Neil Brown

School Improvement Adviser

Education North Tyneside

Email - neil.brown@northtyneside.gov.uk

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An introduction to

FIRST LEGO League

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What is FIRST^® LEGO^® League?

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International

National

Regional

FIRST LEGO League is an exciting global, hands-on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programme for 4-16 years olds. Its purpose is to give children a love for STEM learning and inspire the next generation of engineers and technicians.

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Our Tournament sponsors

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Johnson Matthey (JM) is a global leader in sustainable technologies. Our purpose is to catalyse the net zero transition for our customers.

By applying our inspiring science, we enhance life for millions of people around the world, every single day. We have around 13,400 employees worldwide and operate in over 30 countries.

Over the years, JM has built positive links with its local communities through donations, employee volunteering and fundraising. Through Science and Me partnerships with organisations and grants to local schools, JM hopes to continue supporting its communities around the world.

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Their sponsorship provides:

• Your competition entry fee,
• Your LEGO Spike Prime robot kit
• Volunteers to support our tournament

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Impact survey

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To help us complete the end of season impact report for JM, please complete this short, anonymous staff entry survey. We will survey you again at the end of the season.

forms.office.com/e/s23fGGT4qN

Impact survey

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To help us complete the end of season impact report for JM, please ask your students to complete this short, anonymous entry survey. We will survey them again at the end of the season.

forms.office.com/e/MWhNCsmWch

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The Innovation Project

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Robot Design

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Core Values

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The

Robot Game

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Problem-solving

Coding

Strategy

Design

Engineering

Patience

Resilience

Creative thinking

Research skills

Problem-solving

Presenting

Discovery

Innovation

Inclusion

Impact

Fun

Teamwork

Resilience

There are four equally weighted strands to FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge

The Engineering Design Process

This is how we would like the teams to work in all parts of FIRST LEGO League Challenge - Like engineers do!

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• Identify a problem
• Design a solution
• Create the solution
• Iterate it (try different versions and improve it)
• Communicate and share your ideas with others, and get feedback
• Identify issues highlighted in the feedback .... and the cycle carries on.

We are always looking to improve things.

Registering your team - Team entry

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Ensure you have completed your registration with your funding code.

Kits will only be despatched once this is done.

Essential info - Teams

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• FIRST LEGO League Challenge is for students aged 9 to 16 (Year 5 to Year 11)

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• Teams can have up to 10 students in them.

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• You can mix the ages of the students in your team.

Essential info

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• We expect your commitment to deliver the programme in school and be there at the finals with your team.

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• The entry fees have risen significantly this year. This is being covered by JM’s funding, but any teams that drop out of the competition without good reason may be asked to pay back the full cost of their entry fees.

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• One of our key targets is to promote STEM to groups that are often underrepresented in STEM. We ask that you aim for proportional representation of girls and disadvantaged students, relative to numbers in your school, when you select students for your team.

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• Your role is to mentor your team through the challenges. You can teach and guide but you should not do any of it for them.

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The Challenge season timeline

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August - New season challenge released globally

September - Kits delivered & season launch

September to March - Work on the challenges with your teams in school

December 2025 - Regional tournament takes place

25th April 2026 - GB National Final. Internationals tournaments after that.

Key resources

Where to find everything

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teachictnt.org.uk

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What you get (and keep)

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• 1 x Mission mat
• 15 x mission models to build.
• Digital versions of the Team meeting guide, Engineering notebooks and Robot Game Rulebook.

This will be mailed to you when you complete your online registration.

Session guides and support

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There are 12 optional sessions in the Team Meeting Guide and Engineering Notebooks.

What a session looks like

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Session outcomes

Introduction

Main tasks

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Session guided steps

Sharing and reflections

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Powerpoint slides are provided to accompany each guided session

Session slides

Speeding things up

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• Speed up delivery time by dividing your team into two and splitting the tasks in each session between the two groups.

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• ALL mission model building is included in Session 1. Get help to build the mission models as quickly as possible (allow 6-8 hrs)

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• Allow time for them to share their learning within the team.

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• Mix up the groups so everyone gets to work on both robot and project.

Session checkpoints

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Use the session checkpoints to make sure you’re covering the key things.

More online resources

This document has so many really useful links for your teams.

This year’s theme

The Innovation Project

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• A research and problem solving task

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• Identify a real-world problem linked to the annual theme

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• Research the problem and existing solutions.

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• Come up with an innovative solution to the problem or an improvement to an existing solution

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• Get feedback from experts. Use their feedback.

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• Present the final project to the tournament judges, in 5 minutes.

Innovation Project

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In the UNEARTHED™ season, your team’s challenge is to identify a problem faced by archaeologists and propose a solution that can help.

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Innovation Project

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• Archaeology studies past human activity by analysing human-made objects and remains

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• Paleontology studies ancient life and Earth's history through the analysis of fossils.

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• The key difference is: archaeology focuses on humans through artifacts and architecture, where paleontology focuses on non-human organisms like plants and animals through their fossilised remains.

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Step 1 - WHat is an archaeologist?

You project should focus on archeology

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• Read the Project Sparks to see if one of the problems outlined interests your team.

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• You can choose to design a solution for one of the problems listed or do some research to identify a different problem.

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These are found in the (now digital) Engineering notebooks, p.6

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Step 2 - What Challenges do archeologists face?

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Step 2 - What Challenges do archeologists face?

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Financial and logistical issues

• How to obtain funding,
• Lack of electricity in remote sites,
• Expensive tools like GPR, LIDAR, drones and satellites.

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Field conditions and safety concerns

• Working in dangerous sites,
• Protection from the weather.

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Artifact management, analysis and conservation

• Studying, drawing, photographing, digitising, cleaning and preserving artifacts.

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Site preservation

• Looting, vandalism, littering, environmental effects like tree roots, erosion and flooding.

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Communication challenges

• Maintaining good relationships with local populations,
• Making sites accessible,
• Sharing work with the public.

Step 3 - Identifying your chosen problem

• Find out more about the list of possible problems or any other problems you can identify.

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• Make a plan - Share out the work.

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• Try and use a wide variety of sources - Books, WWW, videos, experts

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• Decide which problem is the most interesting to you.

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• Share what you found with your teammates and decide as a team which problem will you focus on for your Innovation Project - Why is it the best problem for your project?

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Step 4 - More research

Once you’ve decided on your problem focus, you need to become experts on that area.

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• More research - Use a wide variety of sources.

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• Be organised - How will you collect and share the things you find out.

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• Has anyone already tried to solve your problem?

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• Can you improve these solutions? or can you solve the problem in a brand new INNOVATIVE way?

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Step 5 - Design and Create your solution

Your solution can take any form. It could be an invention, product, process or system.

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But you need to make it really clear what your solution is.

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How could you best show it to someone?

• A model
• Detailed diagrams
• A video
• An animation

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Another way?

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Step 6 - Share your ideas

• Now it’s time to share your ideas and get feedback on how to improve your solution.

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• The best people to share with are experts. Are there any in your area that you could contact? You could also reach out to people online through your team coach.

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• Ask the right questions - Everyone telling you your idea is great might feel nice, but it’s not that helpful. Be sure to ask for ways you could make it better or if they can see any problems with your idea. We want critical feedback!

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Step 7 - Use your feedback

• Collect all your the feedback and decide, what is useful?

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• Listen to the experts and act on their feedback.

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• Make the changes needed to improve your solution.

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• If you have time, go back to the experts with your improvements for more feedback and keep improving things.

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Step 8 - Planning your innovation project Presentation

At the tournament, you get just 5-minutes to present your Innovation project to the judges. After this they will ask you questions about it..

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A really good project presentation would include:

• clearly explaining the problem you are trying to solve linked to this year’s Unearthed theme,
• how you decided on that problem,
• the research you have done into the problem and ways people have already tried to solve the problem.
• what your solution is and how it solves the problem,
• who you have shared your solution idea with, what feedback they gave you and how you used it to improve your idea.
• what could be the issues/problems/costs of implementing your solution in real life?
• how would you solve or get past those issues?

You might not cover all of this, but covering that list would make a really good project presentation.

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Step 8 - Planning your innovation project Presentation

Be sure to look at the judges’ rubrics while you plan your presentation.

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These are the score sheets that the judges will mark you against. If you know what’s needed to get the best marks it makes sense to include those things!

Step 9 - Presenting at the tournament

Your Innovation Project can also be presented in any way you like, as long as it's done within 5 minutes. That is not long so keep the information short, clear, easy to understand and fun! (Judges love to see you’ve had fun!)

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Everyone in the team should be included in some way and it should also be presented live. i.e. It can’t all be just a pre-recorded video.

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Step 9 - Presenting at the tournament

Delivery skill tips

1. Know your audience – Speak in a way that’s easy for them to understand. Avoid too many big words.�
2. Plan and practise – Rehearse aloud; don’t just read from the slides.�
3. Speak clearly and slowly – Use pauses, don’t rush.�
4. Eye contact – Look up from the screen or notes; connect with the audience.�
5. Confident body language – Stand tall, smile, don’t fidget.�
6. Use your voice – Change tone, volume and pace to keep people interested.�
7. Tell a story – Presentations are more engaging when they have a beginning, middle, and end.

Step 9 - Presenting at the tournament

If you use slides:

1. One idea per slide – Keep it simple and clear.�
2. Less text, more visuals – Use pictures, diagrams or icons instead of writing lots of words.�
3. Big fonts – Easy to read from the back of the room.�
4. Consistent style – Same fonts, colours, and layout throughout.�
5. Good contrast – Dark text on light backgrounds (or the reverse).�
6. Use bullet points sparingly – Short phrases, not long sentences.�
7. Don’t overcrowd – White space helps the slide breathe.�
8. Check spelling and grammar – Mistakes can distract the audience.

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Innovation Project Resources

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Innovation Project Resources

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Engineering notebooks p.31

Innovation Project Resources

North East Museums online Q&A

• Arbeia, South Shields Roman Fort
• Discovery Museum
• Great North Museum: Hancock
• Hatton Gallery
• Hexham Old Gaol
• Laing Art Gallery
• Morpeth Chantry Bagpipe Museum
• Segedunum Roman Fort
• Shipley Art Gallery
• South Shields Museum & Art Gallery
• Stephenson Steam Railway
• Woodhorn Museum

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Core Values

The Core Values are the heart of FIRST® LEGO® League.

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Teams should work on these through the season and tell the judges about how they have considered and demonstrated them at the tournament.

Core Values

At the tournament - Core Values

• Your team will be judged on how well they have demonstrated the Core Values through all aspects of FIRST LEGO League, through the whole season.

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• They will be asked questions relating to their Core Values during the judging session, when discussing their Innovation Project and Robot Design.

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• Gracious Professionalism is also judged at the Robot Game table.

At the tournament - Core Values

There is no separate Core Values judging rubric, but you will be marked on them by the judges.

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All Core Values marking is integrated into the Innovation Project and Robot Design rubrics.

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These are indicated by a gear icon.

The Robot Game

Spike Prime Core Set

• 1 hub and battery
• 1 large motor
• 2 medium motors
• 3 sensors (1 colour, 1 distance, 1 touch)
• Lots of LEGO

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Expansion pack

• 1 large motor
• 1 colour sensor
• Larger wheels
• lots of extra LEGO

Your robot kit

The Spike app

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Available for:

• PC/Mac
• iPad
• Android
• Chromebook

• Block based or Python coding options.
• Contains FLL unit of work and robot training in Competition Ready unit.

Get the software

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The Spike Prime apps are free to download from the LEGO Education website or your normal app stores.

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A web-based browser version is also available at spike.legoeducation.com

The GUided Mission

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The Guided Mission provides all teams with starter code for Mission 6 - Forge

Find it in the Spike App > Units > Competition Ready (make sure you update the unit to the latest version) > Session 4

Lesson plans are available for this lesson and all the Competition Ready lessons.

The basics

If you use the larger Spike Prime wheels in the expansion set you will need to define this at the start of your code for accurate distances in cm.

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Adjust for bigger wheels

• Identify missions to solve and form a strategy
• Design, build and program a LEGO Robot to complete the missions
• Test and refine your programs and robot design

In the Robot Game your team will:

The rules and much more

Read the rules, then read them again

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• Don’t assume that everything is the same as a previous year

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• All team members should read and get familiar with the rules, not just the coach

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• Ignorance is not an excuse at the competitions

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Look out for updates

• There have already been 3 updates.

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• Updates take precedence over anything in the rule book.

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• Updates will be published on the IET and our website.

A match set up

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Only 4 robot technicians allowed at the table at any time (2 at each Home area)

Teams may not interfere with the opposing field or robot unless there is a mission exception.

REF

REF

Key Robot Game rules

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• Robots must start completely in either Launch area.
• Robots can return to anywhere in either Home area (which includes the Launch areas).

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• Robots can only be handled when completely in Home or the Launch area without losing precision tokens.

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• Nothing can be passed by hand between Home and Launch areas.

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• Each team gets 3 rounds, 2.5 mins per round. Only your best score counts.

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HOME

LAUNCH

• All missions are scored at the end of the match (unless stated otherwise in the RGR)
• Your robot must be fully autonomous - no laptops/tablets at the table.
• The Core Value of Gracious Professionalism is judged at the table.

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Setting up the field

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View on Youtube

Setting up the field

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You can also download an Illustrated field set-up guide.

The missions

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There are 15 missions which can be done in any order. Your team does not need to do them all. Choose carefully which ones to tackle and in which order.

View on Youtube

The missions

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Max 20 points

The missions

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Max 30 points

Max 30 points

The missions

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Max 40 points

Max 40 points

The missions

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Max 30 points

Max 30 points

The missions

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Max 30 points

Max 30 points

The missions

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Max 30 points

Max 30 points

The missions

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Max 30 points

Max 30 points

The missions

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Max 30 points

Max 35 points

The missions

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Max 30 points

Max 50 points

Robot game mission planner

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Our Robot Game mission planner will help your team to analyse this year’s missions. Get them to discuss and then rate the missions from 1-5 (1 = easy, 5 = very difficult) to help them plan their Robot Game strategy.

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Remember that teams can do any mission in any order and don’t have to complete all parts of missions.

Robot game tips

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• There are 545 points to play for, but don’t make that your target!

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• 70 points are on the table before you start (equipment inspection and precision tokens)

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• Get the team to rate the missions to help form their strategy (use our planner)

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• Start with the easier missions to get points on the board and build confidence.

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• Aim for teams to complete missions with consistency before they move on to new ones. (4/5 times success for it to be ‘done’)

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• Consider which missions need a similar action (push, pull, lift etc) and could be done with the same robot attachment

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• Think about combining missions for efficiency once you have a few working missions.

• Don’t forget to practise against the clock (2.5 minutes) and by starting all code from your robot later in the season

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• Drill into your team how vital a precise start position for the robot is. Most missions succeed or fail because of this.

• Always have measuring equipment available. It saves so much time and avoids a lot of trial and error

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• Get your team to break down the steps needed to complete a mission before they start. e.g.
• Move forwards
• Turn clockwise
• Move forwards
• Lift front arm
• Drive backwards
• Turn anti-clockwise
• Drive backwards

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• Then code it one step at a time.

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• Make copies of this Pseudocode page in the Engineering Notebook for them to use (p.22)

More robot tips

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They can then start to improve this by adding distances, times and angles to each step

• Get them built quickly and get on the with the challenges.
• Make sure all models are accurate, working as described in the rules, and all in place when you practise.
• Use the Dual Lock to stick them down.
• Build instructions can be downloaded.
• Allow 6-8 hrs of building time for all models

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Mission Model building

How to place mission models and apply the Dual lock is covered in field setup video.

Scoring calculators

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Use the official scoring calculator to work out missions scores while your team practise.

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The Robot Game table

At the competitions, official tables will be used.

If you want to build a table the dimensions are available HERE and also in the Team Information pack on the IET website.

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Practising without a table is okay too. You can just lay your mat on the floor and mark the Home areas.

Robot Design

Robots can be any design as long as they are made of standard LEGO pieces. Check RGR for other equipment rules. The Spike app includes instructions for two base robots.

Robot Design

Build a robot

ESSENTIAL

The hub - to control and power it.

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Medium motors (at least 2) - So it can move!

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Friction pegs/pins - To connect everything together

ESSENTIAL

Axles - To connect the wheels to the motors. Different sizes are available

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Wheels - for smooth movement around the table

RECOMMENDED

Frames - To provide a base on which to build and connect parts

RECOMMENDED

Steering ball joint - Useful as a back wheel as it can move in any direction.

Don’t be afraid to start from scratch. A basic robot only needs a few essential parts. Then you can add to it as you go with your own attachments.

Robot Design

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FLLTutorials.com and has a selection of nice base robots. You can then add to or adapt these as you wish.

But if you are just getting started, a simple robot is fine.

(Be aware some use more LEGO than the core EV3 or Spike Prime Core sets)

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Robot Design lessons

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Take a look at our free Robot Design lesson slides to help your students with building with Technic LEGO and designing attachments for different purposes.

LEGO Engineering ideas - yoshihito isogawa books

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Link to book

Link to book

Link to purchase book

Planning your Robot Design Presentation

Your team can present your Robot Design work in any way you like (slides, display book, poster), but we’d recommend including:

1. Take their actual robot and attachments to show!
2. Pictures of:
1. Alternative robot designs you tried and how it developed
2. Attachments you tested
3. Things you tried that worked
4. Things you tried that didn’t work
3. An example of some labelled code that they can explain.
4. Your strategy - Which missions you picked and why.
5. How did you improve and test the robot to make it reliable?

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Planning your Robot Design Presentation

Be sure to look at the judges’ rubrics while you plan your presentation.

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These are the score sheets that the judges will mark you against. If you know what’s needed to get the best marks it makes sense to include those things!

The Tournament

The Tournament

All teams are scored on all 4 competition elements, which are all weighted equally:

• 3 x 2.5 minute Robot Games (Your best score counts)
• 1 x 30 minute judging session to cover Robot design, The Innovation Project and Core Values.

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There is no expected level or standard. It’s about having fun, doing your best, working together and learning from other teams.

Judging

• One 30 minute judging session per team.

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• Takes place in a private room/space.

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• Teachers generally wait outside.

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• Your team must present live, but in any way they like.

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• All team members should be involved.

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• Same amount of time spent on the Innovation project and Robot Design. Core Values are now fully integrated in all aspects.

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• Verbal feedback given immediately, final scores will be shared with teams.

The Regional Finals

• Friday 12th December
• Full day event (9:30 - 3:00) at Redcar and Cleveland College
• Supported by Johnson Matthey and Redcar and Cleveland College
• Risk assessments and media permission forms will be required
• Lots more information coming soon.

Judging rubrics

The judging rubrics and example judges questions are available to teams. Make sure your team use them in the preparations. It really makes sense to know how your team will be judged ahead of the tournament!

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Other Useful Info

Getting started with your team

A set of slides for you to use with your team. It only contains things relevant to them and the tasks. You can view them HERE.

Where to find everything

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teachictnt.org.uk

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Get all your team resources

https://education.theiet.org/first-lego-league-programmes/challenge

Getting started

• Pick your team(s) (up to 10 students, age 9 - 16). Please aim for proportional representation of girls and disadvantaged students.

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• Complete the staff and student entry and exit surveys

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• Introduce them to the competition, the challenges and start to research the theme and ideas for an Innovation Project.

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• Have a good look through the Team Meeting guide, Engineering notebooks and Robot Game Rulebook

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• Build your Robot Game challenge models ASAP.

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• Spend some time on robot basics before they tackle any missions.

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• Guide your team, don’t do it for them!

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Please let me know if you are interested in attending an online training session.

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Spike Prime Robot Training

Any questions or problems,

please get in touch

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neil.brown@northtyneside.gov.uk

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