Colindale Primary School is an Eco School. Last year we were awarded the Silver Award for all our work towards becoming a sustainable, environmentally and eco-friendly community and taking positive action to protect and preserve our planet.
Each year we elect an Eco Committee which includes children from every class from years 1 to 6. Every child interested in the position has to fill in an application form explaining why they want to be an Eco Councillor and what skills they would bring to the committee if elected. Every year there is always a fantastic response from the children who want to be Eco Councillors, with often over 100 applicants; this shows how many of our children want to be a positive influence on our school, environment and world. Twelve children in total are chosen and meet every fortnight to discuss the changes we can make in our school to be more eco-friendly.
Meet our Eco Committee councillors
Balma (1PF)
Kiera (1W)
Kayla (1K)
Nadia (2CC)
Danny (2KC)
Gino (2J)
Natalie (3C)
Claudia (3N)
Akaylah (3P)
Anosh (4G)
Andres (4M)
Pelin (4R)
Irena (5H)
Calin (5D)
Yamama (5J)
Mariam (5T)
Tiya (6K)
Aaron (6T)
Sophie (6M)
Eco Committee News
January – March 2018
Being an Eco School has become part of everyday life at Colindale. Children and staff are careful about what they do, making sure they are always thinking “eco”. In the Spring Term we focused on waste; ensuring we reduced the amount we used; reusing what we could; and recycling when necessary. A waste audit was carried out at the beginning of our Waste topic and again at the end by the environmentalist team called Eco
Active. All staff and children worked together to reduce the amount of waste we produce as a school. One class became very innovative, with photocopying their homework on scrap paper – a very good “reusing” technique! Well done 4R for this fantastic idea! Year 6 have also been very helpful in creating wonderful Eco advice leaflets during their English lesson; these outline how to be eco-friendly, in school and at home. These are located at our reception foyer for you to browse and to see how you at home can become more eco-friendly.
FOOD WASTE
Food waste is an area of waste we have not yet tackled. A whole school assembly lead by 5T rose the issue of food waste and taught all children and staff about what we can do to make a difference.
This assembly got the ball rolling in discussing ways we can reduce food waste. The desired outcome would be to have food waste bins, however, the emptying and collecting and lifting
and smell of these bins rose other issues. The Eco Committee and Mr Celi (Site Manager) have been trying to think of ways of managing the food waste bins comfortably. The Eco Committee have made food waste posters for the hall to reduce the amount that children are throwing away. They have written to the Borough of Barnet to see how they can help with our concern and have a few ideas to raise money for the biodegradable bags, which would make emptying the food waste much less messy. BUT, these bags cost 10p EACH! Stay tuned in our quest in reducing food waste!
TRANSPORT
We are also happy to announce that due to our Walk to School Month and our continual effort to walk, cycle or scoot to school, we are retaining our Gold level School Travel Plan Award. Well done Colindale!
ECO IN THE CURRICULUM
Year 5
As part of their geography and science lessons, Year 5 visited The Welsh Harp Reservoir to learn about rivers, water and the effects of pollution. During their trip, they
were shocked to learn that our rivers are polluted. Littering, fly tipping, oil spills from leaking cars and many other human activities are the cause of this pollution.Year 5 tested the water for pollution and found too much! In English, they decided to produce a water pollution leaflet giving information on how water pollution occurs and what YOU can do to help! Thank you Year 5!
Year 6
Year 6 have also been learning about deforestation during their rainforest topic. Deforestation has a HUGE impact on our environment and especially to the creatures who live in the rainforest.This in turn lead them to speak about the biodiversity of our planet and how the plants/trees and creatures we have help our planet survive. Year 6 created fantastic information videos to show the devastation of deforestation, raising the awareness of reducing and reusing to stop the cutting down of trees, the making of the movies covered several subjects- English, maths, ICT, geography and PSHE.
Year 4
Year 4 create an animation every year and this year, being so inspired by our school becoming an Eco School, they chose to base their animation on Eco! Called The Eco Forest. You can see the final animation on You Tube- Colindale Primary School 2018 Animation Project.
Year 2
Year 2 have been learning about staying healthy covering our Healthy Lifestyles topic. They have looked at all the types of food they should eat most of and the food they should eat less of. They also learned about staying active to maintain a healthy lifestyle. With all the skills of making healthy choices, they created an Eat Well Plate choosing from the food groups for a healthy but tasty meal.
EYFS
The early years have purchased water butts for their outdoor areas. These will collect rain water for them to water the plants they grow in summer and reduce wasting tap water. We cannot wait to see their flower flourish!
September – December 2017
This academic year we have chosen to target: Transport, Waste, Energy, Healthy Living and Biodiversity this academic year.
TRANSPORT
In October it was Walk to School Month. The whole school were encouraged to come to school in the most sustainable way possible. The Eco Committee promoted sustainable journeys the children and staff could take; walking, cycling, scooting etc. The Eco Committee raised the profile of the walk to school campaign by making posters, announcing in school assemblies and joining the WOW Monitor team. There were two WOW Monitors in every class who had the responsibility to encourage their class to make sustainable journeys to school. The WOW Monitors also tracked how children got to school using the WOW charts. If children travelled to school sustainably at least three times per week they achieved their first wow badge. The Eco Councillors tracked the progress of this initiative and there was an increase in children coming to school sustainably every week, which is fantastic! The class with the most sustainable journeys were rewarded the Eco Trophy during well done assembly. We continue to encourage sustainable journeys.
WASTE
We were very excited to join forces with EcoACTIVE who are an innovative environmental education charity with a reputation for using hands-on, practical approaches to explore complex issues of sustainability. EcoACTIVE envisions a world where young people and communities are agents of change for creating a better planet. We wanted our Eco Committee, our school and our community to join together to make this change so it was an honour to have EcoACTIVE support us with this.
EcoACTIVE will carry out waste audits throughout their time with us to ensure we are only throwing items in the waste bin which cannot be recycled. The regular waste audits will measure our progress. With substantial progress we could win £500 for our school!
Workshop 1 – Food Waste
The first workshop with EcoACTIVE was very exciting for the Eco Committee as food is one area of waste we are not disposing off effectively. The committee learnt about food waste, where it goes when it is not effectively disposed of. The children learnt that we could get food waste bins so the food is then taken and disposed of effectively, we could also reuse our food waste by having a wormery or a composting system. This is when the food is turned into compost with the help of worms. We got to meet some tiger worms, the best worms for a wormery! We came away with very exciting ideas to implement!
Workshop 2 – Textiles
During this workshop with EcoACTIVE the Eco Committee learnt about textiles and their effect on our world. We are overfilled with textile waste, which is a waste the Eco Committee had not considered before. With all the clothes we wear the children discussed ways we could reduce the amount of textiles we buy, reuse the textiles we already have and how to recycle effectively. The children got given an old t shirt and were quizzed on how they could reuse it. This resulted in them making a bag out of it. This creative activity illustrated the ways we can reuse our textiles and reduce buying more. One of the ideas the Eco Committee came up with for reducing, reusing and recycling textiles was to have a textiles bank in school, where the clothes will be taken to charities or recycled to make new clothes.
Energy
Energy is something we are always trying not to be wasteful of. From last year we have always tried to switch lights off when we leave our classroom and make sure our interactive boards are switched off when we do not need them. The Eco committee have been carrying out energy audits throughout the year to see which classes are remembering to turn their lights and boards off when they leave their classrooms for play and assembly. The class who are the most eco-friendly with their switching of are rewarded the Eco trophy during well done assembly.
We were also very excited to be taking part in Switch OFF Day again this year. We had our Switch OFF Day on Monday 27th November. Children and teachers, within their classrooms, tried their best, when possible, to not use any electricity…no lights, no interactive whiteboards for a whole day! We hoped to beat our 28% save of energy last year!
Switch Off Day
Every child and every adult joined in Switch OFF Day to give us an excellent save of energy. Every class had their lights switched off and did not use their interactive whiteboards for a whole day. Some classes took learning outside to seek the natural light further. The children loved coming together to follow the rules of Switch Off Day and make a difference to our planet as a team.
Nursery playing without lights
Year 1 – no lights and no boards were on, some classes went outside to learn
Year 3 – PE, dance without music or lights (very inventive and expressive)
Maths outside – finding arrays in their local environment
Year 5 – continuing their hard work without lights or their interactive whiteboards
With all of our lessons taught without using ANY energy in our classrooms
we saved 35% of the energy we usually use!!
This was a FANTASTIC result; we had beaten our 28% record from last year!
Thank you all children and staff!!
HEALTHY LIVING
At Colindale Primary School we are continually promoting healthy eating and healthy life styles. This is done through PE, school clubs, PSHE, science and through our Eco School actions. A lot of healthy living promotions were carried out last year and the Eco Committee wanted to add to this, so we put fruit charts in every classroom to encourage children to take fruit (KS1) or to bring in fruit as a snack (KS2). The Eco Committee hoped to not only encourage children to take healthy choices from the school lunch menu, but also ensure children brought in healthy pack lunches.
