The Eco Council is an ideal opportunity for our pupils to get more involved in the way Wychwood Primary School is run and help it to be environmentally friendly. At Wychwood, we believe that we all need to take responsibility for our own actions and have a sense of duty and care for the world in which we live and the Eco Council plays a key role in promoting and achieving this.
Who can be an eco councillor?
At the start of each school year, children who would like to be part of the Eco Council put together a short speech to inform their classmates of why they want to be a councillor and what they would like to achieve. Each class then holds a vote and then there will be one member to represent each class.
What do we do?
We start our first meeting in September by completing eco reviews which then inform the areas we would like to improve throughout the school year. This year, we are trying to improve biodiversity, litter and waste. The rest of the year is then spent working on introducing new initiatives or improving current ones to try and make our school as environmentally friendly as possible. We regularly film videos to raise awareness which are then shared in each class, we have run whole school days linked to a particular area of focus and we always try to promote making conscious choices in regards to the environment. See below for information about our previous meetings and what took place.
Meeting 29.9.22
We had our first Eco Council meeting of the year today. We went around the group and each of us shared why we wanted to be an Eco Councillor. We then discussed ideas and plans for the upcoming year. We also reminded ourselves about our Eco Award boxes that were launched last year and went back to our classes to tell our friends about the different ways they could earn an Eco Award.
Meeting 3.11.22
Today we met to discuss our annual review. We do this each year so we are continually reflecting on our provision and seeing if we can make any improvements to be more eco-friendly. Each class completes one section of the review and it covers a wide range of topics such as litter, transport, waste and bio-diversity. Our next eco meeting will be to look at forming an action plan depending on the outcomes of the reviews.
Meeting 12.1.23
Today we met to plan our assembly which will be on how to save energy at home and at school. We shared ideas on different energy saving tips and planned which parts everyone would like to speak about at the assembly. We also spoke about the launch of our new permanent book swap as our reading shed has arrived. The Y6 Eco Council members wrote some information for the newsletter and once we have collected enough donations, we will be able to open our book swap area.
Meeting 19.1.23
We practised our assembly and made sure all key points were included. We talked about putting a reminder in the newsletter for more books so we can get our book swap area up and running.
Meeting 23.2.23
We decided to have a competition over the Easter holidays about who can go the longest using no electricity. We are going to have an assembly to launch this just before the holidays as well as using this as time to promote our Clothes Swap. We did a poll about which classes had indoor plants/outdoor planters/bird feeders and will make sure every class has access to these. We also talked about our school grounds and decided KS2 will work with Mrs Lerwill to trim the Willow Domes and FSU/KS1 will work with Miss Sleight to do a litter pick across the school grounds.