The Challenge — What Problem Are We Solving?
By the end of today, you will…
- Understand the season's theme and the real-world problem you're solving
- Learn the Engineering Design Cycle: Imagine → Plan → Create → Test → Improve
- Make your first solution sketch in your engineering notebook
- Share your wildest idea with the team and give positive feedback
Materials for Week 2
- Engineering notebooks — one per student
- Pencils and colored markers or pencils for sketching
- Chromebooks (for the Engineering Design Cycle activity above)
What's the problem?
This season's challenge
The FLL challenge is always about a real-world problem that scientists and engineers are working on right now. Your team is like a group of experts who have been hired to help solve it — using LEGO, code, and your own ideas.
Your mission this season
- Investigate the problem and learn what's happening in the real world
- Design a solution using LEGO and code
- Research what real experts are doing to address this challenge
- Present what your team discovered and built
Teacher notes ▾
Introduce the theme with energy — your enthusiasm helps set a positive tone for the season. Hold back some detail so students have room to discover and explore as they go.
Before showing anything, ask: "What do you already know about this topic?" Give everyone 60 seconds to think, then take a few answers. This activates prior knowledge and surfaces misconceptions you can address early.
The Engineering Design Cycle
5 phases every engineer uses
- Imagine — What could a solution look like? Draw any idea — there are no wrong answers here.
- Plan — Choose your best idea. Sketch it with labels. List what you need.
- Create — Build or code your design.
- Test — Try it out. Does it do what you planned?
- Improve — What didn't work? Change one thing and try again.
Activity: Explore the Cycle
Click any phase to see a real example from a robot project.
Teacher notes ▾
The cycle is not linear — teams will loop back through phases many times. If a student says "we already did that phase," ask: "How many times?" The correct answer is "more than once."
Emphasize that professional engineers iterate dozens of times. The goal of this season is not to get it right on the first try — it's to get better each time you loop through.
First sketches
Your challenge
Open your engineering notebook to a blank page. Draw your first idea for what a solution to this season's problem could look like. It doesn't have to be realistic — the wilder the better at this stage. Label at least 3 parts of your sketch.
Share out
Round-robin sharing — each person shows their sketch and explains it in 1 sentence. After each share, the team gives exactly one piece of positive feedback:
"One thing I like about this idea is…"
No criticism yet. Just one positive observation per sketch.
Teacher notes ▾
Walk around during the sketching phase. If someone says "I don't know what to draw," ask: "What's one tool or machine you've seen that does something similar?" Redirect to the theme if they're stuck.
During share-out, enforce the positive-feedback-only rule strictly. Cutting off criticism at this stage builds psychological safety — students need to feel their ideas are welcome before they'll take creative risks later in the season.
Engineering notebook — Week 2 entry
Teacher notes ▾
Ask 1–2 students to share their "question I still have" with the whole class. Write the unanswered questions on a sticky note and post it somewhere visible.
Revisit these questions in Week 7 when the research project begins — students will be surprised how many they can now answer from memory.