Eco-Committee

Eco Committee 2023 - 2024

Congratulations to our new Eco Warriors!

Ashleigh, James, Emily, Oliver, Ella, Noah, Lara, Daisy, Grace, Alana and Georgia!

Meetings

Thursday 21st September

Today we met up to take our pictures and talk about our exciting year ahead! We discussed the process of working through the Environmental Review, identifying 3 strands to work on and then monitoring etc. We are all very excited!

Thursday 28th September

We started our Environmental Review. We were pleased with our scores for the school grounds but realised we still have a lot of work to do for Living Healthy and Littering. We will finish our review next week. 

Thursday 5th October

Today we finished our Environmental Review. We enjoyed checking to see if children were putting rubbish into the correct bins and asking staff about their knowledge of environmental matters. We have decided on our three strands to focus on this year - Marine, Global Citizenship and Water.

Thursday 9th November

Our focus today was our Eco Code. We decided on an acrostic poem and all shared ideas to make it great. We have typed it up neatly and have made a copy for each classroom and our display board in the hall. Next time we meet we will work on our Action Plan! 

Thursday 30th November 

We all met together to create our Action Plan today. We enjoyed sharing ideas and are excited to plan and prepare whole school assemblies to share our message. We have uploaded our Action Plan to our webpage so you can read what we intend to do to achieve each strand of Global Citizenship, Water and Marine.

Thursday 11th January 2024

This week we reviewed our Action Plan and decided to focus on our theme of Water. We have arranged planning time for an assembly that we will hold later this term and time to discuss applications for Water Monitors across the school. Secondly, we have discussed our Global Citizenship strand and which day / celebration we would like to hold to promote diversity. 

Thursday 25th January 2024

We had lots to do today! We finished our assembly ready for the end of term. We also decided on our Water Monitors and have agreed which taps will be checked and when throughout the day. We also talked about local environmental issues and have agreed to try and arrange a visit with our local MP to discuss what more we can do to help. We would also like to do a litter pick soon and have agreed to plan this in for next term alongside World Earth Day. 

w/c 5th February 2024

We've been working hard this week, meeting at lunchtimes to complete and practise our whole school assembly! We enjoyed delivering our assembly to the whole school on Wednesday. (You can see the PPT below). We have also announced our Water Monitors and a competition to make posters and get children talking about saving water! Last week we added some tips on how to save water into our school newsletter too.

w/c 19th February 2024

Today we met to review our Action Plan. We also contacted our local MP to ask for a meeting to discuss local environmental issues and we thought of questions we could ask him. We also talked about our up coming events such as World Earth Day and what we need to do to raise awareness for this special day. As it is nearly Spring, we talked about checking our school grounds to make sure the pond is clear. Mrs Hobbs has planted Spring bulbs in pots with the Nature Club children. 

w/c 15th April 2024

This week we met to discuss our Earth Day plans and practise our assembly. We also chose our Protect Water posters and put them up around school! (See picture!)

w/c 22nd April 2024

It's Earth Day! Today we did our assembly to the school and challenged children and staff to have 'power free' hours! Children litter picked in the school grounds at lunch time and spent time discussing ways to make a more sustainable change in their own lives (e.g. eating more seasonal fruit/veg and plastic free lunchboxes). We also raised money for Wild Oxfordshire through our Just Giving page! 

Eco Committee 2022 - 2023

Congratulations to Isla, Emilia, Lana, Elise, Joshua, Noah, Dom, Alana, Ned, Amelia, Amelia and Oliver who are our fantastic new Eco Warriors this year!

Eco Big Brekky and Pre-Loved Uniform Sale

We had a wonderful morning on Thursday 25th May! We had a Big Brekky at school so parents and carers could come and join us for chat about our Eco work this year. We also collected and sold (small donation) pre-loved uniform as part of our reduce, reuse and recycle policy. We really enjoyed seeing everyone and having some yummy food!

Eco Committee's Assembly on Littering

We enjoyed presenting a whole school assembly on littering. We explained the consequences of littering and what we can do to prevent it from happening. We also discussed our Littering Monitors and updated children on our progress with our Action Plan. 

Tree planting and caring for the pond

We've been busy again this week (w/c 1st May) with planting some trees and checking the pond is in tip top condition! Big thanks again to Mrs Brownjohn and Mrs Hobbs for all their hard work. 

Monitoring

Today (20/04) we managed to get outside and check how our Biodiversity project is developing. We counted:

x1 Butterfly box

x5 Bug hotels

x11 Bird boxes

x2 Bird baths

x6 Bird feeders

x3 Hedgehog houses

x1 Squirrel feeder

We're also growing about 2 metres squared of meadow and wildflower grass and we're in the process of planting 10 trees including: pine, Japanese plum, hazlenut and buddleia.

We're really excited with how it's all developing!

The Big Pond Clean

We were very happy to have help from the wonderful Mrs Brownjohn and a group of volunteers with cleaning the pond out and getting it nicely ready for the Spring! 

The Great Big British Spring Clean

On the 30th and 31st March, we spent time in our school grounds and local village community picking litter. Our younger school members helped to do gardening, weeding and putting out bird feeders to support our biodiversity in the school grounds. 

Events

We had a fabulous day on Thursday 2nd February! Everyone looked amazing in their badger coloured clothes! We enjoyed doing our whole school assembly in the morning to explain all about our Biodiversity project and the Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire Wildlife Trust. 

We were thrilled to receive lots of donations such as:
- bird feeders, bird seed, fat balls, mealworms,
- seeds, bulbs or plants to support bees and butterflies,
 

We raised an amazing £145 for our charity and are so pleased!

Meetings

Meeting 08/09/2022

Our first meeting of the year was to discuss getting new recruits to our team and how we were going to set up the Eco Committee for the year. We talked about the process for gaining a Green Flag and what we will need to do in meetings and at school.

Meeting 13/10/2022

We had a great meeting in which we completed our Environmental Review. The questions induced lots of discussions and ideas for how to improve school.

Our three areas to work on will be:

• Litter
• Energy
• Biodiversity

Our strongest area was School Grounds which we were really pleased about. 

We're all looking forward to now writing our Action Plan and starting with our projects after half term. 

Meeting 17/11/2022

During this meeting we discussed our Action Plan and made decisions on key areas to work on plus a timeline. You can see our Action Plan below.

We're super excited about starting our plan now. We're going to begin with choosing our Energy and Littering monitors and making posters for the school.

Meeting 15/12/2022

We met today to re-visit our Action Plan and discuss our next steps. We have made some exciting plans for next term, including:

• A fundraising day for a wildlife charity and school so that we can start our biodiversity project.
• A whole school assembly to discuss littering plus introduce our anti-littering posters and bin monitors.
• Deciding on Energy and Littering Monitors in each class.
• Being part of the Keep Britain Tidy 'Great Big British Spring Clean' in March and what we will be doing.

We're really looking forward to coming back to school in January and starting our projects!

Meeting 12/01/2023

Today we started work on posters and information for our fund raising day that is coming up this term. We have decided to ask for donations to improve the biodiversity in the school grounds.

We will ask for:

• Bird feeders, bird food, bat boxes and bird baths.
• Seeds and bulbs for re-wilding.
• Plants that are good for bees and butterflies.
• Vegetable seeds/plants and fruit trees.

Some of the children also started work on our assembly which is at the end of term and all about our charity day.

Meeting 01/02/2023

Today we practised our assembly which is all about our charity day. We have added in some important questions about how the Wildlife Trust vision links to our own school vision and values. We also made she we knew the plan for the day and we talked about how we will be organising the Bake Sale for the end of the day too.

Meeting 03/03/2023

We had a very positive meeting today where we discussed our participation in The Great Big British Spring Clean. We also discussed our pledge to collect 30 bags of litter and the children expressed that they would like to do an assembly on litter on this day. 

Secondly, we discussed our Eco Code and started to plan out our promises such as to:

• Reduce, reuse and recycle
• Protect and care for wildlife and nature
• Save water and energy
• Pick up any litter we see
• Encourage other people to be eco aware.

We are in the planning stages and would like to link our Eco Code to our school Vision and Values.

Meeting 30/03/2023

Welcome to Alana to our Eco Team! We're really pleased to have you on our committee.

Today we met to finalise our Eco Code and assess where we are with our Action Plan. We wrote up our Eco Code and made copies for all the classrooms and our Eco Display board. We have a few points to work on next term:

• Posters for anti littering and saving energy.
• Finishing biodiversity work.

Secondly, we discussed an up-coming event (second hand uniform sale) and decided on a date for next term.

Meeting 20/04/2023

Today we had a super meeting where we monitored how our Biodiversity project is developing (see above) and then we discussed our up-coming event for our second hand uniform sale. We feel quite positive with where we are and hope to apply for our Green Flag very soon!

Meeting 04/05/2023

We met today to review the last stages of our application and check our littering assembly was finished and ready to present. We also went to check the pond was doing well and on our newly planted trees. We spoke to our School Business Manager and Mrs Hobbs about the ways we have made the school more energy efficient this year and looked at some energy bills to see if we were saving energy compared to last year.

Meeting 18/05/2023

We practised our assembly on littering today to be ready for next week. We also checked we were happy that everything is ready for our Big Brekky and Second Hand uniform sale next week. We managed to get a nice picture of all of us together and finally checked our Eco display board was up to date.