Month: December 2017

Below is a digimap of the school I am currently on placement at:

 

• Evidence of existing engagement with sustainable education within the school such as garden area, recycling bins, litter picking ‘wardens’, bird boxes, and so on.

The school has litter wardens who pick up litter at breaks as well as bins and recycle bins. There are also flower boxes around the school grounds. In the school cafeteria, there are waste monitors. They take the trays and rubbish from other children in the canteen and dispose of the waste into a trolley separated for recycling.

• Consideration of actual play space for children and its suitability.
  • What opportunities are there for exploration, development, challenges etc.?
  • How is this space used?

The Primary 1-3 cohort has a wooden stage in the centre of their play area which suits for performing or imaginative play. They also have a large metal dragon climbing area which suits them for explorative play and can enhance their imagination further and to challenge them. The p4-7 cohort has a gravel area to play with painted games and a playing field for a  more sporty style play or a softer ground to play on. This area could be more suitable to play instead of a large gravel area.

• Discussion with children on these aspects of sustainable education.

I spoke to some of the children about what it means to be eco-friendly. They replied with it means looking after the environment, recycling and caring about the planet. They did not yet know the concept of sustainability but could tell me that recycling was important because we can reuse materials and not use as many resources to make things.

Map of the School Grounds 
In this first picture is the map of the school and shared nursery campus grounds this shows the three playgrounds one of which is the schools Multi Use Games Area also known as the MUGA.

Evidence of existing engagement of Sustainable Development 

The school has a community garden during the summer months students will contribute in maintaining the garden groups, planting new flowers as they will grow better with the summer weather. The pupil’s who work in the schools garden are known as the ‘Gardening Group’. Within the school there are also recycling bin wardens for every classroom they work in helping the janitor make sure all rubbish in the recycling bin belongs where it should and place all contents in the correct bin. In January 2011 the school achieved their Silver Eco award and Green Flag but from discussion with teachers and pupils the school is striving to achieve Gold.

Play Space for Children and its Sustainability 

The School has two large playgrounds and a Multi Use Games Area (MUGA), which is split into three football pitches. The School is at full capacity with extensive numbers of pupils this is why there are so many play spaces for children. One playground is for P1-3, the other P4-5 and the MUGA for P6-7 but all stages get a turn once a week to play in the MUGA.

Discussion with Pupils on aspects of Sustainable Education

Having discussed with pupils in the P4/5 class everyone said they were happy with the many opportunities they are faced with in schools in taking part in many different groups and activities such as the Eco group, or Bin wardens. The pupils in P4/5 also said having the opportunity to work with professionals not within the school is effective. Morton Football came in to take a block of PE lessons about football skills. But as well as this they also discuss with pupils how to make our environment better and allocated all pupils with a Greener Morton workbook. Within this workbook it was all about energy, transport, food miles and recycling and what pupils can do to improve their own environments.

 

Above is a map of the school which I received from digimaps for schools. The blue x’s are the areas which are designed for the children to play in. They areas include a climbing frame, a sand pit, an outdoor gym and an area with different games painted on the ground. The red circles are where the bins are located. There is existing engagement with sustainable education within Houston Primary School. There is a gardening club for the children to volunteer at every week. At the club the children are responsible for planting a variety of different vegetables and then when their crops have grown they use them to make food such as soup. This club allows for children to see the importance of growing your own vegetables and allows them to have fun and get practical with sustainable education. There is also a recycling committee within the school, who make sure that all paper is being recycled efficiently. At the end of the week the recycling committee go around the classrooms and collect the paper themselves and put it into the recycling bins. Each class also has a litter picking slot for each week. This allows the children to get involved with the clearing up of their environment and will encourage them to look after their community outside of school. The Eco Committee in the school gets involved with the recycling of clothes and distributing ‘electricity wardens’ to turn off switches, lights and computers at the end of the day. Houston Primary School also holds 4 green flags which shows how eco-friendly the school is. Play space is relatively quite small compared to the quantity of children in the school. From the digimap above you can see that there is not a great amount of tarmac provided for the children to play on. However, they have access to different areas of the playground, once a week, which include a climbing frame, an outdoor gym and a sandpit (identified on the map above with a blue x). There are also tyres scattered about and painted games on the ground which are available at all times for the children. From the map above, it is clear that there is a large area of grassland – marked with a green x – available for play. However, this is only useable in the summer as it becomes extremely waterlogged in the winter. I sat down with a small group of children and asked them to consider the different clubs in their school related to sustainable development and what they thought of their playground. All the children were aware of the effect that they can have on the environment. They enjoy being involved in several types of sustainable education which have a positive effect on their environment. Some of the children I spoke with mentioned that they enjoy doing litter picking once a week with their class. Litter picking gives them the opportunity to go outside and get hands on with sustainable education whilst having fun with their friends, tidying the environment that they play in. They enjoy energy saving week and recycling their clothes. The children also commented on the size of their play area and spoke about the different facilities such as the outdoor gym and sand pit which they enjoy playing in with their friends. However, they only get access to these facilities once a week and would enjoy spending more of their play time there.

 

 

 

In this week’s workshop, we have been learning about energy. The main focus was on how we use energy and different types of energy. Furthermore we looked at the planet’s future and how long energy sources will last. We discussed how much energy from getting up this morning to being at uni we had already used without a second thought. This highlighted how much energy we use in a short period.

In the first workshop, there was a carousel of different energy related activities and this would be a good way to introduce and develop energy within a classroom setting. It gave me many ideas as to what I could use in my classroom to engage the children with this topic. There were also a variety of activities that as a teacher I would have to decide which age and stage best suited the class, because one experiment with the steel wool went on fire. It showed me the need to be well organised, have materials to hand and be prepared if a challenge arises.

Some of these carousel activities included: using metallic wool, using a circuit to turn on a light with a variety of materials, a solar power task using a lego car, balloons and kinetic energy. I feel I now have a good idea of energy activities that I could use and be confident with in my classroom.

In the second workshop, we were split into two groups of opposing sides about the positives and negatives of wind energy. This was very useful as every member in the team had a role to play which meant that nobody could step back and let the others do everything. We had to read a passage about our side of the argument and this improved our critical thinking skills and because we had time to prepare it gave me confidence as to what I was going to contribute and I feel that this would be the same in the classroom, if the children were given time to prepare and felt a boost of self esteem to debate for their team. The children would learn from each as they participate in the debate.

There was a guest speaker from Onthank Primary School, who was there to talk about STEM teaching – science, technology, engineering and maths. Within this workshop we had to make an anemometer and then prepare a lesson on how to prepare and teach this to a class. I found this useful as it is a lesson I could use when on my teaching practice and one the children would engage with. It was also emphasised on the need of children to work independently and not be scared on making mistakes and thus build up their confidence.

I have learned that there are many forms of energy: kinetic, electrical, chemical, heat and light to mention a few and I now know quite a few websites that would provide information, activities and online games that relate to energy.

Sustainable Development Serial Day Task

 

This map has changed slightly as there is now the following;

Grass Area now with two Trim Trails

Willows

Concrete Playground with games painted on.

Class Garden Area

 

Within my placement school there is a tremendous amount of evidence of sustainable development running throughout the whole school as the school are very proactive in their education on sustainable development. The school grounds are laid out very well for the children. Within the playground there is a large area of tarmac for the children to use to play on. There are several games painted on the tarmac: snakes and ladders, squares, shapes, numbers, alphabet games all to enhance outdoor learning as well as netball lines drawn. Also within the school grounds there are several green areas that the children can use to explore with their peers whilst playing and the teachers can take the children to for outdoor learning. There are two willows that are used for exploration and some children told me they sometimes go out there and sit to share their class news. The children have carried out mini beast projects and used the willow to compare the amount of mini beasts that were found there to an area on the tarmac. Furthermore the children have the opportunity to develop their physical skills as there are two trim trails one for the upper and one for the lower primaries. The children are allowed to play on the trim trails as long as there is a classroom assistant supervising. The school raised funds for the trim trails and the children were given an input in to which ones to select to buy thus giving the children a sense of responsibility and hopefully encouraging them to look after the trim trails.

 

I feel that these areas outside provide a significant aspect to the school day for the children as they can let themselves be free and explore on their own or with their peers, taking a break from academic work whilst having fun with a good large play area with differing textures and many activities to choose from.

 

The school grounds have a greenhouse made completely out of bottles and sticks reinforcing the importance of recycling and the use of recycling. Whilst asking the children about this they showed enthusiasm towards the greenhouse and spoke about it with pride. They explained to me that over a course of several weeks everyone had to bring in clean plastic bottles which were then all cut, holes put in and then several parents and children were given the task of building a plastic bottle greenhouse. This took a few days to build. The plastic bottle greenhouse is used to plant seedlings and bring them on to then be planted in each class garden or within the school grounds.

 

Keeping with the theme of growing the children grow things in their own class gardens. Each class is responsible and can grow whatever they want in their garden. Some classes grow vegetables, some have fruit trees near their garden and some grow flowers. The children told me that last year they made potato soup and the cooks used the apples to make apple crumble for dinner one day. The children seemed to have a sense of achievement when telling me this and I can see they were really proud of this and hopefully they will take this home and it will encourage their parents to grow things or hopefully foster a desire to do this when the children grow up.

 

 

As sustainable development is encouraged throughout the wholes school the children were eager to tell me about several of their committees and activities that “Save the planet.” Their eco committee has regular meetings and plan new ways of helping the school gain their green flag. The school have had their green flag for three years in a row but each year they have to be continually monitoring their activities, keep them going whilst possibly looking for new ideas. The children I spoke to were on the eco committee and were very enthusiastic to tell me all about it. They seemed to have a good grasp of the aims and how to keep the school running by recycling which is done using blue bags in each class for paper and the eco committee collect the bags, weigh them and empty them every week although the children did admit sometimes it can be over two weeks. The school also has large recycle bins outside, reinforcing to the children the importance of recycling and not waste. They also mentioned the food waste monitors in the dinner hall who check the children put the waste food in the correct bins. They were hoping to put a food waste bin in the staff room, as there are currently none available. Also the energy monitors who do spot checks that lights are switched off when no one is in a room and they note the electricity metre readings within the school. The committee also run an eco poster competition every year and an eco week throughout the school year to draw attention to and make children aware of how being an eco school is important.

 

 

Keeping the playground clean is another aspect that the children were proud to tell me about. The school have a litter committee that operate at lunch times, where the children go round the play ground and get rid of any litter within the area, putting it into recycle bins and making the playground clean and safe for the children. The litter pickers have tongs and wear aluminous vests. Every week they go around the classrooms letting the children know how much litter was collected hoping that the amount will be reducing in the long run as the children will be encouraged to put their litter in a bin.

 

I was am very impressed with the amount of sustainable development that goes on within my placement school and as the Government, (2013 p.4) states there should be a “whole school approach to learning for sustainability that is robust.” I would certainly say this is the case within the school. The children also love having roles and responsibilities that are important and make a difference to the school.