Session 2 - 8/11 - First Full Team Meeting

10 Aug, 2026

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This will be the first meeting of the full team. We have a lot to cover to get started, so we can't fit it all into one session and still leave time for work. We also need to allow for instructing our new teammates while letting the experienced team members get to work.

Agenda

1. Welcome Entire Team and Review FIRST

(1300, 10 min)

• Engineering Notebook
• Core Values
• Innovation Project
• Robot Game
• Presentations
• Notebooks and Documentation (handout notebooks as needed)
• Handout: Robot Design and Robot Game / Innovation Project

2. Innovation Project (Biodiversity)

(1310, 25 min)

• Watch Videos
  • What is Biodiversity? (David Attenborough)
  • What is Biodiversity? (Ethan Tapper)
  • Edward O. Wilson and Island Biodiversity
  • Ethan Tapper on Biodiversity vs Invasive Monoculture
• Biodiversity Decomposition: mind map the following
  • Components of an ecosystem
  • Problems we know of
  • Ways people study/monitor ecosystems
  • Ways people help repair ecosystems
• Project Sparks Engineering Guide page 6

3. How to Research

(1335, 20 min)

• Start with Questions
• Demo online research
• Library treasure hunt (find a resource challenge)

4. Recollect - What did we find? Take NOTES!

(1355, 10 min)

• Briefly present what you found. What question is it related to?

---- BREAK - Get Robot Kits ----

(1405, 10 min)

5. Expectations During Robot Game Work

(1415, 5 min)

• You must be contributing! No making attachments just for fun. No coding sounds just for laughs. If you're not working on a team problem, you're not helping. There is a lot of work to do between now and November!
• Work to do:
  • Designing and building a base robot
  • Researching advanced coding methods (e.g. gyro straight driving)
  • Making baseline code blocks, testing, and refining them.
  • Figuring out how to solve a mission.
  • Making a mechanism or attachment to solve it.
  • Programming (planning) the code needed.
  • Make the code using your plan.
  • Run tests and refine it.
  • Taking notes about what worked, keeping track of performance
  • Saving working code to a repository

6. Robot Coding Intro / Build Mission Modules

(1420, 70 min)

• Experienced teammates will build the mission modules.
  • Instruction Book 1
  • Instruction Book 2
  • Experiment with how to activate them WITHOUT a robot! Think SIMPLE!
  • Think about what biodiversity problems relate to the missions. Does it give you any ideas of an innovation challenge problem to research?
  • Consider which missions you may want to tackle first.
  • Consider which could be accomplished at the same time.
• New teammates will be provided an introduction to programming and coding with the coach.
  • Connecting the Spike Prime to the LEGO Education coding website.
  • Setup code.
  • Movement: basic forward, back, and turns.
  • Moving an attachment.
  • Adding indicators: lights and sounds.

7. Discuss Team Roles

(1530, 20 min)

• Handout: Team Roles
• Everyone does not have to do everything, but they should contribute to everything.
• It's okay for one or two to be assigned to decide and work on different parts, just like a soccer team has different positions.
  • Mission mechanisms and programming
  • Coders
  • Base robot design and build
  • Innovation challenge research
  • Presentation materials

8. Review accomplishments and assign homework.

(1550, 10 min)

9. Help clean up and load out gear.

(1600, 10 min)

Review for Next Week

• Roles will be discussed and assigned next session. This will give the kids a week to discuss amongst themselves what they want to do.
• Team milestones will also be discussed next week.
• Come prepared with a brief presentation of either a biodiversity problem, an advanced LEGO coding method, or a mechanism/method to solve one of the missions.

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