Otley All Saints CE Primary School Blog

For the past three years, everyone at Otley All Saints has been making a determined effort to ensure that our school is run in an environmentally sustainable manner. In particular, we have been closely monitoring our energy consumption; trying to reduce our waste through recycling and composting; and improving our grounds so that the land is friendly to children ….. and wildlife! 

Last week we were delighted to hear that our application for a ‘Green Flag’ Award from Eco Schools had been successful.

Here is a photograph of the eco team proudly displaying our wonderful green flag in today’s assembly.

http://www.eco-schools.org.uk/

Do you know what phenology means?

Thanks to ‘The Great Plant Hunt’ team, Year 5 now know that it is the study of seasonal timings of the life cycle events of plants and animals. 

Together with primary children from across the UK, we are participating in a mass observation of flowering times of ten species of common wild flowers.

The Great Plant Hunt have provided us with some brilliant resources like this plant indentikit.

A Year 5 ‘Plant Hunter’ at work!

http://www.greatplanthunt.org/home

In Year 4, we have been continuing our look at local habitats. Children were out and about studying minibeasts (making sure to treat them respectfully and put them back into their undisturbed habitats).

In year 4 today we have been habitat detectives. When we found an area which was abundant with life, we investigated what kind of conditions the creatures seemed to like.

The easiest place to find a great deal of biodiversity was in our wonderful habitat pile. Inside the pile, we measured such conditions as light, temperature, noise and moisture. We found that minbeasts in our school grounds tend to like reasonably dry, cool, dark quiet places to live.

Here we are measuring some of the conditions in and around our habitat pile:

Alongside schools and community organisations  throughout the UK,  members of  Otley All Saints Eco Team joined ‘The Big Tidy Up’.

 Although the event focused on 23rd April, St George’s Day, many groups have been out and about in their local community ahead of the day!  As Nature Club had recently checked out our school grounds for unwanted litter, we decided to concentrate our efforts on some of the pathways nearby.

Here is a photograph of the team in action.

Sadly, by the end of our tidy up, our bag was quite full of items such as discarded wrappers, juice containers and cigarette packets!

More information can be found from the following link:

http://www.thebigtidyup.org/default.aspx

Well done to our Eco Team for taking the lead on raising awareness – and cleaning up!

As part of our topic we designed and made our own salads.We started by taste testing various salad items to decide which ones we would like to include,and made a chart of the different texures,tastes and colours of each item.Then we designed a plan of how we would like our salad to look and gave it a name.(All Saints Salad seemed to be a popular one!!)We had allsorts of designs from dogs to dinosaurs.Finally we made up our salads and enjoyed eating them.YUM!!!

Satisfied customers!!

Year One have been investigating around the school grounds to find different signs of spring .They found daffodils,snowdrops and crocuses as well as lots of new shoots and buds on the trees and bushes.

Here is our display showing the signs of spring that we found.

As well as being plant detectives,Gus’ mum brought us some packets of wildflower seeds,which the children will be bringing home at the end of our topic.We wrote letters to Nature Club asking them where they would like us to plant them.They sent us a reply suggesting where the best places would be to plant and how wonderful it would be to attract more bees and wildlife.With Mrs Raw’s help the children dug over and raked the ground before planting.

Jemma and Mollie planting around the school fence.

Matthew and Gus sowing seeds around the wildlife area and the pond.

Our wildflower growers!

Almscliffe team explored life at the ocean’s edge during our  ’Creative Day’ about oceans. We found out about the amazing adaptations plants and animals have, that allow them to survive both in and out of the water. Then we devised a range of poems, played some games and created our very own sea shore habitat.

 Here we are, proudly displaying the team’s home grown rockpool.

Which earlier in the day looked like this ……

The children came up with some brilliant ideas for constructing plants and animals from scraps of material, rafia and paper.

 A special thanks to Year 5 members of Almscliffe, who constructed the rockpool ahead of the day from a range of junk materials.

 

Ably assisted by Mrs Rose!

Groundwork recently supplied us with an exciting ’box of tricks’ which included a fun game and some more serious energy monitors.

 The latter, will allow us to monitor which appliances in school use a lot of electricity and then to consider which should be put on timers, (or even better, switched off!), to further reduce our consumption of electricity.

The wind up game required a steady hand

Reading the monitor was quite tricky, but it did provide some useful information about electricity consumption and carbon emissions.

Our fantastic plant display in our classroom. A variety of flowering plants and vegetable tops!

The children are taking great care in watering the plants and keeping them healthy.