Open to both primary and secondary schools, the project has two strands – the Climate Change Challenge and Film and Television.
The competitions are fully funded and run annually. They have been developed by Primary Engineer, an organisation offering teacher training, curriculum support and resources.
Both competition strands aim to enable young people to investigate and present data and to use it to inform decision-making. Pupils follow simple or complex lines of enquiry, conjecture relationships and generalisations in order to develop coherent, justified arguments that are based on thorough data analysis.
The projects aim to encourage curiosity, criticality and resilience, as pupils are asked to consider indeterminate problems and develop data driven hypotheses.
The Climate Change Challenge asks pupils to use big and small datasets to identify three changes they can personally commit to in their daily lives that will lower their individual carbon footprint. Pupils work in small teams or individually and use their data skills to communicate their commitment to these changes in the form of a manifesto.
In the Film and Television strand, pupils work in teams or individually to analyse a large dataset of television shows or films, then develop a data-driven concept for what they believe would be a successful future production. They then produce an infographic poster, an advertisement poster and a 60-second pitch to support their idea.
The Climate Change Challenge requires six hours to complete, while the Film and Television challenge takes 12 hours.
The project offers free teaching resources, including lesson plans, activity sheets and video tutorials, as well as live interviews and skills sessions with data experts.
Upon completion, pupils will receive graded certificates. The winning group from each class will be entered into the final round of judging by industry judges and overall winners will receive an award too.
- For more information on the two project strands or to register, visit www.statwarscompetition.com