We have two middle school teams, boys and girls.

 

We tried having "tryouts" in the fall at the beginning of the school year.
We had over 40 boys tryout for that team and 15 girls tryout for their team.
Tryouts seemed to go on for weeks as we used some team building experiences
and teacher recommendations.  However, it turned out that the sixth grade
teachers could not do accurate recommendation because they had only known
the students a week or so at that point.  The seventh and eighth grade
students could go back to their previous years teachers here to get
recommendations.

 

Our solution has been that we start with tryouts each May.  This means only
the 6th and 7th graders, at that time, can tryout.  We use the team building
events and teacher recommendations.  Then the team begins practice the first
week of school, ready to go.  We don't have any sixth graders and that seems
to work as they have their hands full getting adjusted to middle school in
September.

 

Each year we start with a clean slate.  If a student made the team the
previous year, there is no guarantee they will make the team the following
year.  It seems we always have 8 really good candidates and I end up keeping
7 or 8.  I really think when I have a team that has a few kids with
experience it is better to have a smaller team so they have to work harder.
It seems to help with the kids getting bored if they are almost over worked.
Two years is about the most you can get out kids for FLL.  The third year
they are way too cocky that they have "been there, done that" and that
attitude is not good for the team.

 

 

Rusty West

Page Middle School

Gloucester, VA

 

Pre-engineering

Project Lead The Way / 

Gateway To Technology

 

FIRST Lego League

FIRST Tech Challenge

 

 

http://gets.gc.k12.va.us/schools/page/

 

 


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