FLL mentors

Technical Robotics Education and Curriculum
1

So, for some crazy, ridiculous reason this year, I decided to mentor the two FLL teams at the middle school with two other people on my FRC team. All three of us are high school students, and neither of us have mentored a robotics team before, but we all have some form of leadership experience, but it’s all been with people our age. We’ll start working with the kids very soon, so I was hoping people on here who have mentored FLL teams might be able to give us some tips? What are the general no-no’s of mentoring, and what have you found to have worked particularly well?

I have worked with the lego mindstorms system before (middle school robotics class), but I have never been a part of an FLL team. I’ve read the entire game manual and watched the kick off video, but is there anything else I should know? How involved should I be? I understand I’m not supposed to spoon feed answers, but to what degree should we (the student mentors) be helping the kids? Also (in case this has any impact on your answers), there is one teacher-mentor per team, and that’s all they currently have in terms of mentors. Both are pretty good at solving engineering problems. I’m not sure, but I think only one of them is familiar with coding for mindstorms.

2

2 years ago I was on an FLL team, and last year I mentored 2 FLL teams, so here is my advice.

Team structure is crucial to the success of an FLL team. Most of the time, all 10 kids want to work on the robot. It is normally a good idea to section off parts of each meeting to do the research project.

Make it very clear to the kids that the entire table will not be completed. Make them set goals and plan ahead of time. Try to encourage them to come up with a game strategy (Do we go here first, or should we maybe go there?). Most of the time, this should be done by them. This video is probably a good starting point for that.

During a break (snack time is perfect for this), run core value sessions. Create group challenges for the them to do. I even took a rubric and marked them on how well they did, similar to the real core values judging session. Remember its not about the challenge, but how them came up with the solution.

1 week before the competition, try and enforce a stop work day. After this point, only practice and final tweaking should be done. Any mission or project idea added now will only make everything else suffer. During practice of the table missions, play loud music and have the other kids yelling and cheering. Try and replicate the conditions of the tournament venue (and they can get insanely loud).

At the competition, make sure you use the practise time at the table wisely. Make sure light sensors are calibrated, and all the missions are functioning. Remember that there will be subtle differences from the table mat to your mat at home. Preach to the kids that they are here to have fun. Talk to other teams, learn from them, and teach them too.

I’m sure I’ll come back to this thread, because there is no way I can sum up all my advice in a few hundred words.

P.S. If you really want to tip the teacher-mentors over the edge, buy him/her some Core Value Shoelaces.

3

Why would you want to limit them like that? Some of the most innovative ideas from my old FLL team came directly from us demanding perfection.

4

(Speaking from experience) you will need to be more patient with the kids then with high schoolers. It’s good to have knowledge of the game /project before hand. Also with us i find it better to not do as much for them but instead to assist them if they need it like still making them program, build, etc. With this help them refine their image. Also it’s good to tell them they can’t do all the missions in the beginning and have them choose only some of the missions.

5

Last year (Food Factor) and this year (Senior Solutions), it has been made impossible to complete every mission. FLL has stated multiple times that it is impossible to reach the maximum score.

6

One of the more valuable lessons you can teach the kids is how to be pragmatic. Points per second is what wins, not going after exceptionally flashy challenges. A good way to encourage this kind of thinking is the Socratic method. Never tell them what to do; always ask them to explain what they are doing to you. Ask what the pros and cons of a certain design are; ask questions the judges will ask; ask what rule lets them complete the mission a certain way. This empowers the kids and lets them think on their own, and it will help them see why some of the more extravagant ideas are not as good as the simpler ones.

7

There is still no reason to tell them they can’t do everything. Just make sure they prioritize the missions by points. Once they get one working, move on to the next one. The only missions that will not be fully completed are the tie breaker missions that require going back and forth from base. If they can get to that point, they should be striving to reduce time so they can get more points out of those missions. Although they cannot technically complete every mission, telling them so will serve no benefit, and will just lead to them settling for less than their best.

8

We always start every meeting with a game or team building activity. (it gets the wiggles out of their systems)

Learn to ask questions like…That didn’t seem to work, what could you do to change the outcome? We have two different ideas, what is a good way for us to decide which one to use? What if you tried X Y Z, would that make a difference?

Stress to the PARENTS that they are to be HANDS OFF. You will also have to remember to be hands off (that is the hardest part for my high schoolers when they are mentoring)

Practice the YMCA, cupid shuffle and electric slide before going to a competition. Make sure you are out on the dance floor being goofy with them.

Make sure everyone participates in at least one mission and at least has one line in the presentation.

This sounds silly but: Make sure they know each others names. (we found out a couple of days before an event that they never learned names but managed to communicate for 3 months without it)

Practice your presentation in front of anyone who will sit still for you. Make sure you ask questions so they can practice answering. Make sure they know it is ok to say they don’t know to an answer instead of just making something up.

Good Luck and have fun

9

I’ve never been on an FLL team (it was started the year I aged out), so where would I be able to find more information on what to expect at a competition (or are they called festivals?), what to expect from a presentations judge, and from a core values judge?

Also, from your posts, I can assume that you guys (high school students) weren’t just helpers, but rather ran parts of meetings? How involved were you guys relative to the teachers (for those FLL teams that have teachers)?

Thanks for all the awesome advice so far, by the way.

10

In regards to the teachers really involved pretty much what we do is talk about the team who works well with who, things like that, also about what we expect them to be able to do things like that. In regards to getting more info on fll competion it’s real easy go the FIRST website to the FLL page and go to Senior solutions. hope this helps