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
Pre-engineering
Project
Lead The Way /
Gateway
To Technology
FIRST
Lego League
FIRST
Tech Challenge
http://gets.gc.k12.va.us/schools/page/