FLL Conference Call to Help New Coaches Tomorrow (8/20/08)

This was sent in an FLL e-mail blast yesterday...

"The FIRST Senior Mentors are pleased to announce they will be hosting the first in a series of important Teleconference calls for all FLL Team Coaches beginning this Wednesday, August 20, at 7 pm EST."

They say the call will focus on "FLL Coaching basics," including an overview of the FLL program, tips on shaping a team toward successfully meeting program goals and objectives, and toward finding resources that can make the coaching job easy, productive, and fun.

The call will be led by Sally Sylvester, an FLL veteran coach from Virginia. Also online will be Steve Cremer from Boston, an FLL & FTC Team coach, and FLL Partner Services Manager Karen Burnett-Kurie.

All team coaches are welcome. The call in number is 1-800-503-2899 and the 7-digit access code is 6663906. They will have 100 lines available, so lines are on a first come, first served basis. The call will also be recorded and available for replay at the link: http://www.usfirst.org/community/fll/content.aspx?id=788

I have never attended these conference calls in my 3 years (going to my 4th) with FLL. But it seems they would be helpful for a first year coach and team.

FLL Climate Connection Resources

Marco Ciavolino, an FLL coach from Forest Hill, Maryland has been busy putting together teaching resources for the FLL Climate Connections season.

He has provided downloads of building instructions for the mission models, worksheets for helping students organize their mission strategies, as well as high res files of the field mat and challenge models. Also included is a vocabulary list of weather items to assist with the research project. Marco is selling a booklet of the building instructions if you want to save on printing them yourself (FLL sends them as PDF files).

You can visit his website here: http://www.techbrick.com/

I downloaded all the files myself and am happy that Marco not only shared his resources but also saved me (and many others) a lot of planning time this season.

There are also tips on the site for rookie coaches.

Good Luck Marco and team Tech Brick!