©2002 High Tech Kids Page 1 Successful FLL Coaching 101 August 11, 2004 Version 1.0

©2002 High Tech KidsPage 1

Successful FLL Coaching 101

August 11, 2004

Version 1.0


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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.


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


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!

1. Ridley, Matt, 2003,”Nature via Nurture”, Harper-Collins, pp 145-146


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


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


Duties of the Coach

• Administrative

• Form the team

• Manage practice

• Teach skills

– Or find someone to do it

• Foster teamwork

• Tournament

• Wrap up


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


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


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!


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”


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


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.


Team Formation

• 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.


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.


Teamwork

• 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.


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?


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


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


Problem Solving

• What’s the Problem?

– This is the most important step

• Brainstorm solutions

• Evaluate solutions and pick one

• Try it

• Evaluate results


Decision Making

• 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


Matrix Example

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teer

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Clim

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it on

bas

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load

To

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ank

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


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.


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


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.


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.


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!!


The Season

• 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


The First Month

• 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


Middle meetings

• Trying out different robots

• Working on the research and presentation

• Develop programs to try on the practice field


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.


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


Tournament Day

• What to bring

• Structure

• Awards


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.


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.


Beyond Freq Enc. Situations

• What is too much intervention and what is too little?


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


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.

http://www.hightechkids.org/

Documents

©2002 High Tech Kids Page 1 Successful FLL Coaching 101 August 11, 2004 Version 1.0