By Dana Chism, Jr.FLL Program Manager
Greetings FTC Teams,
First off, let me congratulate you on starting another
successful FTC Season. I hope you are
hard at work mastering the plans for an awesome competitive robot for this
year’s FTC Ring It Up! Challenge! I wish you a lot of luck in your competition
season!
As your team is meeting weekly and preparing for your FTC
competition, perhaps you are thinking of how you can get more involved in FIRST®?
If your team is thinking this, we have an idea for you!
Over the past many seasons, we have heard wonderful
stories about how some of our high school FIRST
students are giving back and mentoring younger kids in the FIRST® LEGO® League and Junior FIRST
LEGO League programs. We have seen this
mentorship start to take off, particularly in Jr. FLL®, and we really think this is
a perfect way for FTC teams to give back to the youngest FIRST’ers and help
grow the mission of FIRST!
Mentoring a Jr. FLL team is very simple. Teams of up to six, 6-9-year-olds usually
meet for a minimum of 6-8 weeks and build a LEGO model based on the season theme
that has been presented to them for the year.
This year the Jr. FLL Challenge is called SUPER SENIORS and has Jr. FLL teams exploring the
world of aging by working with a Senior Partner to learn about their life
experience and all the change and innovation they have seen throughout their lifetime. The teams will then build a model out of LEGO
elements with a motorized moving part that represents a part of their learning. (The Challenge specific details are shared
with the Jr. FLL team online once the team is officially registered for the
season.) The team works together to
decide what to build and how to build it. Once they have completed building their Jr. FLL model and Show Me poster that compliments the
model, they share what they have created together as a team at a Jr. FLL
Expo.
An FTC team can serve as a
valuable resource by helping many more young innovators have an opportunity to
experience FIRST at the youngest
level. We encourage you to help start a
Jr. FLL team in your local area. There are
so many ways to serve as mentors to Jr. FLL teams the possibilities are
endless. If your team would like to help
grow Jr. FLL, we encourage you to contact your local Jr. FLL representative to
see how you can help. The list of
representatives is provided on our FIRST website
under Jr. FLL, U.S. and Canada Contacts.
If there is not a representative listed in your area, stay tuned, we are
adding more and more representatives daily.
Another way FTC teams can give back to FIRST and help grow the Jr. FLL Program
is by hosting a small Jr. FLL Expo for teams in your local area to attend. Jr. FLL Expos are no more than three hours long
and provide an opportunity for the Jr. FLL teams to share what they worked on as
a team and celebrate their learning with other Jr. FLL teams. At this level of FIRST, there is no competition.
Everyone is a winning participant, which makes hosting an Expo much
simpler! There is a Jr. FLL Expo Guide
on the Jr. FLL website explaining all the details that go into hosting an Expo. Many Expos charge teams to attend and food and beverages are also sold which can be a wonderful fundraising
opportunity for FTC teams.
We hope you will consider this for your FTC team and
encourage you to contact jrfllteams@usfirst.org
if you have any further questions.
We thank you for your support in advance and wish you the
very best Ring It Up season!
-The Jr. FLL Program Team
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