FLL, or FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO League is a great program for middle schoolers. In the program, students are required to build a robot out of LEGOs and Mindstorms blocks to complete certain tasks. The robot is then programmed to complete certain missions on the Mission board. When it is time for competition, we run our robot on the board hoping to get enough points (by completing missions) to move on to the next tournament. Your scores in three different presentations are also factored in to your ranking. Here's a link to the website: https://www.firstlegoleague.org/. It's a really great STEAM program. In FLL, I led my team for my eighth grade year and programmed the two prior years.
FTC is the FIRST version for high schoolers. In FTC, students build a robot out of metal and other real-life building materials and program it using JAVA. We also give a presentation for FTC tournaments, but it is more focused on our robot and outreach than a project. Here is a link to the FTC website: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/ftc. I am currently the leader of our FTC team, although I hope to get the chance to program. This past year was very disappointing, as it was mostly ruined by COVID. We hope to get back to regular practices and tournaments this year, however.
I hope that gave a basic outline of FLL and FTC.
