In the past few years, Camborne Science and Community College has built strong links with the Ritsumeikan High School in Japan, so it was with great anticipation that three of our students travelled all the way to the Shiga District near Kyoto in Japan last month. Their mission: to present a scientific study at an International Water Forum.

Heavy metal pollution is a big problem in Cornwall. Centuries of mining have left a legacy of damaged ecosystems so our students were determined to raise awareness on the matter. After several weeks of research and field trips, they presented their findings in the hope that others would learn about this issue. Their presentation was a great success and our students were praised for …

Read all of Camborne Science & Community College Raises Awareness on Heavy Metal Pollution

Holly Class were studying WW2, evacuation and rationing. As always, at Turners Hill, we like to try and tie our topics to our healthy eating and environmental ethos, so the children were asked to come up with a campaign similar to that of the Dig for Victory campaign but with a modern twist, ours being to grow your own vegetables and buy locally.

An opportunity was spotted to include the community in this project. Elderly members were invited into school and interviewed. They told the children about their experiences in the war, focusing on rationing and the produce they grew themselves.

The children researched war time recipes, searching out ones that could include produce that we grow in our own gardens. Holly …

Read all of Get on Your Boots and Dig Some Roots! – Turners Hill School

One World – People in a Global Village
This report describes the small and local actions that we have taken as citizens of a global village. We hope that by acting locally we can help to effect some global changes. It is the ‘People’ section of our Roots & Shoots mission.

Students are aware that global warming underpins much of the world’s problems, and have thus signed the school up to 1010, represented the school on The Wave, held a climate change conference and initiated direct contact with students in Tuvalu, likely to be one of the first islands in the world to disappear beneath the waves. These events describe ‘environment’ rather more than ‘people’ so will be discussed here …

Read all of Ringwood School’s One World Project

This term the year 2 pupils undertook a project on polar bears, linking with the international conference on climate change. The children studied the bears’ habitat, finding out where they live, what they eat and how they are now endangered because of global warming. We made a display of the children’s work to show the rest of the school in order to highlight the plight of the polar bears.

Southridge First School is a school near Whitley Bay in Newcastle . We are lucky to be surrounded by green fields where the children can play but they really wanted a wildlife feature. We had already added bird boxes and feeders in the grounds and the children had worked with the Northumberland Wildlife Trust to make their own mini-beast houses but we decided that we needed another feature in the grounds.

We already had an allotment so we decided to convert a boggy area of the field into a garden. We gathered together a group of adult volunteers to do the digging and children from all year groups were involved in the development of the area. This took place in …

Read all of Southridge Bog Garden 2009

We are developing our school eco garden. First we had 3 new raised beds installed, then all the children planted herbs and vegetables. We had the most amazing pumpkins and marrows.  Some unusual purple sprouts are growing now.  Also the children grew their own potatoes and took them home to share with their families.

Everyone at the school is involved in our eco garden. In the summer every child got involved making a scarecrow to celebrate Henry VIII’s 500th centenary. The scarecrow was exhibited at Hampton Court Flower show. It was entitled ‘Henry and his Birds’.  Now we have a new greenhouse and hope to plant seeds in the …

Read all of Coleshill CofE Infant School – Our Eco Garden

Skinners’ School in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, is already renowned for being at the front of the fight against saving energy, with solar panels supplying all of our science and catering facilities and filtering left over energy into the national grid. These were in place before I (Miss Montoya) started and organised by a teacher called Mark Moody. He and his Sustainability Group consisting of mainly students from across the years were also able to recently complete the building of a sensory garden at a local school called Oakley with the help of the High Weald of Kent project. With his knowledge, experience and guidance I was then able to put my plans into action.

In September of 2008 I started as …

Read all of HEAL @ Skinners’ School 2008-2009

Our sense of ‘community’ transcends national boundaries. We have taken a conventional school twinning project and transformed it into a international project for the whole community. The result is a complex and innovative scheme that is having a massive impact on students and adults on two continents.

Warrington hit the national headlines for the wrong reasons in 2007 when Gary Newlove was killed by a teenage gang outside his home. Through this project our students play a positive role in their community and we achieve greater levels of community cohesion. Warrington is also one of the least ethnically diverse parts of the UK. Its population is 97.9% white (1). By working with the population of the Mdantsane township, we …

Read all of Lymm High School: Spreading the “Sense of Community” across Continents

Summary:
We were concerned about the increasing carbon emissions from our school transport. We conducted a survey on vehicle use, model, emissions and journey length for the entire school for a year. We calculated, we needed to plant 4490 trees to offset annual transport emissions. To date we have planted 2800 trees, organised a cycle to school day to encourage less vehicle use, built a bike shed from recycled materials, organised cycle buses, influenced government to action cycle lanes and setup a tree nursery for all new students to grow trees. Our vision is to become carbon neutral with our school transport.
We called our project tREe’CYCLE’ because we are recycling Carbon Dioxide emissions by planting trees, and …

Read all of tREe’Cycle’ at Queen Elizabeth II High School – Mission Report!

If we are absolutely honest, how on this beautiful earth can a school be ‘sustainable’? We are users – and heavy users at that – of resources, heat and equipment. Health and Safety dictates that we cannot cut back on so many aspects of light and heat, while quick responses, financial constraints and necessity dictate that we cannot always select the cheapest options.

However…

What we can do well is to educate the children in our care to consider and appreciate the value of everything they own and how they will live their lives. To understand they have options and to make ethical and sustainable choices.

From the youngest children in Nursery to our fledglings in Year 6, the girls have roles and …

Read all of Leaden Hall – How sustainable is our school?