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Documenting your story
To help you prepare your project for submission to the Sustainable Living Challenge, we are providing the list of questions you will need to consider.
The new online submission form includes these key questions to encourage students to reflect on their learning. Below the questions we provide simple prompts or supporting information to help you to write your answer and to consider the significant aspects of your project.
Through the online submission process you can provide supporting material such as photos or images from your project. You do not need to provide any hard copy material (e.g project reports, folios). If you feel that you would like to send in a supporting document, you will need to provide detailed references to it in your completed submission form.
- Provide a brief summary of your project.
Write 1-2 paragraphs that describe your project. What you were trying to do? Who was involved? What did you achieve? What did you learn? Anything else you want to share? - What is the problem or issue your project is addressing? How did you discover it?
Define the problem. What is your project attempting to address or change? - Why is it an issue for you, for your school, for other people?
Why did you choose this issue for your project? Why is your issue an important one? What aspects of sustainability did you consider? - What did your project aim to achieve?
What did you want to do with your project? What were you dreaming about? Did you have things you wanted to achieve in the long term or the short term? - Describe the main activities involved in your project
(For individual or group projects only)
What were the main things you did in the project? What sort of planning and research did you do? How did you go about trying to achieve your project goals?
Describe the project activities that relate to the following project elements* (for whole school projects only):
- Teaching and learning
What departments did you work with inside your school? What key learning areas where involved? How is your project linked to curriculum? Did you do a curriculum audit or review? How were students encouraged to become involved? How did you program enable students to guide their own learning?
- Resource management
How is your school seeking to reduce waste, minimise energy, water and transport usage? Has the school been involved in any biodiversity projects? What sort of purchasing policies and practices does the school have? Have you conducted a resource audit? Do you have a school environment management plan? - Physical surrounds and school grounds
Did your project explore the physical surrounds and school grounds? Is you project involved in activities such as habitat creation, food production, mulching, landscaping, litter reduction or creating learnscapes? Did you examine your existing or new building designs? - School governance
How much is the school engaging its staff and students to be involved in becoming a sustainable school? During the school community take time to reflect on what is working and what is not in order to improve? Does the school have goals and benchmarks to aim for? How is the school measuring and celebrating its success?
- Teaching and learning
- Who was involved in your project? What roles did they play?
Who created and ran the project? How much were students involved in designing and managing the project? How did you make decisions of what to do? Did you have partnerships with people outside the school that helped you with your project? Clearly identify the different people involved in your project and the roles they played. This could include students, teachers, others at school (for example office staff, gardeners, canteen staff, parents) and other people in your community (for example local council education officers, volunteers, local businesses or environment groups). - What did your project achieve?
What was the effect of your project? What were your project outcomes? Did you produce anything as a result of this project? Did you evaluate your project? How do you know it was successful? - How did you communicate your project achievements?
Did you talk with others about what you did in your project? Did you write a report, create a powerpoint, or perhaps write a speech? Did you share your project results with people in your class, school or your community? - What was the most successful part of your project?
What part of the project worked best and why? What was the most effective thing you did in the project? What did you enjoy the most about this project? - What were the biggest challenges of your project?
What was the hardest part of your project? What parts of your project did not work very well? Where did you seek help? Is there anything you would do differently? - What did you learn? What surprised you?
Did you learn anything new about your sustainability challenge? Did you learn anything new about yourself while doing this project? What did you discover that surprised you? What new ideas did you come up with while doing your project? What made you think hard when you were doing your project? - What does sustainable living mean to you?
* Don’t worry if your school is just beginning its journey and you can’t answer all parts of question 5. We still want to hear your story!
