By: Aahan Patel | 3635 Vice President
July 14, 2025

FRC team 3635, Flying Legion, held a two day middle school coding camp at Houston County High, using Experimental Robotics Platform (XRP) robots, on July 9 and July 10 from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm.

Their goal with the camp was to help middle school students develop programming skills to prepare them by the time they joined the FIRST community.

A total of 26 middle school students, ranging from grades six through nine, participated in the camp.

During the first day of the camp, students were taught how to use blocky, a block based programming language, to automate robot actions. Starting out they learned how to code the robots to move in geometric shapes, control speed, move certain distances, and take measurements using sensors. They were then given a contest to make laps around a given track the fastest.

During the second day of the camp, the students were introduced to Python by having them replicate the code they had made earlier into the language. In addition to this, they were also taught how to use servos. To end off the camp, the students were grouped into teams of four, and put to the test by having them compete tournament style in a game to see who could score the most points using robots they had to code themselves.

Jacob Harvey, the computer science teacher at Mossy Creek Middle School and a mentor at the camp, noticed a few things while helping out the kids learn to code.

“So, this is a great experience for the kids and we got to kind of see what this group of kids, this age group; what their strengths and weaknesses are. The difference between coding in block and python was pretty significant.” Harvey noticed, “We saw that a lot of the kids needed to get better at attention to detail, their spelling, what they are coding, but also you get to see how to break it down and teach them how to spot errors in the code until it runs.”

Keenan Sanders, a member of team 3635 and an upcoming 12th grader at Houston County High School, found the camp to be great.

Sanders mentioned, “Some of the kids I was paired up with, they weren't the best at coding. But they tried, and they persevered. Even though I don't know how to code, I felt like I made some sort of impact here.”

Throughout the camp, team 3635 also gained some valuable experience and insights, along with other mentors there.
By the end of the camp Harvey said, “It was a great experience, kids are engaged, actively working. They are excited to come in and work with the robots, and they're learning trial-and-error.”

Jake Chaffee, a member of team 3635 and an upcoming 11th grader at Houston County High School, shared this sentiment.
“I think it was really fun, and it was amazing to see how inspired the kids were,” Chaffee said, “to see them working with all the robots and just watching them think and work through the processes of the camp was just an amazing experience.”

Chaffee also went on to say, “Just seeing them work through the challenges of working with robots for the first time, I think that was really an experience for me because it gave me a new point of view on what robotics was.”

Overall, this camp was a great experience for both the students and the 3635 team members. The middle school students ended the camp gaining some programming skills, and the 3635 team members were able to help impact their community.