Eco-Committee
Learning and living as children of God
(Ephesians5:1) (You are God’s children whom he loves. Try to be like God)
We serve our community by providing the highest quality education, encouraging understanding of faith and promoting Christian values. All children can express curiosity, explore big questions about our world, share socially and spiritually with freedom to make good choices underpinned by our values. Respect, Friendship, Perseverance, Thankfulness, Trust and Truthfulness. Eco-Schools is a key example of how our school vision permeates through all we do by looking after one another and the world around us. Eco-Schools creates the intrigue of curiosity about how we can help and become more aware of what we do and the impact it has.
In September 2021 Deerhurst and Apperley set up our own Eco-Schools Committee. This committee is made up of 12 children from across the whole school. In Eco-Committee we talk about how we can help make our school more eco-friendly and have created an action plan explaining what we would like to achieve in the acidemic year.
What is Eco-Schools?
They are a charity passionate about engaging young people in environmental education and action. Eco-Schools do this by providing a simple, seven-step framework that guides, empowers and motivates pupils to drive change and improve environmental awareness in their school, local community and beyond.
After completing the seven step process, schools can then apply for Eco-Schools Green Flag accreditation, which recognises, rewards and celebrates the environmental achievements of young people.
Eco-Schools was founded in 1994, operates in 70 countries and engages 19.5 million young people globally. This makes Eco-Schools the largest educational programme on the planet.
The Seven Eco-Schools steps are designed to make environmental actions pupil-led. Working through each of the seven steps and achieving Eco-Schools Green Flag accreditation is designed to be done in a single academic year. Several of the steps, for example Step 5: Informing and Involving, naturally overlap and this is encouraged – our process is designed to be holistic.
Below, is a brief summary of each step, but further details, examples, criteria and resources can be found on the Eco-Schools website.
- Eco-Committee, a group of students and adults responsible for all things Eco-Schools.
- Environmental Review, a free-to-download resource which has been designed to review learning environments and provide inspiration to Eco-Committees.
- Action Plan, a plan for environmental actions in your school, college or nursery.
- Curriculum Links, including environmental issues in your school’s, college’s, or nursery’s learning.
- Informing and Involving, including all pupils, staff members and your local community in Eco-Schools work.
- Monitoring and Evaluation, measuring the impact of the projects in your Action Plan.
- Eco-Code, a rallying call that everyone can get behind!
2022 – 2023
In our committee this year we have; Sonny, Gabriel, Ben, Isla, Orla, Alexander, Molly, Este, Ella, Hugo, Flynn and Molly. They all had to fill in forms to explain why they would like to be on the committee and all put forward great aplications.
Notice Board:
Any donations of plant pots, compost, seeds, vegetable plants and other plants would be wonderful.
Summer Term:
- Friday 23rd June – Sunflower seed planting at 3pm. Please come and join us to plant some seeds with your children.
- Tuesday 20th June – plant, homegrown veg and fruit swap at 3.15pm
- W/B: 19th June will be Deerhurst and Apperley Green Week. During this week there will be different activities for the children and parents to join in with.
- Every Tuesday in June there will be a walking bus from the village hall at 8.30am
- Forest school was made bigger. Class 2 planted wild flower seeds round the borders and created a willow fence round the edge.
Spring Term:
- They planned to change the area of forest school and make it larger. They discussed how they would do this.
- Seed donations to school for our wild flower boarder around forest school
- Eco-Committee have brought lots of new eco awareness books from the money they raised.
- Eco-Committee planted the tree which were donated to school.
Autumn Term:
- Thursday 24th November – Cake Sale
- Meeting – decided on a cake sale to raise money for books, seeds, bulbs and plants for the school
- Environmental Review completed by the children over a couple of meetings. They have looked assessed the areas we scored well and not so well in.
- Eco-Committee have been chosen. They will represent the committe for this year.
- Friday 16th December – Eco-Committe application deadline
Facts, Top Tips and Recipies:
Fact: One out of every three mouthfuls of our food depends on pollinators like bees.
Top Tip: Remember to turn the lights off when you’re not in the room.
Recipe: https://www.mobkitchen.co.uk/recipes/wintery-leek-and-potato-eggs
Fact: The Sun could provide us with a year’s worth of energy in just one hour (if we could harness it all).
Top Tip: Remember to turn the tap off when you don’t need it.
Recipe: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/bean-enchiladas
Fact: Every year 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in the oceans, that’s the equivalent of one rubbish truck every minute.
Top Tip: Don’t waste food as it adds to the amount of CO2 in landfills.
Recipie: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/veggie-shepherds-pie-sweet-potato-mash
