Quote:
Originally Posted by Debbie
This year, Michigan put FTC as a middle school option. Our Jr. High is now 6th - 8th. We offer FLL and FTC options here. We try to steer our experienced 7th and 8th grade FIRST kids into FTC (unless they just want to stay in FLL, which some do) and we steer our new recruits to FLL.  |
When we decided to do a pilot FTC program in Michigan for middle school students we were really trying to get the programs back to the way they were originally designed. FLL for elementary school, FTC for Middle School, And FRC for high school. This creates the intended flow of students and allows you to keep students and mentors around for a lot longer. This solves all the valid issues discussed in this thread. I believe that FIRST is working towards this transition after the success we had in Michigan with the pilot.
Quote:
Originally Posted by btslaser
We would like to do FTC but our middle school is grades 7-8 and FTC is for grades 9-12. We are considering VEX or BEST...
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The rules for all the FIRST programs only have upper bounds for the grades not lower bounds. So if you would like to do 6th-8th grade on an FTC team you can do that and like Debbie said they will compete quite well.
I have coached 4 Lego league teams consisting of elementary school students. From my experience having 4th graders compete against 8th graders is a lot tougher then having 7-8th graders compete against 9th-12th because so much development happens between 4th and 8th grade.
If anyone has any questions about running FTC at a middle school level I can give you my first hand insight from coaching 2 middle school FTC teams this year. The kids loved it and handled the challenges very well. The transition from Lego league to FTC is very seamless and my Lego alumni students picked it up right away. I strongly believe that if FIRST wants to grow it will need to go back to its initial design and stop promoting FTC as a lower budget FRC program for high schools.