[EricH]

Originally Posted by HRobotics

Hi. This is Havergal's second year in FIRST Lego League, but we are still having problems, mainly with lack of interest from the students. They are constantly procrastinating and we had to rush to be able to complete our robot. Of course it was unsuccesful. The good thing is that now all the members (who are all new this year) can see what went wrong and what we want to fix for next time. The bad thing is that many are discouraged. How do you motivate your team and make learning a fun experience while getting things done?

As a suggestion, try doing a mini-challenge. You set up rules and a field about the size of this year's and encourage them to do it. The other thing is that with the students procrastinating, you might to offer incentives (candy, pizza, extra competitions, you name it) for getting something done on time or early, and in a creative way.
And, use this as an object lesson. Something like, "Hey, you guys chose to mess around (or whatever), so not having a good robot is a consequence of that. How can you deal with this so you can go out and do better next time?" I bet they'll learn really fast.

The most important thing right now is encouragement. Encourage them to go beyond. Encourage them to try new things.