Lego Robotics
*  Mr. Hale  *  Mrs. Dapice   *

September 12, 2013

Dear Parents and Students,

Welcome to the 2013 FIRST LEGO LEAGUE Challenge - Nature's Fury.  Participation on this team requires a willingness to work together as a team, respect each other’s ideas, showing gracious professionalism to our teammates and competitors.

FIRST LEGO LEAGUE competitions are not all about winning; it's about teaching our students the value of teamwork, learning about the problems facing the world around us and searching for solutions to solve some of these problems.  Our biggest goal is to have FUN while we learn, but like any other team, we want to excel in our sport. As famous NFL coach Vince Lombardi said, "Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work."   For our team to have a successful year requires a strong commitment from each member. 

Teams will be judged on the following:

• The Robotics Competition (many tasks in 2 1/2 minutes)
• The Research Project ( 5 min. presentation on challenge topic)
• TEAMWORK (how well we work together as a team)
• Robot Design and Programming
• Gracious Professionalism.

For more information, please see http://usfirst.org.

All team members will meet tentatively every Tuesday and Thursday in Room 30 (Mr. Hale's room) from 3:30 to 5:00.  (Additional practices may be needed closer to the tournament).  Our first tournament will be in January  (date TBD) and if we advance, the citywide tournament will be in  March at the Javits Convention Center.  

Parents are responsible for the transportation of their child to and from the tournaments and picking them up after the practices on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  In addition to this, parent participation is encouraged and needed for this year to be successful.  Some of this can be done by providing strong encouragement and kind words for the team and their competitors.  The team also may need assistance with donating snack and food, as well as other materials to help us show that we are a team (making T-shirts, posters, supplying face paint, etc.). 

If you would like to be part of this exciting team or have any questions, please contact Mr. Hale at jhale@gardenschool.org, or Mrs. Dapice at mschultz@gardenschool.org.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.  We are looking forward to a very successful year together!

Mr. Hale & Mrs. Dapice
Lego Robotics Coaches