Just a stone's throw away from Labrador Park and Berlayer Creek lies a unique primary school set in nature that has big dreams for its students.

Just in case you’re wondering where Blangah Rise Primary School is located:

Surrounded by an abundance of greenery, Blangah Rise Primary School wants to give back to its community, and teaches their students to open their eyes to the nature around them.

One of its students, 12-year-old Choo Zhi Lin, wrote a children’s book that was published by the school in 2022.

The Green Dragonflies and Their Swampy Friends

The school is no stranger to community outreach when it comes to the environment. However, physical engagements like collecting recyclables from residents came to a halt when the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

"So we asked ourselves, how do we re-angle this outreach programme where we can still educate everyone about the environment?" said Aprilene Goh, one of the teachers who helmed the project.

And so “The Green Dragonflies and Their Swampy Friends” was born. The book was a labour of love from teachers from the Art, English and Science departments, who planned the project.

Goh, an English teacher, was the one who recognised Choo’s talent for writing and roped her in to write the book.

A burgeoning writer

Juggling the impending Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE) must be tough enough on its own, which makes Choo’s dedication to the story even more admirable. Through her eloquent answers, one could easily get a sense that language was her forte, but writing a children's book proved to be more of a challenge than it seemed.

Picking up writing within the walls of a classroom, writing became a form of expression for the young student. At Primary 4, a challenge from one of her friends motivated Choo to take her first step into writing horror stories. Her friends were engrossed in her story, which motivated her to write even more.

The book details a family of dragonflies which are displaced from their home. As the weather gets hotter and ponds dry up, the dragonflies have no choice but to search for greener pastures. However, finding a new home isn’t as easy as it seems, with litter and pollution making some places uninhabitable.

The school also aims to make the book as accurate as possible biodiversity wise, drawing inspiration from species of dragonflies at Labrador Nature Reserve and consulting the National Parks Board (NParks) about the characteristics of different dragonflies.

"At first I was a bit reluctant because I didn't know how to write simple books," she explained. She told us that she was used to writing more complex stories in totally different genres. "Now I know that this requires a lot more redrafting and a lot more patience and creativity."

“While writing the story, I learnt to persevere even in the toughest times just like the family of dragonflies in the story,” Choo told education news site Schoolbag when interviewed about the book earlier this year.

Goh assisted her through the drafting process, highlighting the importance of characterisation and dialogue to bring out memorable characters. The story was then brought alive through the illustrations by the school's art teachers. To ensure that the book’s language was appropriate for a younger audience, they read the book to their target audience – a group of kindergarten students.

The team was relieved to receive the green light from their audience. From then on, it was relatively smooth sailing, since the school rallied behind the environmental message and eagerly provided the funds to print the book.

Dedicated to all children in Singapore, the school hopes to convey a sense of love, ownership and responsibility for the environment they live in.

"One of the key messages that we want to spread is environmental awareness and the message of sustainability to not just our students but also to the younger audience, so the book becomes a conduit for us to do that," said Goh.

Engaging younger children through storytelling

After publishing the book, Blangah Rise Primary student leaders also conducted public storytelling sessions for the younger audience.

As storytellers, these students help to spread important environmental messages to the rest of the community, and most importantly to the next generation.

At this point, you really get a sense of the amount of hard work and effort the teachers at Blangah Rise Primary School put into engaging the students about sustainability and the environment.

Why invest so much time painstakingly planning and executing all of this?

“We are situated in a place that is very much filled with nature, so it's something that we need to do to spread that awareness, the message of sustainability, not just to our students, but also to our community,” explains Goh.

She highlights that sustainability is multi-faceted, and not just about achieving climate justice. There is an aspect of wellness that is often overlooked, how intertwined our emotions, community and learning are with the environment itself.

“When you know that the environment is important, then you will be motivated to conserve it.”

The school is also working on a sequel, where one of the characters from the first book, Bushy the squirrel, will take centre stage.

It plans to involve students from the current Primary 5 batch, and also be accessible digitally for easier distribution.

Check out other environmental initiatives at Blangah Rise Primary School in this post:

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Top photo via Blangah Rise Primary School