Green Flag Award

Congratulations to our Green Schools Committee on being awarded the school’s fourth Green Flag! This award was for the pupils’ hard work on promoting sustainable travel in our school environment. Everyone is immensely proud of our Green School Committee and the tremendous work that the Committee and wider school community have done to achieve this flag! The school’s previous three flags were for reducing Litter and Waste, conserving Energy and saving Water for the school community.

An Taisce’s Green Schools Evaluation Committee, was extremely impressed with our Green Programme on Travel. Congratulations to our Green Committee and to Múinteoir Oonagh and Múinteoir Laura, our Green School co-ordinators, who worked so hard during the year. Our success is due to the great co-operation of pupils, parents and staff who took on board a Green and Eco-friendly way of travelling to school.

Unfortunately, due the current situation, An Taisce are not in a position to hold a Green-Schools Awards Ceremonies this year. As soon as the schools re-open they will ensure we receive our Green Flag and certificate and hope that we can celebrate with a flag raising in our own school when possible.

Congratulations again everyone! 😃😃👏👏

Monitoring and Evaluating

Step 4: Monitoring and Evaluating

Litter and Water Flag: 

1.The previous themes have been monitored and were focused on heavily in the first year of the theme and first few weeks after holidays in September, November and January. To help maintain our Litter and Waste Flag: every class, from first upwards entered an art competition being run by Galway City Council. The theme of the competition is Keep Galway Litter Free (Coinnigh Gaillimh Glan). Some of our entries even made it onto the calendar!

2.We organized a whole school spring clean day.  We took advantage of the fine weather and headed out to clean up our local area in Doughiska. We all put on our gloves and brought a bag with us to put the rubbish into. Some of the locals we met thanked us as we cleaned the skatepark and the tennis court. We had great fun cleaning our local area and were very proud to see the area so clean when we had finished!

3.Junior and Senior infants reuse paper from the photocopier and old worksheets during Aistear time for the writing table. During aistear time the children are encouraged to make things from recycled materials for the junk art station. We are still working on our litter and waste and energy theme.  We have a recycling centre in the school to recycle: Mobile phones & Batteries.

Energy Flag: 

We are very proud to be flying our second green flag (energy). In order to achieve this award we have been:

1. Turning off lights when not needed.

2. Closing doors to keep the heat in.

3. Turning off interactive boards.

4. Curriculum work in the classroom

5. Energy monitors in every classroom. 

Water Flag: 

1. Each class has a “Water Wizard” to monitor running taps, watch water usage and ensure that taps are switched off after school.

2. We monitored and recorded the amount of water being used in the school by talking to Lucia, our School Building Manager.

3. BAM check for leaks in all school toilets every morning.

4.We introduced a new water filter in school so children can bring reusable containers and reduce the number of plastic bottles we use in the school. 

Curriculum Work

Step 5: Curriculum Work

The boys and girls in Merlin Woods Primary School have been busy learning about the things we can do to protect the earth and to make it a cleaner and safer place for us to live.

All classes have learned about the things we can do to reduce, recycle and reuse waste materials. In Junior and Senior Infants the children reuse empty boxes and cartons on a daily basis to create pieces of art. The children enjoy using their imaginations to create pieces of art with empty boxes they have brought in from home.

All classes in the school participated in the Food Dudes Programme at the beginning of this year. Eating more fresh fruit and vegetables every day is an important part of sustainable living.  The children learned about the benefits of eating fruit and vegetables over processed packaged food items.

Múinteoir Eimear’s First Class learned about the benefits of walking to school for their health and for the environment. The children have made a special effort to increase their daily step count by walking to school.

Our senior classes completed comprehensions and small projects learning about how modern life is impacting and affecting climate change. The children learned the negative impact of air and water pollution on our world and the world we share with other animals. The children in Fourth Class learned about the forest fires in Australia and how it impacted on human and animal life there.

Informing and Involving

Step 6: Informing and Involving 

Our Green Schools Committee were hugely involved in promoting ‘walking to school’ as method to travel to school among our staff community including informing teachers, parents and students. Our Green Schools Committee made announcements on the school intercom to inform others of the BIG TRAVEL Challenge and reminded classes to make special efforts to walk to school. They made announcements in school assemblies telling the children about our Action Day activities of ‘The Walking Bus’ and poster competition. We also use letters and newsletters to inform parents of Green Schools Activities throughout the school year, sometimes asking parents for support to participate in activities i.e. Walking Bus, Spring Clean and sending recyclable materials into school for art . The whole school community is also informed of Green School Activities through constant updates on our Green Schools noticeboard in the school corridor and through updates in the school website.

Our Green School Committee are actively involved in encouraging their peers to be environmentally aware. They are highly motivated and eager to make a difference. Their enthusiasm for making a real change to protect our environment was evident on the day they spoke to Hildegarde Naughton (TD) about the things they would like to see our government doing to promote sustainable living to our nation.

Travel Action Plan

Step 3: Action Plan

Fundamental to all our studies on Sustainable Travel  is an understanding of ways for pupils, staff and local government to work together to raise awareness of transport issues and come up with practical solutions that will make a real difference to pupils’ everyday lives. Take a look at some of the activities we have been up to!

Our Aims:

• We want to reduced levels of unhealthy weight through encouraging healthy active lifestyles.
• We need further reductions in the number of deaths through safer roads.
• It’s important to us that we have a cleaner and greener county with a reduced carbon footprint.
• We want a transport network which enables reasonable and predictable journey times with reduced congestion and reliable passenger transport services. Appropriate capacity for business and economic growth.

Green Code

Step 7: Green Code

We the staff and students of Merlin Woods Primary School are dedicated to creating a clean, healthy and pleasant school environment. We feel it is important for the school community to have an awareness and understanding of the effects of their actions upon the environment in which they live and work.

Our Code:

1. Continue all recycling and composting.
2. Walk, cycle, scoot or take the bus to school.
3. Exercise and eat healthily.
4. Use water sparingly.
5. Don’t waste food.
6. Switch off lights and electrical equipment when they’re not needed
7. Keep doors and windows closed when the heating is on.
8. Respect the plants and animals on our school grounds.

Our Travel Green Code: 

Keep it Green, Park the Machine!

Travel Tips for Parents

Travel Tips for Parents

Use public transport where possible.

Do your part for our environment.

Have respect for our Earth.

Be aware of your carbon footprint.

Do random acts of earth kindness.

Avoid the plane and take the train.

Talk about sustainable travel.

Pick up litter on your travels.

Spend time in nature.