Geography Teaching Today

We are a school of about 230 pupils in rural Hertforshire. Pupils are from Nursery to Year 4.

We wanted to make the children more environmentally aware and the Eco-schools award seemed a pro-active way to do this. Geography is an important part of our Creative Curriculum which we adopted nearly two years ago.

We began in January 2008 by choosing our Eco Action Team. This consisted of one representative from each KS1 class and two from each KS2 class, making a total of nine children in all. Mrs. Willett the headteacher also agreed to join the team along with Mr. Hall our caretaker. We then approached the Governing body to see if they would like to be represented and we were delighted when Mrs. Worby a parent governor joined us.

Our progress so far

We conducted an environmental survey and decided that we wanted to concentrate particularly on the areas of litter and energy saving. As a result of this lights monitors have been appointed in each class and the Eco Action Team have been on the look out for taps left running or lights left on anywhere in the school.
We also drew up an Eco action plan which is displayed in each classroom reminding the children of things they can do to help. We created two Eco notice boards, one in the library area and one outside by the main gate so that parents can be involved.

Mrs. Willett arranged for the school to have 'water hippos' put in most of the toilet cisterns. These reduce the amount of water used each time the toilet is flushed. We purchased some litter pickers and rubber gloves and the Action Team regularly have litter picking sessions with the assistance of Mr. Hall. 

We joined the 'fones for schools' campaign encouraging parents to recycle their mobile phones. This had a good response with well over 50 phones collected for recycling purposes. We also took part in the 'Yellow Woods Challenge' collecting 108 old Yellow Pages to make a sculpture with before having them collected for recycling. All of these activities resulted in us achieving our Bronze Award in March 2008.

You can read more about the Eco-schools project in the following PowerPoint presentation prepared by Claire Moore.

Download: Eco-schools project (PPT, 965K)

Evaluation

What has surprised us is the enthusiasm with which the children approached the scheme.

Further Developments

We aim to achieve Green Flag Status (the very best Eco-schools award).

Links

Millfield First & Nursery School website
Eco Schools
Healthy Schools

<<< back to Teaching Ideas index