Here are some ideas on how to introduce students to Spike Prime and FLL Competition.
Kickoff
Gather your kids together, once they've announced the First Lego League challenge details for the season (usually beginning of August) and you've received the challenge materials (board and challenge parts). Get the kids excited about the new theme by watching the kickoff video. Split the kids up into two groups:
Gather your kids together, once they've announced the First Lego League challenge details for the season (usually beginning of August) and you've received the challenge materials (board and challenge parts). Get the kids excited about the new theme by watching the kickoff video. Split the kids up into two groups:
Creating a Challenge Plan
FLL is a great opportunity to teach kids how to break down a complex project and organize it into a plan. Here is one way to do that. Every year the competition board is made up of approximately 15 challenges. The goal at the end of this activity is to get all the students to understand all the challenges and to break the challenges into groups that can be solved using the same robot design. That will enable the team to break into smaller groups to work on a robot design that will solve a group of challenges.
FLL is a great opportunity to teach kids how to break down a complex project and organize it into a plan. Here is one way to do that. Every year the competition board is made up of approximately 15 challenges. The goal at the end of this activity is to get all the students to understand all the challenges and to break the challenges into groups that can be solved using the same robot design. That will enable the team to break into smaller groups to work on a robot design that will solve a group of challenges.
Assign one or two students to analyze each challenge. They should think about different ways to solve the challenge and what type of mechanism they need to do it:
Once all the challenges have been analyzed, the students will present their findings to the entire team. This allows everyone to understand how that challenge works and potentially come up with additional ways to solve it.
Start to organize the information into a chart. The chart should have enough information to determine which challenges can be solved with the same robot design. It could include:
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Breaking Up Into Groups
How many driving bases you can make will determine how many groups you can have working simultaneously. My recommendation is to have 1 group figure out the best way to "travel" - get around the board using movement commands, following lines, and distance & push sensors. As we near competition day, we'll know what challenges we can solve and the order we want to solve them. The "travel" team will help stitch them together.
The other groups will work on a robot design that solves a specific group of challenges. Because they don't have to worry about traveling, they can start their robot near the challenge and work on solving it.
How many driving bases you can make will determine how many groups you can have working simultaneously. My recommendation is to have 1 group figure out the best way to "travel" - get around the board using movement commands, following lines, and distance & push sensors. As we near competition day, we'll know what challenges we can solve and the order we want to solve them. The "travel" team will help stitch them together.
The other groups will work on a robot design that solves a specific group of challenges. Because they don't have to worry about traveling, they can start their robot near the challenge and work on solving it.
Coding
Everyone needs to learn the basics:
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To Do
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