Archer joined Lego League at the beginning of 7th grade at Ames Middle School. In order to make the team, Archer had to try out, which included a solo interview and coding the robot in pairs. We asked him last year (at the start of 6th grade) if he wanted to try it as we (Jarad and I) thought he would really enjoy it, but he said no and we didn't want to push it since it involved trying out for the team which would require preparation on his part. We have pushed him into other activities before but only when we could just sign him up.
So at the beginning of this year, we really pushed him to try out because you can only participate in Lego League until the end of 8th grade. At first, he was really reluctant and did not want to try out. Finally, the weekend before the try outs, we convinced him to just go to the training on Monday after school and then we'd decide about the try out. I was pushing him to try out on Tuesday evening so it would interfere with cross country practice. After the training on Monday, Archer came home and said that he wanted to try out, but wanted to wait until Wednesday after school so that he would have more time to prepare! That made a lot of sense, so we said great!
Archer did the tryout on Wednesday and he said it went really well. He was given 5 questions to prepare for the interview and he had to answer 3 of them that were chosen at random. He was paired up with an 8th grade girl for the robot coding and he said it went well. Although, he had forgotten that you had to press a certain button to make the robot perform the code, so he was happy that his partner remembered that part.
Archer made the team! The team was split into 4 different competition teams and Archer would meet with his team on Tuesdays before school. I also found out at this time that Jarad had said he was interested in coaching. Dagney, the Ames Middle School Science Teacher, who is in charge of Lego League reached out to Jarad to see if he could help coach Archer's team. Jarad would be in charge of coaching the team on the presentation portion of the competition. Dagney along with two high school mentors, Henry and , coached the kids in programing the robot. All of the coaches were great in letting the kids lead and make decisions together as a team and helping to guide them as needed.
As the season got going, Jarad felt the kids needed more time to work on the robot and coding, so he offered optional extra practices at our house, which several kids attended.
Archer loves Lego League! I think it is probably his most favorite activity that he has participated in! His team of ten kids worked great together and they learned so much and had a lot of fun!
Dagney runs a scrimmage the night before the district competition so that they kids can see what it is like to compete and practice their presentation and answering questions. Here are some pics and videos of the scrimmage.
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