What to expect in the judged rooms .. .. ..

I was asked to describe what to expect in the judged rooms at an FLL tournament, here is my best descriptions.

CORE VALUES

Some people refer to this as the teamwork room.  The students will come into the room and the judges will describe for them a challenge.  The students will then have 5 minutes to brainstorm and work on the challenge.  At the end of 5 minutes the judges will stop them and have a 5 minute question period.  They are mostly evaluating the students on their teamwork.

PROJECT

This is the room where the teams will present their research project that they have been working on.  Again there will be a question period at the end.  If you are not familiar with the rules.  The teams have 5 minutes for their presentation.  The time starts when they enter the room.  The students must setup anything that they are bringing into the room as far as props or computers.  If you are using a power point with a projector, make sure it is booted and ready to go when you walk into the room.

DESIGN AND DEFENSE

The students are evaluated on the design and programming of their robot.  When they enter the room there will be a playing field just like they have been working on all season.  The judges will ask them usually to show one of their programs and ask some questions about how the season went and who primarily worked on the programming.  At the state level this year they are asking for an executive summary, I really don't know what that means but I assume it would include hard copies of their programming, mission planning and a discussion of what went right and what didn't go right.

The scoring rubrics are available on the FIRST sight if you want to look at the individual areas that they are evaluated in.