FIRST FLL Practice

I had my first team practice this week for all the students in our FLL program. We have 30 students participating this year over 2 days (15 students a day). Our students range in age from grade 3 to grade 7 with two High School mentors/assistant coaches. We purchased two field set up kits so we could display one as a real life model and the kids could build the second one.

We are having the advanced team (those with prior FLL team experience) meet on Wednesdays and the rookies meet on Thursdays. We had the same lesson plan for both groups this first session.

Here's how Session 1 went (duration 1 1/2 hours):

Arrival/Warm-up Activity
Build your name out of LEGO & share your name, what grade your in, and experience with LEGO, Robotics, and FLL.

This group is already showing teamwork by building their names as a crossword puzzle

Showed FLL video (to rookie team)
http://www.usfirst.org/VideoPlayer.aspx?video=FLL.flv

Shared & Discussed FLL Values
http://www.usfirst.org/community/fll/default.aspx

Climate Connections Theme Overview
Reviewed our 3 challenges as a team - what we have to accomplish this season:
1 - Robot Game
2 - Research Project (just stated what it is - we did not get into details - we will leave that for a later practice)
3 - Technical Presentation

Reviewed Missions on Field Set up Table
Our High School mentors took turns explaining each mission and took questions.

Both groups (rookie and advanced had lots of questions and ideas for strategies).

We used the scoring worksheet from TechBrick.com as a guide.

Sorting LEGO Bricks
We split the students up into 4 groups to sort the mission model LEGO bricks

Building Mission Models
We divided the students into pairs or triads to build the mission models, giving the advanced builders the more advanced projects. The advanced team completed about 3/4 of the mission models (minus 5 models - the interactive model, the ice core, the elevation house, the core drilling model, and the storm). Those groups that didn't finish left a post-it on the step they last completed as a marker for the next team to start from.

Clean up
This year with a motivated team clean up is a breeze. In years past I used to give prizes (like a pencil or some SMARTIES) for the best cleaners (everyone gets something).

Homework/Notes Home
I assigned everyone homework to come up with an idea for a team name (we create one each year to match the theme) and to visit the FLL website to learn more about the missions and research project). I also sent a note home with our practice schedule for the season, a parent contact from, and a call for parent volunteers.

Next week (Week 2)...
We will work on completing the mission models, then will split up the students into paired teams to watch and re-teach the mission videos, and begin research on robot design. We will use NXTLOG, NXTprograms.com, and Domabotics as resources to help us.

Week 3 ideas...
I just re-watched An Inconvenient Truth and will show chapters of it to introduce the research project.