The Great Travel Challenge Draws to a close!
Our GSC has worked both day and night,
Promoting travel that’s green and bright.
From walking to cycling, scooting with pride,
On WOW day, 54% took the stride!
We’re proud of the change that we’ve made,
Spreading the word on a greener crusade.
Health and the earth are reasons to care,
And we’ve raised awareness everywhere.
We ran surveys and had fun with a race,
Colouring, challenges, and a whole school space.
Love our Earth, letters so sweet,
A mile a day—getting on our feet!
Michele Castiaux came in with a talk,
Teaching us all how to walk the walk.
A walk to the park, art lessons too,
Senior and Junior pupils joined in the crew.
With less than 100, we all play a part,
Every action counts to keep Earth’s heart.
Though we lack social media’s reach,
We’ve spread the word through lessons we teach.
Announcements, updates, Aladdin in use,
Our events were shared, there’s no excuse!
We’ve filled our notice board with cheer,
And made WOW days something to revere.
The GSC led with passion and care,
For a greener world, we all must share.
Now, enthusiasm is growing strong,
Together we’ll make the Earth sing along!
Green Schools Committee visit Laois Chambers
Our Green Schools committee spent a very exciting morning in Laois Chambers with other schools involved the Travel Cluster. We listened to talks, offered our opinions and made plans to get our school family walking, cycling and travelling sustainably to school.
We can’t wait to visit again in the summer term.
Love Letters to the Earth
5th and 6th Class wrote the most beautiful ‘Love Letters to the Earth’.
The Great Travel Challenge
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!
Winners of the Great Travel Challenge Colouring Competition
Congratulations to the lucky winners of our colouring competition. Well done to all who entered! The Green Schools Committee had their work cut out for them trying to choose a winner from each class. The winners are: Junior Infants: Ella
Senior Infants : Zahra
1st Class : Dhyan
2nd Class : Rouaa
3rd Class : Abigail
4th Class : Ava
5th Class : Izabella F
6th Class : Sinéad
Clean Air Week
This week is Clean Air Week. Join us as we try to improve the quality of the air in Portlaoise this week and develop good habits going forward.
Our Green School Committee are busy preparing some information for you, carrying out surveys, and informing our school community about ways we can contribute to improving the quality of the air around us.
We will be sending out a survey to parents this week. We would appreciate it if as many of you as possible could respond.
Check back here soon for some more information and photos.
The Green School Committee.
Walkability audit
Some of our Green School Committee took part in a walkability audit, near our school, with Karen from the Low Carbon Portlaoise initiative. Check out some photos of them in action. Thank you to Karen for visiting our school!
COMPETITION TIME!
Everyone loves a good challenge!
A message from the Green School’s Committee
Our school is a Green School. We are very proud to have achieved the flags for Litter, Waste, and Energy and are currently working on our Water flag.
This year we are going for our third green flag! It is based on water conservation and valuing water. To get this green flag we have to save more water where possible and become more aware of how we use water. This is extra challenging this year, with all of the extra handwashing that is happening, but, we have decided to focus on what we can do to make a difference!
Our Green School’s Committee is made up of teachers and students from the school. Due to Covid 19 restrictions this year, we have decided to have committee members from one Junior and one Senior class only, who will share the message with the rest of our school family. Our pupil members this year are Zoe Shaw, Megan Adams, Molly Jane Dempsey and Abbie Smullen, from 5th class, and Isabella and Nell from 1st class. Mrs Barry and the rest of the school staff help out where necessary.
Over the coming weeks, we will invite the school and local community to take part in water-saving challenges and water awareness activities. We will also be sharing our Top Tap Tips with you to help you save water in your home.
One of the first activities we have done since we returned to school, is to check for leaking taps in all the classrooms. Leaking taps = wasted water. Have you checked the taps in your home recently?
We have also decided to buy basins for the sinks in our classrooms so that we can wash our paintbrushes and pallets without leaving the tap running. We are trying to make our classmates aware of how much water is wasted by leaving the taps running when washing up. Do you use a basin in your sink?
Our school challenge this week is to measure how much water is wasted when we brush our teeth and leave the taps running. We will compare this to how much is wasted when we just turn on the taps to rinse our toothbrushes.
We have water conservation tips up around the school and on our Green School’s noticeboard. These tell us how to be aware and how to save water at home. We also have information up about water pollution and how it affects animals/plants.
We are teaching our water code to all the classes and learning songs about water in the Infant classroom. All students were invited to enter an art competition, run by An Taisce, promoting the theme of valuing water. We are looking forward to seeing if we have any winners from our school.
Thanks to everyone for trying their best to help save water
