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The Great Big Energy Challenge

Turners Hill School have recently completed a project that they called the “Great Big Energy Saving Project”.

The idea of the project was to consolidate and add to what they had already learnt. The children made a papier-mache thermometer with a world at the base to use as a measure, the target being to be completely carbon neutral.

The children looked at the school and talked about what we already do to help the environment. They surveyed all the school children to see which of our projects they thought made the biggest difference to the environment. By doing this it really brought home to our children how much we do. The list included:

  • Wind turbines
  • Solar Panels
  • Composting
  • Chickens
  • Recycling
  • Planting our own wood
  • Bugs Hotel Walking Bus
  • Air Source Heating
  • Wormery
  • Water Butts
  • Bird Boxes
  • Bee Houses
  • Ladybird Houses
  • Regular rubbish collection

The children in class 5 looked at how we could save water at school. They measured the amount of water the children used when washing their hands, they put all the data into graphs to present to the whole school. As a result of this initiative we are now going to fit aerated taps to the bathroom basins.

The school decided that they wanted to spread the eco message to the wider community. The children wrote letters to parents and shop owners outlining how they could be more eco friendly and asking them to return a form to school saying how they would help. They also sent a questionnaire to all the other schools in the local area asking them what they do for the environment and inviting them to come and look around our school.

The school are also about to get a bio-mass boiler so the children were asked to design a ‘feeder’ for the boiler, some sort of device to move the wood chippings from their delivery spot into the boiler. Some of the other children designed playground equipment for the future e.g. a roundabout, a swing and a seesaw that create energy.

The final part of the project was to make a film in the style of a news report. The children were the presenters and the reporters, reporting from different areas of the school, they even had a weather forecast at the end!!

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