Eco-Schools
Welcome to our Eco-Schools web page. We hope you will find it full of information about our work. What is Eco-Schools?
Eco-Schools is a countrywide scheme which helps children take responsibility for the future of their environment. For more details about Eco-Schools please visit their website at: www.eco-schools.org.uk Our Awards We have gained our Bronze and Silver Awards and are working towards our 1st Green Flag. The Action Team Our Action Team is made up of children and adults. At present, we have two elected members from each class in KS2 who come to our meetings. We have a group of adults who help us, too, and we keep them informed of what we are doing if they can’t attend all our meetings. Our Meetings We hold meetings regularly, at least once every half term. We meet during a lunchtime break. We have an agenda for our meetings, and minutes are taken as a record of our meetings. We all get to know each other well, and everyone is allowed to have their say! Our Action Projects In the past few years some of us joined together to form Action Teams for special purposes, such as Display, Energy and Litter Busting. Recently, we have tried to give everyone the chance to take part in Eco-Schools by encouraging each Year Group to take on an area of responsibility. At present, the responsibilities are: KS1 – Our School Environment Our main projects are Katie’s Garden and the Environmental Area. These two areas, which have very different purposes, share the fenced space outside the three classrooms on the main corridor in the old building. In former times this was an unfenced, grassed (and mown!) area in the centre of which was a flagpole. Unfortunately, the flagpole blew down, and it was decided to convert the area into an environmental area for use in Science and other lessons. The conifers, horse chestnut tree and rhododendron bush were kept as features. A path was laid, a pond built, meadow flowers sown and a log for invertebrates put in place. The pond had to be filled in after a few years because of problems with vermin (rats!). In 2003 the area to the south and west of the main path was chosen to be the site of Katie’s Garden in memory of Katie Dean who sadly died when she was a pupil in Year 1. The remaining area, the section to the north and east of the path has been retained as the Environmental Area.
Katie’s Garden Our task, as a school, was to provide a fitting memorial to Katie, a place filled with her favourite shapes and colours, where her family and many friends could go to find peace. A tree was planted in a wooden planter, and seating in the form of a picnic bench and donated bench were put in place. Katie’s year group designed planting schemes for the garden and many plants were donated. Much planting, watering and weeding went on, with people from different classes and years taking part. When the weeding became too difficult bark chippings were laid around the plants and the path was resurfaced with stone chippings. Because the pond in the Environmental Area is no longer a danger we have been able to provide open access to Katie’s Garden. There is much work still to be done. We have many planters which need regular attention, and we would like to use more of the lovely ideas for planting schemes that were suggested by Katie’s friends. The Environmental Area The former pond area is still fenced off. We decided to leave it as a wild area of long grass. The rest of the grass is cut with a strimmer twice a year, to encourage plant variety. There are many different types of grass within the area, as well as Rosebay Willowherb, nettles and thistles. We have a bird table in the area and we also hang feeders from the horse chestnut tree. We want to encourage more birds into the school grounds. We have hung different feeders filled with a variety of foods in different areas, but we did have some plastic feeders chewed up by a grey squirrel! Our KS1 children will be taking on much of the work in and around Katie’s Garden as well as planting, bird feeding and looking for areas that need improving in other parts of the school grounds.
Year 3 – Litter busting We don’t just pick up the litter! We learn why we shouldn’t drop it and about the effects of litter on the environment. At all times we encourage everyone to put litter in the bins. We talk about this in assemblies and we also have posters asking everyone to keep the place free of litter. We sometimes have a problem when the wind blows some of the crisp packets out of the playground bins. We sometimes have a problem with litter near the fences because some people drop litter outside the school grounds and it blows inside and collects in certain areas. Our litter busters go out regularly to collect the litter and dispose of it safely. Recently, we were able to buy litter grabbers, which means that we can pick up litter safely without needing to use lots of expensive plastic gloves.
Year 4 – General recycling We have signed up with a recycling company, Recycool, so that we can collect and recycle old mobile phones and used inkjet and toner/ laser printer cartridges (but not Epson) to raise money for school funds. This also helps the environment because handsets and cartridges contain toxic substances which, if they are dumped in landfill, can leak into the surrounding soil and pollute the earth. Find out more at www.recycool.org. We are also in charge of collecting and weighing the Christmas cards which we hand in to the Woodland Trust’s Tree For All Campaign.
Year 5 – Paper recycling We work very hard at Five Ways School and use a lot of paper! We have been recycling our scrap or waste paper for several years now. Unwanted paper is put into the special blue bins located in each classroom. We are in charge of emptying these bins. We check the bins and empty them at least twice a week, and at busy periods on a daily basis. We empty the bins into a big tub which is moved by trolley to the Paper Bank on the Langholm Drive car park. We also try to reuse paper as much as possible. We use the back of unwanted worksheets and photocopies for our scrap paper. We also make posters to encourage people to use paper wisely and dispose of it properly.
Year 6 – Energy We are collecting data about the amount of energy we use in school and recording the figures for gas, water and electricity. After SATs we will be studying this data and drawing some conclusions about it.
Other Projects Safe Travel Plan In February 2006 the School Council and Year 6’s Purple Group put together the Five Ways Primary School Safer Routes to School Travel Plan. This includes a survey of pupils, staff and parents, graphs and figures from the results and actions to be taken.
Healthy Living At Five Ways we are very keen to promote healthy lifestyles through teaching the benefits of fitness and of eating a balanced diet. For more details see our Being Healthy section of the website.
Saving light energy In 2004/2005 Year 5 pupils ran a campaign in their ESD lessons to try to persuade children and teachers to save light energy. We surveyed all the teachers and other adults in school to ask them whether or not they switched off lights when they left their rooms, blocked light sources with posters or furniture and kept their blinds down or closed when the sun wasn’t shining. We identified problem areas and made posters to encourage people to use daylight whenever possible. Unfortunately, the old building makes saving light energy difficult. Almost every classroom has a wall of large windows that face south. Even in winter, when the sun shines we get dazzled and the blinds have to be closed. We have also found that in some rooms we cannot see the Interactive Whiteboard properly unless the blinds are closed, and we usually have to have some lights on as well so that we can see to do our work! We do try to make sure that we turn off lights when it is possible, especially when the room is going to be empty, and we have Lights and Blinds Monitors to take charge of this. |
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Our Eco-Code
Our Eco-Code was produced by our Action Team (then known as the Eco-Schools Committee) in Spring 2004. We have copies of our Eco-Code displayed in different parts of the school to help remind us of our aims.
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Minutes of our last meeting |
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| 4th July 2008 | |
Mrs Robinson reported that we had collected over 1100 Asda Go Green for Schools vouchers. Action Team members were asked to look at the items available for order in the on-line catalogue. It was decided to spend 800 vouchers on a weather station and 300 vouchers on a pack of 25 environmental signs. We decided that if Asda run the scheme next year we will aim to collect 3000 vouchers so that we can have a Bird View Remote Camera System. A rota was made for Year 5 Action Team members to take turns next week going outside with a digital camera to take environmental photos for the website. They were asked to look for any areas of litter so that we can put the photos on our Tidy Up section of the Big Tidy Up website. We have registered for this project and Year 3 will be taking part in it in the autumn. All Action team members were congratulated on the way they have remained in their job over the year and for the interest they have taken. No one dropped out this year. Miss Anslow showed the charts which Year 6 had produced about the use of energy in the school. There had not been time to look at them in detail, but the main result seemed to be that much more energy was used in the KS2 building. This was the last meeting of the school year.
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More details in the autumn.
We will need to look into why this is. Could it be that the whiteboards and computers make the difference or is it that the building is less energy-efficient?
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