! It was a BLAST!

RoboTigers

Rob

robotigerSo a few months have gone by and we have been busy. So busy I haven’t posted about our process. Sorry! I am finding out there are lots to do before our competition on December 10.

If you are considering starting a team I HIGHLY suggest you find yourself a mentor or join an established team with an experienced coach.

Although I did have a coach from another team to ask questions of, I didn’t realize just how much you have to do. I knew about the robot competition and the project, but didn’t realize you have to know and demonstrate how you meet the FLL Core Values. I didn’t realize all the paperwork involved.

With that said, this wouldn’t stop me from continuing to coach a FLL team. I know now that much of the work needs to start day 1 instead of a month before competition.

Overall, the experience was good. One of the Core Values is “We know our coaches and mentors don’t have all the answers; we learn together.” That includes the FLL competition process. The students and I learned a great deal and had a lot of fun in the process.

The diary of a FLL coach

Rob

animalalliesFor years I have been interested in coaching a First Lego League robotics team. This year I finally get a chance. Through this blog and twitter, I plan to document each step of the way. For those who want to create a team but don’t know where to start, I hope my ups and downs during the season will give you the courage to try coaching a team yourself.

I am lucky. My team was already set up before I decided to coach. My daughter’s school was looking for someone to coach a third team they were creating. All I had to do is say yes. I excited that my daughter will also have the opportunity to be on the team. We ordered the materials, so it’s official. I am coaching a FLL team.

For our first meeting, we spent time coming up with a team name. We didn’t actually agree on a name yet. I didn’t want to spend all of our time debating, so we will leave that until next week. None of the students have been on a FLL team before. I guess we all will be learning as we go.

We also spent time discussing the project and the robot game. This led us to discuss how we interact with animals.

Before we knew it, our time was over. Until next week…