Successful FLL Coaching 101
August 11, 2004
Version 1.0
Page 1
©2002 High Tech Kids
Legal Stuff
© 2003 INSciTE in agreement with, and permission from FIRST and the LEGO Group. This document is
developed by INSciTE and is not an official FLL document from FIRST and the LEGO Group. This
work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. To
view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
LEGO, ROBOLAB, and MINDSTORMS are trademarks of the LEGO Group used here with special
permission. FIRST LEGO League is a trademark owned by FIRST (For Inspiration and
Recognition of Science and Technology) and the LEGO Group used here with special permission.
INSciTE is a trademark of Innovations in Science and Technology Education.
High Tech Kids
111 3rd Ave South, Suite 120
Minneapolis, MN 55401
612.781.2203
www.hightechkids.org
Page 2
©2002 High Tech Kids
Creative Commons License
• High Tech Kids is committed to making the best possible training
material. Since HTK has such a dynamic and talented global
community, the best training material and processes, will naturally
come from a team effort.
• Professionally, the open source software movement has shown that far
flung software developers can cooperate to create robust and widely
used software. The open source process is a model High Tech Kids
wants to emulate for much of the material we develop. The open
source software license is a key enabler in this process. That is why we
have chosen to make this work available via a Creative Commons
license. Your usage rights are summarized below, but please check the
complete license at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/.
Page 3
©2002 High Tech Kids
Creative Commons License
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0
You are free:

to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work

to make derivative works
Under the following conditions:
Attribution. You must give the original author credit.
Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may
distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.

For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of
this work.

Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright
holder.
Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.
Page 4
©2002 High Tech Kids
Credits
This class material is based on “Coaching FIRST LEGO
League Teams” by Steve Jevning and Kathy Bishop of
Leonardo’s Basement. Some of the material on forming a
team was developed by Timothy Jump. This presentation
material was put together by Fred Rose.
Page 5
©2002 High Tech Kids
Coaching FLL Teams
• Objective
– Give you a comfort level in coaching your team
• Goals
• Duties and Roles of a Coach
• The Season
• Frequently Encountered Situations
• Resources
Page 6
©2002 High Tech Kids
Welcome to Coaching 101
• Congratulations on coaching a problem solving team!
• Welcome to the most rewarding, and at times the most
frustrating, often on the same day, job you will ever
have.
• Problem solving is a life long skill that can be learned.
• In fact, neurological studies have shown that problem
solving (creating new synapses searching for
connections)1 establishes life long pathways in the brain
• So let’s see how to exercise those young brains!
Page 7
1. Ridley, Matt, 2003,”Nature via Nurture”, Harper-Collins, pp 145-146
©2002 High Tech Kids
High Tech Kids Philosophy
• Kid directed
• Learn and experience problem solving in a team setting
• Hands on science and technology
• Competition is important
– Gives a goal and deadline
– Makes everyone take it seriously, but not too seriously
• Interact with professionals
Page 8
©2002 High Tech Kids
Goals for Your Team
• Have fun learning
• Put the kids in charge of what they do but give them guidance
• Make sure your goals, and your kid’s goals align
– Bad
• Your goal : Win the state championship
• Your kid’s goal: have fun with their friends
– Good
• You both want to do the best you can, have fun, and build a robot.
• Some good goals:
– Develop as a team.
– Do the best you can, improve, learn new things, stay together
as a team, trust and respect everyone.
• Decision making: how will the team do it?
• Taking risks/venturing into the unknown is OK
Page 9
©2002 High Tech Kids
Duties of the Coach
•
•
•
•
Administrative
Form the team
Manage practice
Teach skills
– Or find someone to do it
• Foster teamwork
• Tournament
• Wrap up
Page 10
©2002 High Tech Kids
Forming a Team
• There is NO best way to select a team
– Have an open house at school or organization
– Group of friends
– Decide if team will be all one gender or age
– Part of a class
– Tryouts or essays: but be careful with these
• Some guidelines
– Mixed gender teams in 5th and 6th grade can be challenging
– Try to limit size to 7 kids (legal limit is 10)
– Try not to span too large an age
– If you have a lot of kids and few coaches, make helping coach
the only way to guarantee a spot on the team for their child.
– Try really hard to get two coaches
Page 11
©2002 High Tech Kids
Funding a Team
• Registration fees
– $200 national, $50 MN regional tournament fee, $45 MN state
tournament fee
• $395 Mindstorms kit (don’t need to buy every year)
• $65 challenge set (mat and field pieces)
• Other expenses could add another $100-$200: Batteries, snacks,
maybe a table, T-shirts
• Sources:
– School/organization activity fund
– “Activity fee” for each team member
– Local sponsorship : eg. “Joe’s Pizza”
– High Tech Kids Financial Aid
Page 12
©2002 High Tech Kids
Dealing with Parents
• Parents can be a great asset and/or a great distraction
• Communicate clearly to parents program objectives and your
expectations (like getting kids to practice)
– Have all the parents come to an early practice or meeting
• Communicate with them regularly
• Get parents involved if possible (help at a practice occasionally,
etc.)
• Have some “practice runs” of both the robot challenge and your
research presentation for the parents
• Make it clear it’s the kids problem.
• Remember: Involved parents this year, are coaches next year!
Page 13
©2002 High Tech Kids
Who ARE These Kids?
• Get to know them
– Understand their experience
– Are they detail oriented or a perfectionist?
– Are they spacey, disorganized and full of crazy ideas?
• Get them to know each other
– Teambuilding is essential!!
– Use many of the team building games available1
• Some will need help understanding how to learn from mistakes
• Some will need help accepting ideas from others.
• Remember that kids timelines are different than adults! To them, a
tournament 8 weeks away is a lifetime.
1. Scearce, Carol,”100 Ways to Build Teams”
Page 14
©2002 High Tech Kids
Children with Special Needs
• Learning disabilities, ADD, etc.
• Some simple rules
– Provide food, drink and exercise.
– Set aside a quiet and safe place for kids to get away from the
chaos.
– Acknowledge appropriate behavior immediately and
constantly.
– Develop clear rules and expectations for behavior.
– Confront inappropriate behavior quickly.
– Establish routines.
– Set clear goals with reasonable timelines.
– Set time limits for popular or other high demand activities such
as using the robot, the remote control or the computer (kitchen
timers work well).
– Ask parents for suggestions and advice about their children.
• These rules will be helpful for other kids as well
Page 15
©2002 High Tech Kids
Age Ranges
• Young teams (9-11)
– More adult attention and recognition
– Simplify the rules for them
• Older teams (12-14)
– Behavior will be to push the limits
– Reluctant to admit mistakes
– They can assume responsibility for their own
learning
• Older students can make excellent mentors but make
sure this is something they want to do.
Page 16
©2002 High Tech Kids
Team Formation
•
•
•
•
Page 17
Team building
– Introductions
– Eat together
– Select a team name and design a team logo. Sometimes it may be
better to wait a while for selecting team name, as your team needs
time to form it’s own identity.
– Build the challenge set
– Play games
Team Goals
– Take time to set team goals
– Help frame goals in terms of doing one’s best, making improvement
and thinking creatively.
– Ultimately competing with yourself is as much or more rewarding
than defeating others (this is a hard lesson for all of us to learn).
Put the goals in writing and post them at practice
Establish rules of behavior (no interrupting, etc.) and post them as well.
©2002 High Tech Kids
Team Formation
• Develop a timeline
– Make it general but refer to it every practice
• Determine strengths and weaknesses of team members
– Observe children as they work. Are they easily distracted?
What seems to pull them off task? Do they work alone? Can
they concentrate in a group?
– Is there one kind of activity the child seems drawn to? Afraid
of?
– Ask the children, their parents and/or their teachers about
strengths and weaknesses.
– Can you tell what motivates the child? What seems to make
him or her happy? Sad?
– Think about how each child seems to learn.
Page 18
©2002 High Tech Kids
Teamwork
•
•
•
•
Page 19
There is an award for it, but what is teamwork?
Looking for teams that exhibit
– Student initiative, "kid directed" work.
– Participation by all team members.
– Student understanding of process and objectives.
– Growth as a team based on individual members’ contributions.
– Cooperation and competition valued equally.
Judges want to see how the team came to form itself, create the roles, and
deal with problems
There is no one right way to structure roles, it depends on a lot of factors.
– Some coaches/teams prefer fixed roles for team members
– Some coaches/teams want the roles rotated
– Some coaches let the kids gravitate to what they like best.
©2002 High Tech Kids
Practice Logistics
• Where
– After school classrooms
– Churches
– Homes
• When
– Whatever works for your team members’ likely busy schedules
• How Long
– 1.5 to 2.5 hours twice a week is typical
– Maybe some field trips or Saturday building sessions
• Expect many practices the last two weeks!!
• How will you communicate with kids and parents?
• Who provides snacks?
Page 20
©2002 High Tech Kids
Anatomy of a Practice
• As a coach do some preparation
– Take a look at the weekly lesson plans1
• Set goals for the session with the kids or on your own. It’s critical
you have a goal for each practice, especially early on in the season.
• Try to a brainstorming session early in the practice
• Try to teach some skills along the way
– Technical, team building, decision making
• Take a snack break
• Wrap up each session with a look at what kids have accomplished,
review new problems that have come up, identify plans for next
session etc.
• Clean up
1. hightechkids.org web site, under Coaching 101
Page 21
©2002 High Tech Kids
Team Problem Solving
• 5 Steps of problem solving
– This is one of the most important skills to learn, if
not the most important.
• Questions to ask your team
• Roles for kids
• Technical skills
• Team building skills
Page 22
©2002 High Tech Kids
Problem Solving
• What’s the Problem?
– This is the most important step
• Brainstorm solutions
• Evaluate solutions and pick one
• Try it
• Evaluate results
Page 23
©2002 High Tech Kids
Decision Making
•
•
•
•
•
Page 24
Which robot design should the team use?
Voting or majority rules
– Try to avoid, leads to bad feelings, lack of team consensus and
strongest opinion generally wins
Discussion decision making
– Can be time consuming and may not always work but generally leads
to good decisions or, at least, to thoughtful discussions.
– May need to “sleep on it”
Matrix decision making
– Team makes a list of factors used to evaluate the choices
– In industry, this is a Six Sigma tool called Quality Functional
Deployment (QFD) and can get quite complicated, but a simple
example here should help.
In general, as a coach you should work to help the team take the emotion
out of decision making
©2002 High Tech Kids
Ra
nk
d
Ca
To
ta l
lo a
F it
rry
on
g
Cl
im
St
ee
b in
g
rin
l
ro
Co
nt
d
Sp
ee
Page 25
ba
se
Matrix Example
Big
Wheels
10
5
5
5
5
4
34
Medium
Wheels
7
7
8
6
8
6
42
Tracks
2
9
7
7
6
8
39
©2002 High Tech Kids
Questions to Ask Kids
• How can you get your robot to turn where you want it to?
• How can you make your robot more “robust” (an engineering
term that basically means solid and reliable).
• Does you robot have enough power to go up the incline? What are
ways to get it more power? (This would be a good teachable
moment for gear ratios).
• Always asked open ended questions, never yes or no questions.
• Try to answer a question with a question.
• Help them find the cause of the problem, don’t let them just
“shotgun” a solution. That means just randomly trying things, to
see what works.
• Have one kid act as the “robot” and another kid act as the
“program”, telling the first kid what to do.
Page 26
©2002 High Tech Kids
Technical Skills
• Use mini challenges1 in the first few practices to get you
and your kids comfortable with the process.
– These are good ways to learn some skills without
struggling with the more complex FLL challenge.
• If this is your first year, err on the side of a simple
robot. Many missions in these challenges can be done
with simple “point and shoot” robot. That is robots that
are simply pointed in the right direction. These won’t
win any prizes in robust design but they will help your
team complete some missions successfully.
• Don’t be intimidated, consider taking some technical
training classes.
1. hightechkids.org , under Resources
Page 27
©2002 High Tech Kids
More on Technical Skills
• Programming
– Two choices : ROBOLAB or RIS (Robotic Invention
System)
• ROBOLAB runs on Mac and PC, RIS runs on PC only.
• No difference in results, ROBOLAB does offer a few more
advanced features but probably a steeper learning curve.
– Again, focus on simple programs first.
• Building solid robots will be your team’s greatest
challenge, make sure you learn some basic construction
techniques using beams/pegs.
Page 28
©2002 High Tech Kids
Team Building Skills
• Names
• Trust
• Have each team member write what they think each
other team member is good at, and give the combined
results to that team member. This is a good exercise for
mid season when everyone is kind of owly.
Page 29
©2002 High Tech Kids
Brainstorming Techniques
• Generate lots of ideas, writing them on the board
– Coach may want to do the writing for younger teams
• Combine similar ideas
• Make sure everyone understands each one
• Give each team member 3 – 5 votes, and let them mark the ideas
they like.
• Pick the 3-5 top vote getters for further analysis, experimentation,
and discussion.
• Use other more formal decision methods (described earlier) to
make the next step of decision.
• Remember the problem solving process! Especially remember
what the problem is that you are trying to solve!!
Page 30
©2002 High Tech Kids
The Season
•
•
•
•
•
•
Page 31
The first month
The middle part of the season
The rush before the tournament
The tournament!
Wrap up
From regions to state to FLL World Festival
©2002 High Tech Kids
The First Month
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Page 32
Weekly Lesson Plans
Field Trips and Experts
What you want to accomplish
Everyone needs to understand the challenge.
– If it’s a new team, do some mini challenges first
Start talking about the research problem right away
Teambuilding activities
Set rules of behavior and consequences
Pay attention to age of the kids
©2002 High Tech Kids
Middle meetings
• Trying out different robots
• Working on the research and presentation
• Develop programs to try on the practice field
Page 33
©2002 High Tech Kids
Before the Competition
• This is when most of the work will get done
• Plan for extra practice sessions
• Consider having smaller groups get together in between practice
• Practice under realistic scenarios
– In front of an audience, timed
– Practice what happens if something doesn’t work
• For the challenge, have the kids write the program order down on
paper, so they don’t forget in the heat of the moment.
• Go through the pre tournament checklist
• Make sure you have all your paper work in order for the event.
Page 34
©2002 High Tech Kids
Preparing for the Tournament
• What to expect
– Hectic day
– Busy, loud, hot, crowded
– Exhilerhating, exciting, fun,
• You as a coach, with your attitude, are hugely responsible for the
attitude of your team
– Fair play
– Dealing with officials and referees
– Setting the expectation to do your best and accepting that.
– Never set winning as a goal because too many weird things can
happen to mess that up.
• Right attitude and expectations
Page 35
©2002 High Tech Kids
Tournament Day
• What to bring
• Structure
• Awards
Page 36
©2002 High Tech Kids
Wrapping Up
• Closing practice
– Have a practice after your last tournament
– Talk about your successes
– Ask each team member (and the coaches!) what they
learned
– Make students aware of other similar programs they
may be interested in.
Page 37
©2002 High Tech Kids
Frequently Encountered Situations
• See the text for complete discussion of these. Here are
some examples:
• We have one kit and six team members, all of whom
want to build the robot.
• Parents come to watch and start offering suggestions
for how to build the robot.
• Sandra really wanted to be on the team but she misses
practice and is often late.
• All my team wants to do is play. They throw LEGO
pieces, act goofy and avoid the work that needs to be
completed.
Page 38
©2002 High Tech Kids
Beyond Freq Enc. Situations
• What is too much intervention and what is too little?
Page 39
©2002 High Tech Kids
Administrivia
• Forms (hard copies)
– Always refer to the web site for up to date but in
general you need:
– Team Survey, one per team
– Publicity release form one per team member
• Keep up with the website and email lists
• See next slide re: checklists
Page 40
©2002 High Tech Kids
Resources
• Always check the High Tech Kids website for further
information
– www.hightechkids.org
• In September, 2004, the HTK site will be significantly
upgraded with personalized checklists for coaches.
Page 41
©2002 High Tech Kids