Editor's Note: It is Robogals Manchester's first semester in teaching schoolgirls, and so far they have done a fantastic job at it! They have already successfully taught 6 schools so far, and counting! Laura Leay tells us her chapter's thoughts about their busy semester.

During the UK summer this year, Robogals Manchester have been busy working with the LEGO NXT robots in preparation for school visits, with the aim of the visits being to mentor schoolgirls entering the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) competition. The regional tournament is to be held on the 9th and 10th of December. This year's competition theme is Body Forward with the challenges representing various parts of the body and medical applications. Our president, Zartasha, describes:

"The idea [of the visits] is to teach children to identify a problem utilizing creativity, by simply creating a list of body parts and identifying what can go wrong and then thinking about ways to protect, repair, or make them stronger. [This is then developed to present an] innovative solution in FLL."

When the school term started in September the university schools liaison officer put us in touch with six high schools in Manchester. We quickly found ourselves struggling to cope with the demand. We decided we needed help and badly! Our calls for help received a very impressive response. Iulia, our marketing manager, held a training session with some of the volunteers and here's what she had to say:

"[The volunteers'] great interest in Science and Engineering and Robogals kept them motivated and patient, even on a Saturday morning. In a two and a half hour session, I went with them from the very basics (acceleration, moving backwards, curve and point turning) to loops, switch statements and line following. I was impressed by how quickly they learned and how much they were enjoying themselves."

Some of the volunteers bravely ran a session themselves with minimal help on our part and only the lesson plan we had drawn up for guidance. Many thanks to them for taking the pressure off the four of us! Our Schools and Students officer, Louise recalls her first lesson:


"I was more than a little daunted the night before my first session, just me and a classroom full of 11-13 year olds for a whole 60 minutes; what if I forgot the lesson plan; what if no one listens to me or worse still what if no one says anything at all?! I needn't have worried, the kids found the robots fun, fascinating and frighteningly easy to program! When the session ended, the kids let out a simultaneous groan and so did I, 60 minutes felt more like 6."

Although we had a first lesson plan drawn up, it quickly became obvious that each lesson would need to be tailored to the individual school. As Zartasha observed, students from some schools had already worked out some ideas about the FLL challenge and shared their views on the Body Forward theme. Others were still working on the basics. This meant that lesson planning was minimal with the Robogals for each school visits—it involved simply getting together before hand and deciding what they should teach.

My own impressions of the school visits is of how much energy the girls had! It was impossible not to get caught up in their inexhaustible enthusiasm for everything science related. I also learned that it can be pretty difficult to teach a concept that you are familiar with to someone with no experience. I discovered that the best approach is simply to let them figure it out for themselves with hints and guidance from myself.

Perhaps the best summary of the experience we've had so far came from Louise:

"My first school visit was a huge success and by the time I returned ... the following week, word about 'the LEGO club' had spread and the number of participants more than doubled!"