I’ve mentored my fair share of FLL teams in the past, however this fall I’m going to start a new team at one of the local elementary schools.
Does anyone have any tips on how to run the team? I’ll be working with 4th and 5th graders, and there’ll be a few adults helping as well, though I’m the only one with FLL experience.
They need to learn all the software, building designs, etc.
What time should we start meeting? (How early in the season?)
Thanks a bunch!
Our team/teams normally start meeting in middle September to beginning of October. Most of the students have previously been on the team or have used the NXT before. Once we start meeting we usually have 2 days a week for them to come over. We do two because we know not everyone can make it one or both days since most of the kids have other commitments also.
If you have any other questions shoot me a message. I’ve been an assistant coach for 5 years and also on our area’s FLL planning committee.
The sooner you get your team together to do some things, the better it will be. Your field kit will arrive in August sometime, so if your team already knows how to work together, building the field will be an extension to your team-building activities. With the younger grades, even those with experience building Lego models will not have very much practice building with Technic parts. I think a good investment will be a medium-sized Technic set, truck or crane or plane. Build the model together (practice in following instructions) then build the alternate model together. Then build something else from those same parts. The good news is that all of the parts from that set or sets can be used for your FLL robot,
Once the team is comfortable building together, unleash the excellent site nxtprograms on them. Dave Parker has put together an amazing (and free) collection of models to make using NXT parts. If you cannot find something to interest the team on that site, you should change over to gardening, or horseback riding or something. You could also support Dave by spending $20 for his CD that has all the same stuff as his site on it so you don’t have to have a WWWeb connection for showing the stuff. Oh, and he also has beginner level programs for most if not all of the models.
Short answer is - spend as much time together as you can and don’t worry about not having absolutely all the team at every meeting.
If you want specific tips on running successful FLL programs PM me. My family has run FLL teams every year since 2004.
I also have a question on starting a FLL Team. Do you think 6-8th graders would be better suited to FTC or FLL and about how much would it cost to start a FLL team? Around $1000?
6th to 8th grade (even 9th grade) are fine for FLL. I believe that FTC is for high school students aged 14-18.
A $1000 budget for FLL should be fine, you may want more if you have a larger number of students in the program. On our teams we usually do not run more than 3 kids per kit and computer combination.
For our FLL teams we start usually in June in order to train the students building with the LEGO Technic system and programming with the NXT-G or RIS 2.0 (for the old RCX controller) software. Most teams do not start this early, we however find this to be more effective because it allows the kids to really become a team and really get a lot more out of the experience.
Funny thing!
I made a document outlining this process a couple months ago!
Its still a little rough (not completely edited), but the information shouldn’t change. Its based off the experiences of myself and another 1675 alum.
Hope it helps!
Thanks Katie! I’ll take a look at it!