Congratulations to the Challenge winners! 🎉 🎉 🎉
Every year, educators and students across Canada register to participate in GreenLearning’s Challenges, which involve environmental learning and culminate in a final climate action project. To celebrate the achievements and impacts of school communities participating in the Challenges, we have written short stories of the top placements of each school’s projects.
Keep reading to view the highlights. We hope these provide motivation and inspiration to engage your students in environmental and climate action projects.
Eco 360
This challenge encourages grades 3-12 learners to develop a feasible plan that incorporates a circular economic model with a focus on repurposing single-use plastics and eliminating plastic waste from our environment.
First Place: New Central Public School, ON
Grade 6 students from New Central Public School are on a quest to reduce plastic at their local landfill. The students discovered they could recycle plastic milk bags into sleeping mats. The students went to work collecting as many milk bags as possible at their school and created three mats made out of plastic milk bags! Each mat uses up to 500 bags. The mats created will be sent overseas to help homeless communities to have a clean and comfortable place to sleep.
Second Place: Brentwood Elementary School, BC
Brentwood Elementary 4/5 students worked in groups and explored different options to reduce plastic waste. After lots of research, the students created 6 models to reduce plastic waste! The students took their learning a step further and shared their inventions and learnings at their school districts Climate Changemaker Open House.
Third Place: Somerset Academy, ON
Students at Somerset Academy created two inventions, namely a Plastic Recycling Toy Machine and Detect Garbage Drone. The first invention is aimed at turning recycled plastic waste into toys for the less privileged. In an effort to help ocean wildlife, the second invention was created to detect floating garbage in the ocean. Inventions were shared with 200+ people via newsletters and a STEM fair.
Third Place: Chief Little Pine School, SK
Chief Little Pine School’s grade 3 students want to keep their school, playground and community clean of garbage. To do this they decided to repurppose plastic bottle caps to create artwork and made a wall mural reusing polyester fabric!
Flood:ED
This challenge helps learners understand the science behind flooding - floodplains, watersheds and extreme weather and to create a flood resilience plan, action plan or build a STEAM model to protect their school against flooding.
First Place: Orchard Park Public School, ON
Grade 5/6 students from Orchard Park Public School created a STEAM based model to help prevent flooding in their school yard. Their model included adding more trees and plants to help with water absorption, having drainage systems and more!
Second Place: Riverview Central School, ON
Grade 7 students at Riverview Central School completed learning lessons, watched educational videos and then sprung into action. Using a combination of Google Maps and weather data, they calculated the volume of rainfall in an area of their choice on the school grounds. After that, they created three prototypes of the watershed their school is located on, showing how natural infrastructure such as planting trees and installing rock levies may be used to combat flooding from the Sydenham river.
Re-Energy
This challenge turns youth into energy engineers by challenging them to design, build and test a working model of any renewable energy technology.
First Place: Annapolis West Education Centre, NS
Science club students from Annapolis West Education Centre created four wind turbines and one hovercraft. The students discovered that using renewable energy can help reduce the amount of fossil fuel we use.
Second Place: Fourth Dimensioners at Unionville High School, ON
The Forth Dimensioners at Unionville High School created 14 proto types of renewable energy. These students did extensive research on renewable energy sources.The students explored hands-on learning by creating working models using wind, solar, hydro, mechanical, and bioenergy sources. The students shared their learnings with a physics fair and were able to show the science behind renewable energy with over 400 students and staff.
Third Place: Fifth Vector at Unionville High School, ON
The Fifth Vector at Unionville High School created 17 proto types of renewable energy. The students explored hands-on learning by creating working models using wind, solar, hydro, electric, mechanical, and elastic sources. The students shared their learnings with a physics fair and were able to show the science behind renewable energy with over 400 students and staff.
Third Place: Bonnyville Centralized High School, AB
Grade 9 students at Bonnyville Centralized High School designed and built a prototype water purification system, exploring how solar energy can be used to make water safe for use. As part of their hands-on learning, the students conducted experiments using various types of solar ovens in different weather conditions to determine the most effective setup. Throughout the project, they gained valuable insights into the benefits of renewable energy and proudly shared their findings through the school newsletter and on social media.
Energy Revealed
In this challenge, learners participate in a school lights-out event to raise awareness about energy efficiency at their schools.
First Place: New Central Public School, ON
Students at New Central Public School hosted a Lights-Out event and saved 23233 kWh of electricity! During the event, the students played a series of outdoor games on a variety of Earth day topics from climate change to recycling.
Second Place: Somerset Academy, ON
The students hosted a Lights-Out event at school to learn about the importance of conserving energy and sustainability. They also raised awareness by delivering presentations at the school assembly and creating newsletters. In total, they reached 116 students, teachers and parents in their community with information about turning the lights off when not in use.
Overall Impact
Over 750 students participated
Students shared their learnings and projects with over 20,000 community members
76 renewable energy prototypes were built
650.5 kg of GHGs reduced
133,020 kg of potential waste diverted
Please visit the Challenge showcase to view the full library of projects and student work from the entire list of schools who participated in this year’s Challenges. Draw inspiration from the work of these students and prepare to submit your learners’ project next year. If you are interested in learning about GreenLearning’s Challenges, join our newsletter to know when registration reopens.
We are so inspired by the students' innovations and action projects and the educators that supported and guided their learning.