The Wawota Grade 7 ELA class and their teacher, Mrs. Jaime Finlay, are the Canadian National Champions of the Mission Explorium Challenge from Agriculture in the Classroom and were awarded a $1,000 prize!
Students in Mrs. Jaime Finlay's Grade 7 ELA class competed in 16 challenges over six weeks with focuses in four areas: art/creative tasks, language/writing tasks, career focused tasks and science/math tasks. The overall scenario involved landing on a deserted island during a class field trip and having to develop a sustainable society there.
During the regional competition they created 3 new species, planned and mapped out a sustainable farm, invented new ways to use all parts of their species, developed recipes and advertisements, created a new cultural celebration depicted in a comic strip format and wrote and performed an anthem among other tasks.
The class was notified they were the winner of their region and were moved on to the national challenge where they competed against schools from all 10 provinces and 1 territory. Mrs. Finlay’s grade 7 class created a documentary film about their time on the island highlighting all their creative work plus new scripts, footage and editing to put a new spin on their final project. They were surprised and thrilled when it was announced that they were the champions out of 215 classes across Canada! The class wants to thank Agriculture in the Classroom for this awesome opportunity and the $1,000 prize!