Our Eco Council consists of representatives from every class and together we think about how we may look after the environment, our school, its grounds and the wider world. All of these are important things we can do to support the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

We think that our school has lovely grounds and wild areas and we don’t have a litter problem outside.

But, we can do more!

So, each class has monitors to make sure:-

• that there is someone to switch off the lights when we leave the classroom
• that computers are switched off when we leave the room (especially at the end of the day)

So that we are doing our best to save energy!

On this page we will update you with all the Eco News from Mission Grove!

Suds Project Update

The Eco Council were excited to find out that the gardens were ready for planting. They were soon busy planting!

 

Planting 

The children from the Eco Club have been busy planting vegetables and herbs in our wildlife area.

Eco Code

After looking at the pledges that they made, The Eco Club created an Eco code from their ideas.

They then created Eco Code posters. 

 

Promise Trees

The Eco club created promise trees, with pledges to care for our environment. They shared these with their classes.

 

Pollution Workshop

The Year 5 children learnt about pollution through a workshop.

Suds Project update

The work is on the way. We can't wait for our new gardens to be completed.

Air Pollution Monitoring

The eco club worked with the Asthma and Lung association, to measure the air pollution in the air around our school. The children set up pollution monitors around the school. We removed them and sent them f for analysis.

     

Let's hope the results show clean air around our school.

Cut Your Carbon

The Eco council were proud to be part of the Cut Your Carbon campaign. We even won a prize!

The SUDS Project 

The Eco Council at Mission Grove School has been involved in designing and delivering a small sustainable urban drainage scheme (SUDs) in the grounds of the school. This new project will introduce imaginative and exciting ways of re-using rain that falls on school buildings or falls on the external surfaces areas in the school.

The project will be about making Mission Grove School more climate resilient by:

• helping to reduce areas of flooding or water saturation.

• capturing rainfall before it enters the drainage network.

• re-using or filtering rainfall from school surfaces or school rooftops.

• creating new greener spaces in the school.

The project aims to introduce sustainable drainage systems to Mission Grove Primary School, to support flood and climate resilience.

The Eco council met with local architects to support the design of the project.

 

Pupils favourite places.

 

Ideas drawn by the eco council for the gardens.

The Eco Council also looked at drainage systems.

The Eco council also designed bug hotels for the new garden.

The children look forward to the work starting on the new gardens soon. 

Eco Code Board

The Eco Council have regular meetings. The children agreed an Eco Code that they wanted to implement in the school. They have an Eco board display, which they update regularly.

Summer Term:

In Gardening Enrichment we got to taste some of our school grown strawberries! The bees loved the flowers and we loved the fruit.

Look how many snails we found after the rain! We put them in our bug hotel so we didn't crush them all with our feet.

Superbloom

Children in Year 3 and the Eco Council have been planting wildflowers, as part of the Superbloom project. The Eco Council visited the Tower of London to see the wildflowers planted in the moat.

 

We took part in the Big Plastic Count:

Telling the government to sort out plastic pollution!

Spring Term:

We had a workshop all about air pollution. We learnt about the causes and effects.

In Enrichment, we cleaned out the pond to make it a healthy habitat for the frogs and other creatures that lived there. We realised the pond wasn't healthy because it was full of dead leaves which means there is not enough oxygen. Creating and maintaining habitats is part of our Eco Schools action plan.

Autumn 2:

This term we used the environmental review to help us create an action plan for our school, we will finish this next term and then start trying to make our school more eco friendly!

In November, we had a Climate Week to coincide with COP26 in Glasgow, where all the world leaders met to make new promises to do with climate change. Each day we looked at a new theme, we focused on fast fashion, personal echo pledges and even had a meat free menu on the Wednesday!

Year 2 took a trip to the charity shop to donate unwanted items:

Year 3 designed a flood proof house.

Year 5 made a wonderful handmade book full of all the work they completed for our COP26 week.

Switch off Fortnight

The Eco Council checked all the classes each day during Switch off Fortnight to see which class were the best at keeping their lights and whiteboard screens off at lunchtime. 

No Electricity Day - Year 4

The year 4 children had a day when they used no electricity. The teachers taught their lessons outdoors or without using electricity. Even the parents got on board, and they used no devices at home. 

Autumn 1:

Here are some posters that Year 2 made about our school environment:

We assessed how eco friendly our school is using the environmental review. We looked at things like litter, biodiversity and waste. 

One of the most worrying this we noticed was the fruit waste and plastic litter after KS1 playtime. This is definitely something we need to fix.

We also completed a survey about house plants and leaking taps. We found that only one tap leaked which we will get fixed and four classes are without a house plant. Eco Council are going to propagate some spider plants to give out to these classes!