FIRST LEGO League Learner Teams (Grades 5+)

Many of you have found your way to us through the amazing adventure that is FIRST LEGO League. If you didn’t find us this way and would like to learn more about FIRST LEGO League (FLL), please click here. 

We’ve been very lucky to participate in FLL for the past 14 years; we’ve been 3x Ontario Provincial Champions and then 9x Ontario West Provincial Champions. It is wonderful to witness and experience the great growth FIRST LEGO League teams have made over the past 14 years and we have loved every minute of it. 

E-Bots traditionally has had 4 teams an FLL season (September to December/February approximately). The teams are traditionally made up of returning FLL Team members and new students that have been invited to the experience through class participation.

When COVID hit we had to decrease our team numbers to 3 teams as we weren’t sure if we could properly support the teams virtually.

We’ve been blessed to have still been very successful these past two COVID seasons. In 2020/21 all 3 of our teams competed at Canada Cup and one even was able to compete and be awarded at Global Innovation Awards. 

This season 2021/22 we are actually still competing with two of our teams until May 2022 as they have moved on to World level events!

We are starting to look to the 2022/23 season and trying to think of ways to introduce new students, who joined us during COVID, join us on this experience.

In the past we’ve offered courses we’ve called “FIRST LEGO League Prep”. These courses were a way to introduce students to an unstructured class setting and allowed them to learn about the expectations that an FLL team requires. We have always felt these classes were super beneficial BUT never long enough to give the students the full competition experience. 

This year we will be offering two “learning” teams adding them to our roster. Each of these two teams will have seven grade 5+ students, who will have successfully passed Robot 3. The teams will be organized by grade/age.

Students will participate in a real FLL Season with E-Bots, as a team. They will compete at a regional competition (traditionally on a Saturday in late November/early December) and will continue their experience until the end of the Fall session regardless of the outcome of their regional event. 

These will not be our traditional “competitive” teams. These two teams will be “learning teams”, and will be an opportunity to compete and learn the expectations involved in participating in FIRST LEGO League.

It will be a true team experience. Students will work on engineering/building skills, project management, research, presentation skills, and so much more. They will build and program a robot to complete the competition table. They will compete at an event. 

The goal of this experience is just that; to experience the FIRST LEGO League competition with E-Bots. 

The demand for this course may be high and since we cannot take all the kids that want this experience and/or are eligible, we may have to make some hard decisions.

If your child isn’t selected for this experience this coming year (September), please don’t get downhearted, we are only taking 14 students in total. The following year there will be 14 new students that will be offered this opportunity. 

Each student will get just one season on a learning team.  At the end of the experience the students may decide; that was enough for them, or perhaps the proverbial FLL bug will have bitten and they will want to work on preparing for the prerequisite to be on a ”competitive team” (Python 2).

We are still very early as to what the schedule will look like for the fall. We will have more information as we progress. The important thing is that as students are completing their spring classes or preparing for summer camps, that you have this information for them to complete their level 3 before September, if they are interested.  Students will be able to let us know they’re interested and want to be considered for this opportunity by end of April. 

We have one teacher down as we head into Spring as Stephanie will be on maternity, but she will be returning for summer camps. 

Info on this opportunity will be forthcoming, please watch for your emails from E-Bots. 

The requirements will be; 

• Students must be grades 5+
• Have successfully completed Robot 3 (teacher has approved them to move on)
• Be interested in FIRST LEGO League

And that’s it! 

We will have some info nights in April to give you all the back ground on FLL and after which we will take a tally of those interested. These info nights will be mandatory for consideration as we hope it will help parents & students decide if this is an opportunity, they are interested in.