Tips for coaching LEGO Robotics

[Rachel]

My son has participated in LEGO Robotics through 4H the last couple years. When our agent sent out request for volunteers for a new coach, I volunteered.

I know NOTHING about programming or robots. There is the 4H curriculum, but I don’t think they have followed it in the past other than for a session or two. 

Ages range from 9-13, we will have some new kids and some kids that have been doing this 4 years.  The club has the basic Mindstorms EV3 kits.  They have some add-on kits too but have never used them in the past. 

In the past the kids have met a couple times during the semester and then for a month leading up to the competition about once a week, so maybe 6 times. It’s really not enough time. At the competition they mostly seemed to undo what the previous person had programmed instead of tweaking the programming. In other words their communication and teamwork stinks. 

At past competitions they have done puck collection, completing a maze, and sumobots.  

I’d love some tips on how to get off to a good start and improve communication between the kids. If there is a supplemental curriculum that might be helpful, let me know.

 

[TCB]

I'm a FIRST FTC coach but my friend is the coach to the FLL teams we have started. I definitely recommend getting into the FIRST robotics competition. If you do though, you will have to meet much more often. Our teams meet once a week during the summer until October and then they meet twice a week with some extra practices thrown in just before the competitions. My friend uses a curriculum to get them started. I will find out details from her and come back and post. 

You can definitely do it though, even if you know nothing now! We were in that position when we started the FTC team for homeschoolers and the team is doing great despite our initial level of ignorance!

[Rachel]

Thanks TCB, FLL curriculum is free and online but there aren’t any competitions near us. I have considered using it to compliment what they do through 4H. Even though the challenges are different they could learn a lot more and be better competitors.  I definitely think we need to meet more frequently, in the past they didn’t meet more due to the coach’s availability. 

[Meriwether]

I am a FLL coach. I feel weird typing that. I don't feel like I know what I am doing, but our team is heading to state again this year. We've gone both years. I don't worry about not knowing about programming. The kids are supposed to do the programming. There is no way I can cross the line and do it for them like some coaches do. Our kids figured it out mostly by doing it, but they did have a teen mentor that got them started. Coopertition (I hate that made up word.) is a big deal, so feel free to invite another team to visit your team and get them started or watch videos online. For the project, download the rubric and make sure that you meet the highest levels of each category. Make sure you have a variety of sources, including experts. Share with as many relevant people as you can. Do field trips. Have a fun skit or song and props like they recommend. We won our regional project competition this year. Partly because we had a good project idea, partly because one of our team members wrote a really cute skit and the kids did a good job answering questions. Try to do team building exercises regularly. They have to do one in the core values judging.

We meet in the fall, once a week for 2 hours most weeks but as often as needed closer to the competition. Whatever time and money you think it will take, double or triple it. LOL

[Rachel]

I think the 4H competitions are a bit different. They don’t have to answer any questions or do a skit, I wish they would! 

I won’t worry about not knowing the programming. I just want the kids to have the right tools to learn on their own.  At the district level the competition is divided between novice and advanced so the 9 year olds aren’t competing against more experienced teams. At the state level there are no divisions so the 9 year olds are competing against high schoolers. 

[madteaparty]

23 hours ago, TCB said:

I'm a FIRST FTC coach but my friend is the coach to the FLL teams we have started. I definitely recommend getting into the FIRST robotics competition. If you do though, you will have to meet much more often. Our teams meet once a week during the summer until October and then they meet twice a week with some extra practices thrown in just before the competitions. My friend uses a curriculum to get them started. I will find out details from her and come back and post. 

You can definitely do it though, even if you know nothing now! We were in that position when we started the FTC team for homeschoolers and the team is doing great despite our initial level of ignorance!

I would love to hear what curriculum your friend uses. DS did FLL for all of two years, the team did very well in our regional competition, but DH was coach and it was a bit of an haphazard experience, we tried using curriculum but it just didn’t work well for whatever reason. Anyway DD is only 7, we will do some work with Edison robotics but I think she would love FLL and I want to think about coaching a little team for her and her friends...

[TCB]

51 minutes ago, madteaparty said:

I would love to hear what curriculum your friend uses. DS did FLL for all of two years, the team did very well in our regional competition, but DH was coach and it was a bit of an haphazard experience, we tried using curriculum but it just didn’t work well for whatever reason. Anyway DD is only 7, we will do some work with Edison robotics but I think she would love FLL and I want to think about coaching a little team for her and her friends...

I checked with my friend and she said that they use a curriculum that our kids in the FTC team have written. It is loosely based on a book they had but which didn't really work well for them so they wrote their own. My dd was one of the ones that wrote it lol but for some reason I thought they were using something else. The curriculum is really just the programming part with a little building instruction at the beginning to get them going. It has worked well for the kids on the FLL team though. They are able to tackle pretty complicated programming tasks now. We can definitely share it but it does need a little bit of editing to be completely easily understood by someone other than the writers.