My team is thinking about starting an FLL team for our town’s middle/elementary schools, but we’re not really sure how to recruit students at that level, especially in the elementary schools. It’s hard to get those kids to come to our Open House at the high school to come see our robot, which is at this point one of the only events available to the younger kids in terms of robotics. We also set up a booth at the town fair every year, but the kids that come to the booth are usually younger than the age group we’re looking for for FLL Challenge. I’m not really sure how we can recruit kids in that 5th-8th grade group we need.
I’d like to try bringing our two minibots and our mariokart style track from Open House over to the middle school to let the kids drive and race, but transporting the track (on a large rug) and minibots to another school might be difficult, but it’s an idea!
What events has your team planned to help get the younger kids excited about FLL/FRC?
There isn’t a lot in the way to start the team - but there is in the management of your new FLL/FTC teams.
First off, I would make certain that you have a ‘parent organization’ to manage the money, scheduling, registration of the teams, etc. We use our Booster Club for this purpose. Without the parent organziation, longterm management will fall back to the FRC team (not ideal) or will be left to the last person holding the bag - usually a parent. Again, this is not ideal.
As for gaining interest, contact the principal of the schools you intend to target and see if they will allow you to send home flyers, make announcements, etc to promote the program. Most will welcome this with open minds as long as it doesn’t mean more work for them or their staff. Many times they will have suggestions or communication portals in place to aid with this.
Set up a pre-registration meeting and advertise it on social media (especially on town forums) as well as through your newly formed school connections. Be prepared to answer a lot of questions - usually about start times, offering this program after school (very popular for parents -just don’t expect help from them if this is the time frame), cost, etc. Use the information that FIRST provides. Create a form or gather contact information from those interested. Make sure all of this is done a month or two before the season so that you can start to plan out the logistics.
Host a registration event and again use the same communication channels as before and then send invites to those that left their contact information. With this communication make certain you put in the amount of registration (cost) and the times that the team(s) will meet. You should have the registration of the team(s) complete with FIRST and if you can, have the payment already into FIRST so that you get your materials on time. Do not go into this meeting ill-prepared.
Also include that you are looking for mentors for this (FLL/FTC) team. You will want to start farming these FLL and FTC teams for future mentors. Many of our 4607 mentors have grown up in our FTC program and now are invaluable - I am very appreciative of the work they have done in the past and how they continue to impact my current students and teams.
Let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks!
To drum up interest, I recommend setting up demo events at the elementary schools. Bring your robot, a handful of students who can speak to a crowd, maybe some high-quality videos if you have them. When I was in high school our teacher-advisor organized this as a one-hour field trip in the last few weeks of school, when missing class would not be too big a deal.
A good demo gets the kids excited, but more importantly it will get the teachers & admin excited. In my experience, the hardest part is getting a teacher to agree to supervise the FLL team - once you have a teacher on board, they can recruit students without much trouble. The younger levels of FLL are limited to 6 students per team, so it really doesn’t take a huge recruitment drive. My mom coaches FLL for fourth graders and her recruitment process is:
Talk to third grade teachers about which students from last year would most enjoy/get the most out of it
Reach out to the parents of those students, invite them to an info night, talk about how great the program is
So recently we just did a presentation for our middle schoolers mainly for them to join our frc team. If you want to try and find the right kind of people, I would reach out to stem teachers at the middle school. The woodshop teacher, anyone who does the engineering design process, science olympiad teachers. Plan a presentation as to what first robotics is and see how much interest it receives. The elementary schools, reach out to the principals, you might be able to have an entire assembly for the school, we have done it in the past to demo our robot and encourage them to get excited about engineering. I have no idea how to start a team, but this is how we promote excitement and get people ready for it.