What is FLL?

 I wrote this for my speech class last year. It explains what FLL is about and why it's so much fun. 

--Jordyn

  What is fll?

I know a lot of kids think science is just dull boring stuff that you read out of a text book. But FLL makes science fun and amazing. FLL stands for First LEGO League, and it’s a world-wide competition where kids ranging from nine to fourteen go to compete in one of the qualifiers against other teams in their state. Out of the 30-40 teams at each qualifier, only six move on. If you move on you compete against all of the teams that moved on from the qualifiers, usually about 40? In Fll, there are three main parts. Teams have to get either 1^st or 2^nd in one of these parts to move on. The parts are:

Research

Teamwork

Programming

RESEARCH

Out of the 17 years that FLL has been going on, there has been a different research topic each year. For example, this year’s topic is transportation. And teams have to find a problem with something relating to transportation in their community, then come up with some solutions that could save time and improve efficiency. FLL said that you had to decide what you think your community should include. It really could be anything from outer space to the roads you drive on. Then after you decide what to research, you research it! And after research you have to come up with a 5 minute presentation to show the judges what solutions your team thought would work. Every year that I have been involved with FLL my team has written a little skit, rather than just standing up and talking to the judges. We have also added a little humor to make our presentation more memorable. After your five minutes is up the judges take three minutes to ask you questions about the solutions you came up with.

TEAMWORK

Another main part is teamwork. For teamwork, you go into a room with your team. Then the judges give your team an assignment to complete in five minutes. They watch to see if you respect each other and if all the team members give their input to how the team should do the task. For example, one year the judges asked the teams to write out a recipe for the perfect FLL team like: 2 cups of love, a dash of kindness… and so on. After your time is up they ask you questions about how you work together.

PROGRAMING

The last main part is programming and technical. During the months leading up to the competition all the FLL teams work on building and programming a robot. A lot of the teams use the directions that FLL provides, but this year my team decided to use our own creativity to build the robot using gears. You are allowed to do this, and come up with your own design, as long as all the pieces that you use are LEGO pieces. Then after you finish your robot you have to program it. Each year FLL comes up with a different design for the table that your robot will run on. Then you have to program your robot to do different missions that FLL has made up, such as knocking over walls, gathering loops that are sitting on top of walls, and going over a bridge.

Ending

 So FLL is not only a lot of fun but it is a great learning experience. I think most people, like me, only start FLL because there mom makes them. They don’t want to because they think that science is just dull boring stuff that you read out of a text book. But let me tell you I’ve done FLL for 3 years and I no longer think of science as really boring. I think of it as really fun and amazing. So put it all together, and FLL is a really great event.