FLL Robotics

The First Lego League competitive robotic season is over for us.  This was our inaugural season and it went very well.

The FLL program is really top notch.  It is for students in grades 5-8.  There are 4 components to the program, most of which are hidden from view.  The strands consist of the robot game - the most visible and the most exciting, core values, project/solution, and robot design/programming.  The four strands evaluate very different skills.  The teams that are the most well rounded are the teams that move to the next level of competition.

Our lower school technology coordinator (who is amazing - IMHO!) and I coached a team of nine 5th grade boys.  We began in September and met twice a week after school for an hour.  As our competition date drew closer we added a few weekend practices.  The time flew by with the boys being more productive as their sense of urgency increased.  The boys finished 3rd in the robot game, but didn't finish high enough in the other strands to move on.  I think they were slightly disappointed, but we were very proud of what they accomplished. 

 The competition we attended was held at our school.  Our school community is extremely supportive, and we had parent, student, and faculty volunteers working the event.  In addition to having our 5th grade team, the middle school had two teams competing.  All total there were 20 teams in attendance.  The day went extremely smoothly and surprisingly quickly.  It was a wonderful end to the first of many seasons to come.