Cotton Catchment Communities CRC

The Enviro-Stories competition was central to the  overwhelming success of the Cotton CRC schools program, encouraging students in grades three to  seven, across nine catchment areas, to explore their local surroundings and write a 16-page school reader.

The competition was designed so the participating  schools were able to meet syllabus requirements in english, science, studies of society and environment, and creative arts. It is based on the pedagogy of ’Kids Teaching Kids’, providing an important learning process as older students write and illustrate the simple books for younger children to read as part of their literacy education.

A comprehensive education kit, which explored the year’s theme and included teachers’ notes, fact sheets and activities for students, was created to assist teachers with the delivery of the competition.

To date, a total of 865 entries have been received from over 1200 participating school students, with 52 winning entries published. The winning readers are distributed annually to over 400 schools, community groups and local libraries throughout the cotton growing regions, from the Fitzroy basin in north Queensland to the Murrumbidgee in southern NSW.

Competition themes have included:

• Creepy Crawlies… Life underground (2009)
• Fur and Fins, Feet and Beaks: What can you find at your local creek? (2010)
• An Aussie Bush Tale (2011)
• Our Farmers, Our Future (2012)

The Enviro-Stories competition was established in collaboration with PeeKdesigns and the Central West CMA, who will continue to run this highly successful program post the Cotton CRC.

(The Cotton CRC was shut down in 2012 after providing seven years of scientific support to landholders and communities in the cotton growing regions of Australia.)

[person name=”Trudy Staines” role=”CSIRO Education Officer” ] As a sponsor, I love everything about the Enviro-Stories Program. Industries have the opportunity to get information that they want disseminated out into the community through the education packs that PeeKdesigns put together for Enviro-Stories. The fact that it’s got literacy, numeracy, science and agriculture…so many different subjects can be covered in the Enviro-Stories competition. It’s Kids Teaching Kids…it’s the whole package. [/person]