Eco School
Eco-Schools in an International Award that recognises when schools are making considerable achievements in being an eco-friendly environment which prepares children to live their future lives with consideration for the environment and global issues.
Our Awards
We are currently renewing our Green Flag status and hope to recognise the children’s hard work in ensuring that the school is Eco-friendly. Our school was awarded green flag status Green Flag in May 2013.
Eco Council
Our eco council is made up of pupils, staff and parents.
Every year we have 2 representatives from P4, P5, P6 and P7. Each person who wanted to be a councillor had to prepare a speech to make to their classmates. They had to explain why they would make a good councillor and a good representative for their class. After everyone made their speeches the class had to vote for 2 people. The children with the most votes were awarded children’s eco-councillors. Our eco council is also made up of staff and parents.
Eco councillors:
Fintan McDonald, Trudy Mazs, Maria Napier, Evie Martin, Ellie Barton, Isla McKibbin, Tierna Farley and Charlie Caldwell.
Mr Coulter, Mrs Hennessy and Janine Martin.
Eco Prayer
Loving God,
Thank you for the world we live in.
Guide us to follow the Word of the Lord, giving us the strength to look after
our environment, keeping it clean and safe, showing its beauty.
We pray that we can follow your teachings,
showing kindness to others,
showing consideration
and giving thanks for all that is good in our lives.
Help us to mirror you Lord,
through each day and night as we strive to keep our world a great place.
Amen
Topic Work
The Eco Schools Programme is divided into 9 topics
- Litter
- Waste
- Biodiversity
- Transport
- Healthy Living
- Global Perspectives
- School Grounds
- Water
- Energy
This year we will focus on energy, litter ad waste, bio-diversity and healthy eating.
Litter and waste
- The school continues to ensure that the playground is litter free by having several bins located in different areas.
- To ensure that our playground is always litter free we will monitor waste and ensure bins are emptied regularly. Each class through-out the year will carry out litter picking in the school grounds.
- The whole school will take part in the ‘Big Clean up’ later in the year.
- The lunch time classrooms will have compost caddy bins for food waste which are emptied daily into the brown compost bins.
- A weekly rota for empting blue recycling bins and caddy bins will be carried out by the eco committee.
- We will look at buying more caddy bins for the staff room and dining hall to recycle food waste.
- We will look at recycling batteries in the school and educate the children on why these should be recycled.
Energy
- Every classroom continues to have 2 energy monitors per week who are in charge of ensuring that windows and external doors are closed and that lights or electrical equipment are switched off when the class leaves the room.
- We continue to monitoring the electricity readings for the school and display them on our regularly updated Eco Status display. By monitoring this information we can hope to further decrease our energy consumption.
- We will look at the effect the solar panels have on saving waste and money for the school.
Healthy Eating
- We will look at running healthy eating/lifestyle workshops throughout the year. The Belfast Giants came in to school in Term 1 to do their healthy lifestyle workshop.
- We will work with parents and governors and outside agencies to create a Healthy eating policy for the school.
- We will ensure the children know the importance of drinking water throughout the day.
Bio-diversity
- We are creating a Stem Trail in the schools grounds.
- We will identify areas in the school which have STEM activities for the children.
- We will create a Stem trail folder for teachers to find resources.
- We will work with the Ulster Wildlife on a Nature Matters Project.
- We will develop a wildflower area in the school grounds.
- We will design and build bird boxes and bug hotels to attract more wildlife to our school grounds.
- We will create a log pile for mini-beasts.