Four years into our robotics experience in Moore County Schools, Clint Rogers and I decided to take our robotics game to the next level. We picked one of our schools to go into this new experience with and we both came away learning a lot. We didn’t realize exactly how much time and effort this new commitment would require, but given the opportunity we would participate in First League League every season that it’s offered.
What is FLL?
First Lego League is an international robotics competition for students from grades fourth through eighth, but it is so much more than robots. This competition is made up of 3 distinctive parts in which students are judged: Project, Robot Game, and Core Values.
During the course of the season, students research a topic, develop a plan, and present their project to an outside party. This year’s theme was Hydrodynamics - so everything was centered around water. Students collaborated with field experts and university professors before deciding on a course of action and coming up with the topic they wanted. Once they decided on their project they had to come up with entertaining ways to present it to judges (song, skit, ect).
The robot game has a challenge board with several challenges and each challenge is worth a set amount of points. Student have 2 ½ minutes to execute as many of the challenges as possible. They compete in 3 rounds and they keep the best score out of the 3 rounds. Students are also judged on how well they have modified their EV3 robot in order to perform the tasks in the robot design category.
Core Values is portion of the competition where teams show they can work together and value each other’s input. During this event, students are given a task or a challenge that they must work together to solve and they are judged on how they teamwork. **Below you can see we played reverse musical chairs as a practice exercise - students had to try to work together to get ALL team members on fewer and fewer chairs each round.
Teams aren't just judged at an FLL competition in the four judging spaces, they are watched throughout the competition day by judges to see if they are showing gracious professionalism, sharing what they have learned with other teams, and displaying an understanding that learning is more important than winning. Below you’ll find a picture of the pit where teams are staged in between events. Bring snacks! There is plenty of downtime.
How is it different than what Moore County is doing with robotics?
At the elementary level we have a county and regional competition. This competition consists of four, twenty minute rounds of programming and EV3 robot to navigate a board/path for points using various sensors. The challenge is that students have not seen these boards before.
How do I get started with FLL?
First you need a team of no more than 10 students and you need to register your team nationally. You can do that here. This comes with an annual team registration fee of $225. The field kit (which is different each year to coincide with the theme) costs $75 plus shipping. Then you will need to build a board so your team can practice - instructions here. This summer you will need to order your lego pieces for practice - they did not release this year until August 29. Then in mid October, register for a qualifying tournament- cost is $75.
Rookie Tips and things we learned this year:
- Programming with cables on a computer is most dependable. It is do-able on a chromebook but the software is much more robust on a computer.
- Having a reliable parent volunteer is a MUST and a requirement to compete
- Each team member needs to be knowledgeable about the robot and program as well as the project - you never know which team member will get asked questions.
- Collaboration with other coaches that have FLL experience proved to be very valuable.
Neither of our teams walked away this season with any awards but “What we discover is more important than what we win” (this being one of the eight core values that your team should remember). If you are considering diving into FLL next season and have questions, please reach out to us and we will be happy to help you!
Kelly Priest - kpriest@ncmcs.org
Clint Rogers - crogers@ncmcs.org
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