Session 1: Getting Started with Your Team

Before You Begin Your Season

This STEM Lab is designed to help you and your team launch your season with a strong foundation. It introduces processes and practices you can continue to model as your team progresses through future competitions.

The sessions in this STEM Lab are sequential, guiding you from your first team meeting all the way to your first competition. You’re encouraged to move through the sessions at your own pace, spending as much time as needed in each one. The content is meant to offer both structure and a starting point for your team’s journey.

Before diving into your first team meeting, there are a few key things to consider as the coach. Taking time to prepare in advance will help set you and your team up for a successful, organized, and engaging season.

Register Your Team

If you haven't done so already, now is the time to register your VEX IQ Robotics Competition team for the season with VEX Robotics Events at events.vex.com. 

• For help registering a new team, see this article. 
• For help with renewing your team, see this article.

Once you are registered, follow the steps in this article to find your Virtual Skills Key to share with your team.

Complete Required Background Checks

A background check is required for every adult who serves in any active role in connection with a VEX Competition event or team. All coaches must have a completed background check before their teams can register for an event. 

• See this article for information on completing the required background check.

Get Your Kits and Field Materials Ready 

Make sure you have the VEX IQ Competition Kit (2nd gen) so students can build the Hero Bot, along with the Field and Game Elements for this season’s game. Follow the links on this page to order VEX IQ Competition Products and Game Kits for this season.

Register for Your First Event

To help your team organize and work toward a competition, it is important that they know when their first competition will be. Visit VEX Robotics Events at events.vex.com to find and register for competitions.

• Use this article to help you know what you will need to register for an event. 
• See this article for steps to register for an event.

Not sure how to choose an event that is right for you? Consider the following to help you get started: 

• Where is the event, and how much will it cost? Think about how students will get to and from the event, and factor in both registration and transportation costs. Choose an event that fits your budget.
• What type of event is it? Different event types offer different experiences and levels of competition, so choose the one that best matches your team's goals and experience level.
• Rule of Thumb - Compete early, and compete often! There will always be more that students can do to “get ready” for a competition. Competing early in the season is a powerful motivator and can be an invaluable learning experience. 

Set Expectations for the Students and Adults Involved in Your Team

Establishing clear communication between coaches, students, and parents is essential to ensuring everyone is aligned with your team’s goals and expectations. Use this Letter Home (Google doc / .pdf / .docx) to help communicate expectations for the team with parents and family members. The text in purple serves as a sample and is meant to be customized with your specific team details.

While you and your team will set goals for the season together, there are a few expectations that can help guide this process.

• The VEX IQ Robotics Competition puts student safety first. Students must feel safe in order to learn. Every participant in the VEX IQ Robotics Competition, whether student, coach, parent, or volunteer, is responsible for maintaining an inclusive and safe environment for all involved.
  • This article outlines the Global Robotics and Science Foundation Youth Protection Policy. It is essential to read and understand this information before beginning your season.
• Student-centered learning is at the heart of all VEX Robotics Competitions. Students do the work, and explain their work. The role of adults—whether coaches, mentors, or parents—is to guide, not do. The Student-Centered Policy includes three Checks to give students tools they can use to make sure their team stays student-centered.
  • This article explains the Global Robotics and Science Foundation Student-Centered Policy. It is essential to read and understand this information before beginning your season.
• Season goals are about more than just winning. Encourage your team to think about how they want to grow over the course of the season, so they view success as more than just points scored or matches won. Building a team culture that is inclusive and values learning over winning will help your team be successful no matter how a competition match ends up.
  • The Global Robotics and Science Foundation provides this Code of Conduct to ensure everyone understands the expected standards of behavior for all. It is essential to read and understand this information before beginning your season.
• The VEX IQ Robotics Competition is collaborative, emphasizing cooperation over competition. Teams are encouraged to support one another, share their learning, and foster a spirit of cooperation. During competitions, your team will work as part of an alliance, making communication and teamwork essential to success.

Learn About Facilitating This STEM Lab

• Read the Implementing a Competition 101 STEM Lab article to learn more about what you can do before, during, and after sessions to ensure your team gets the most from the unit.
• To learn more about how to differentiate, or adapt, STEM Lab content to best meet a variety of student needs, read the Making Competition 101 STEM Labs Work for All Students article.

If this is the first time team members are meeting one another, help students connect and get to know each other: 

• Have name tags available so students and adults can start to learn each other's names.
• If your team is meeting outside of regular school hours, provide a snack for students to start off your meetings. It can be hard for students to focus if they are hungry.
• Start with a fun icebreaker! A great option is to ask students some silly "Would You Rather..." questions to help them get to know each other. 
• Don’t be afraid to sprinkle in icebreakers or get-to-know-you activities throughout your early sessions—they're a great way to build team connection and trust.

Make sure that all team members can see and hear the game unveil video. You may want to project it and watch it as a whole group, so students can encounter it together. 

Depending on the number of students on your team, you may want to run multiple Virtual Driving Skills Practice stations, to allow multiple students at a time to have a turn to drive.

Post a Driving Turns list that shows the order in which students will have a turn to drive. This way, they can be prepared for when it will be their turn. Make sure that all students get at least one turn to drive.

While students are not driving, help them stay engaged by doing things like: 

• Having them watch other drivers to see how they are driving, and cheer them on.
• Thinking about how they want to move the robot when it is their turn. 
• Talking with other teammates about their experiences driving with a Controller. If they have never driven a robot, have they driven in a video game? How do they think this will be similar or different?

Setting expectations for behavior and helping your team establish their identity creates a foundation for students to contribute positively.

• Read this article to learn more about developing a positive team culture.

Make students aware of the Student Centered Policy and the Code of Conduct. Introducing students to these policies now will help get the season off to a good start.

• Code of Conduct
• Student-Centered Policy

The Code of Conduct describes six Commitments for all VEX IQ Robotics Competition participants:

1. Safety: Put student safety first, always.
2. Respect: Treat every person with respect.
3. Learning: Let students do the work and own their decisions.
4. Integrity: Compete within the rules and own the result.
5. Fairness: Follow the rules, and expect officials to follow them too.
6. Reporting: Report concerns and violations, and protect those who do.

Before having students watch the video, have a whole-class discussion about these commitments, helping students to understand what enacting them would look like, sound like, and feel like. Make them aware of the Student-Centered Policy as well, so they understand the expectation that students do all the work across the robotics season. This important discussion will help students to make actionable rules and goals for the season.

Let students word the rules in the way that makes the most sense to them. Your role as a coach during this activity is to guide students through the process, while not making the team's guidelines for them. By having the team create the rules and guidelines in their own words, students gain a sense of ownership over the team, build their own team identity and culture, and help empower students to solve problems themselves when future conflicts may arise.

Guide students through the process of brainstorming, listing, and creating team rules. 

• Brainstorm a list of answers to the question: “What does good teamwork look like and feel like?” 
• Use that list of answers to create an additional list to answer the question: “What actions are needed to ensure good teamwork?”
  • These answers should relate back to what good teamwork looks and feels like, which you described in the first brainstorm.
• Look for common ideas in your lists and consolidate them into three or four big ideas for the team to use as rules.
  • For example: Team members interact respectfully at all times. This is a good guideline because it can be broadly applicable to many scenarios. It is not specific to one student or situation.
  • You should NOT dictate a rule or guideline yourself and ask students if they agree or not. This takes the ownership out of students' hands, and students may agree to something they don't understand. 
• Reference Rules G1–G4 in the game manual for a place to get started. 
• Make sure your rules and guidelines align with the Student-Centered Policy.

Team rules should be documented in a visible place for the team and added to the team's engineering notebook.

A Note About Engineering Notebooks

Your team will need to keep an engineering notebook throughout the season. This can be either physical or digital, and it should be used to document your team’s progress, design iterations, and learning. The engineering notebook must be completed by the students. You can help students develop their notebooking skills, but coaches or mentors cannot contribute to the notebook itself. 

Students should submit three short summaries alongside their Engineering Notebook: a Season Summary, a Code Summary, and a Credit Summary. The summaries point judges to what matters most in the notebook so they make sure to look at the sections your team wants them to see during the notebook review.

• The Season Summary is your team's one-page overview of its season. 
• The Code Summary is a one-page overview of how your code works.
• The Credit Summary names any outside sources you used when building or coding, and gives them credit.

See this article for details about these summaries.

Here are some ideas and resources to help you support students' notebooking skills: 

• Build documenting into everything your team does as part of the task, not an add-on after the fact. This can help students get into the habit of notebooking, so it is not a chore or “extra” task, but something they expect to do. 
• Talk about ways that the notebook will be used during the season, so students understand the purpose of notebooking. These can include: 
  • Communication within the team: Team members can read the notebook to know what they missed.
  • Data-based decision-making: Teams can use data in the notebook to support their ideas and make informed decisions about their robot, code, or strategy.
  • Communication with judges: Competition judges can see the team's progress and learning throughout the season in the notebook.
• Introduce students to the Student-Friendly Engineering Notebook Rubric. 
  • Read this article for an introduction to how Engineering Notebooks are evaluated in a competition.
  • Share the Student- Friendly Rubric with students. Because students are just setting up their notebooks and completing their first documentation, show them the ‘Is our Notebook Easy to Use?’ section on page one. 
  • Have a discussion about this section of the rubric to help them establish what the organizational part of their notebook would look like at the exemplary, proficient, developing, and beginning levels.

If your team is new to notebooking, consider watching or sharing this video to help introduce the purpose and value of the engineering notebook.

Decide if your students are going to use a digital or physical engineering notebook. Use this article for digital notebook resources.

Your team determines what a successful season looks like for them. Chances are, they won’t win every match—and that’s okay. Success is measured by more than just winning or losing. Remind students to think about what they hope to do, learn, and accomplish together as they set their goals.

Help students to think about each type of goal individually. If students are new to being on a team, their goals may be simpler. If you have more experienced students on the team, their goals can directly build on their previous season. Here are some suggestions:

• Teamwork goals — Improving communication and listening skills, making data-based decisions, and celebrating each other's small successes throughout the season.
• Game-related goals — Scoring in a specific goal, improving strategy development, making it to alliance selection at a competition, or earning points in skills matches.
• Personal goals — Enhancing engineering skills through build modifications, learning to use a new sensor, becoming a more agile driver, or leveling up the team's engineering notebook.