[FTC]: Ideal team size for FTC team of middle schoolers

[n3rdchik]

Rookie coach here.

I have 32 middle schoolers - only 6 kids in 8th grade.
I have 2 registered teams.

Should I spin up another?

Pro
-More "hands on" time per kid
-There is a 15 person cap in MI FIRST

Con
-Mentors spread thin
-If kids drop, then we are 7-9 kids per team.

Looking forward to veteran opinions.

[MattRain]

Even 15 kids on a team is a bit much for FTC. For the last two years, I have been running two teams out of the same school. The greatest challenge is the budget. Semi-doubles. At least for us, even when we had two "teams" we functioned as one, with different designs from each "team."

If you think that you will be keeping all 32, then yes, I would make another team. 7-9 kids is a great number for a team. As for mentors, our teams met at the same time most of the time, so the mentors could float around.

[cadandcookies]

I've been workign with FTC teams for the last four years, first as a student mentor with FRC 2220/Eagan Robotics, where we were at about 10 teams my senior year, and now with FTC 9205 at a school which has 3 veteran FTC teams and probably another couple of teams forming this year.

Now, these are both high school or high school/middle school programs, so there are some things which are going to be different, but generally I've found that 15 kids is FAR too many kids for an FTC team. I'd personally target between 5-10 students for team size, after attrition. You will almost certainly have kids drop off the team. It happens.

Now, for mentors... you're going to have to strike a balance. 15 middle schoolers is more chaos than I'd wish upon anyone. But if you're already limited, you have a functional limit on how many you have-- I believe FIRST requires 2 per team.

Personally, I'd definitely suggest spinning up another team, and would say that 7-9 kids per team is perfectly alright. You're going to burn out mentors anyway if you're at 15 kids per team, especially if they're new or aren't trained in/used to dealing with that many students at once.

So from my (non-MI, 75% high school FTC) perspective, I'd definitely suggest adding another team. I'm sure there are people from MI that are more familiar with the norms of MI FTC than I am though.

[RRLedford]

The real question is → what number of robots can you build with your current inventory of parts and electronics? You can stay at two teams, but still built three or more robots in order to keep all 32 students well engaged and learning.

Then, if the estimated amount of drop outs happen, you will still be two near 15 member teams and working with three robots, which still better occupies that many students. You just have to commit to a bigger inventory of parts.

-Dick Ledford

[gblake]

FTC has evolved some since I had hands-on experience with it, but unless you are investing quite a bit into custom and semi-custom parts, I am surprised that you aren't wishing you could reduce each team's headcount down to 8, or fewer. Extrapolating from my experience, and from my VRC experience, ...

The number of students/mentor won't change (same number of mentors, same number of students, more teams).

The number of teams per mentor will go up. That does add a little more paperwork, and some more balls to keep in the air during tournaments. Delegate the tournament stuff to the students.

The students per machine will drop and give each student more opportunities for a hands-on contribution to, and experimentation with, the STEM activities.

Also, for a team to do well, more students will have opportunities to contribute to the parts of team performance that aren't explicitly STEM.

Blake

[Anthony Galea]

I have found 7-9 students per team is a happy medium between too many and too little at the middle school level. We (3175) had 24 middle school students in our FTC program for the 2015-2016 season and had 3 teams, and the kids were very satisfied. If you have the resources to lead 4 teams, I'd go for it.

[n3rdchik]

Thanks!!! ALL the feedback was EXTREMELY helpful.

I did spin up a 3rd team, which is my limit, I think. This leaves 10-11 per team (as we added 2 more kids!)

We have just enough money for a few extra parts and a field.

[paragon571]

Currently my team has fourteen students on our team. We are a combo of middle and high school students. We currently meet two nights a week and the kids have been told they can come either night. So on average we only have 6-8 per night on rare occasions we have more. We have lots of parents who have stayed and helped the team out.