Our Green Schools Committee have had a busy two weeks during the Big Travel Challenge. We have being doing our best to promote sustainable, green ways of travelling to school to reduce emissions in Portlaoise and make getting to school a safer, fun experience for all.
We had an online meeting with the other schools in Portlaoise that are taking part in the Travel Cluster where we discussed ideas to encourage as many people as possible to walk, cycle, car- pool, park and stride or take the bus to school.
We then met up again as a committee, to make a plan for our school and did out a timetable of events to take place. We surveyed parents (Huge thanks to all the parents who responded – our response rate has been the best of all the schools in the town so far!) We surveyed every child in the school three times over the course of the the two weeks and recorded the scores to see if there was an improvement in numbers travelling sustainably. We applied for more bike/scooter parking to cater for the increasing number of students needing it. We organised a whole school assembly with the wonderful Michéle from the Green Schools, to teach us more about the benefits of walking. cycling, taking the scooter, and park and striding to school. Our 5th and 6th class wrote very moving, love letters to the earth – Check out our beautiful display in the entrance to see these inspiring pieces! Our Green Schools Committee organised a colouring competition for all the classes, art lessons for younger classes and gorgeous displays with the older classes. We put an extra special emphasis on our WOW Day on the 12th of February where we all came dressed in red to show our love for the earth. This has definitely been our best WOW day to date with record numbers taking part! We finished off our two weeks with a beautiful walk in the People’s Park.
Well done to all the children and parents in our school for engaging so enthusiastically with all the activities. We can’t wait to organise some more events in the near future – Watch this space!
