Year 5 and 8 challenge

This is an exciting opportunity for our Year 5 and 8 students to take part in a national competition about sustainable buildings. In preparation, the students are getting into teams, choosing a team name and beginning to plan their sustainable school building. This year’s competition has attracted interest from around the world; for example a number of cities and their respective mayor’s offices are planning to get involved. The students will have the opportunity to choose their school’s location from the list with options ranging from Brighton to Chongqing, China.

As teams, students will conduct research on the impact of climate change on the local weather patterns and terrain, and how these factors will influence their design decisions. The teams are encouraged to tap into their creativity and ingenuity when deciding on the facilities their proposed school will offer; this may range from an assembly hall to a dry ski slope!

During the environmental sustainability week, the Year 5 and 8 students across the Trust will attend a session at Ruislip High School’s EcoHub, where they will explore sustainable building practices, understand the challenges facing modern architecture and discover innovative solutions. Once the teams have completed their building plans, they’ll learn how to bring them to life by creating detailed architectural drawings of their new school. The aim is that students will learn about sustainable architecture, including the construction materials used and common sustainable features of buildings. In order to enter the competition for those teams that decide to progress to this stage, they will innovate and create their own design concept for a sustainable school.

There will be an internal school competition to decide which team has the best design. The best designs from each school will be entered into the British International Education Association STEM 2023 Rebuild Challenge (click here). This activity supports two of the objectives for the environmental sustainability week, which are:

- to understand how an individual’s or an organisation’s carbon footprint is measured; and

- to challenge ourselves to reduce our carbon footprint.