Our Water Flag

Our Water Flag Blog

Green-Schools, known internationally as Eco-Schools, is an international environmental education programme, environmental management system and award scheme that promotes and acknowledges long-term, whole school action for the environment. Unlike a once-off project, it is a long-term programme that introduces participants (students, teachers, parents and the wider community) to the concept of an environmental management system.

Merlin Woods Primary School established it’s Green School Committee in 2011 and to date have successfully attained and maintained two green flags, one for ‘Litter and Waste’ and a second for ‘Energy’. The school is currently working on its third flag which is on the theme of ‘Water’. In order to achieve this flag we must continue to reduce our litter and waste, and keep our energy use down and now start to reduce the amount of water the school uses. We began working on the water theme in October 2016.

Green School’s Committee

In Merlin Woods Primary School the committee is made up of students from 2nd to 6th class. The children have been elected to the Green School’s Committee by their class teachers.  We are delighted to hear from the committee members in the classroom, telling us all about our water conservation ideas. The green team help to show the their classmates different jobs, and explain the action plan.  There are 12 students in total on the committee– 2 from each 5^th and 6^th class and one from 2nd, 3rd and 4th. We also established a sub-committee in each classroom. Their jobs are as follows:

• Energy Detectives
• Recycling Experts
• Water Wizards

Students from Junior Infants to 1^st class are not represented on the Green School’s Committee.  These students will be kept informed by their class teachers and by the children on the committee who will visit each class to pass on the necessary information e.g. our green school rules, surveys and competition details etc.

Our Work to Date

• Múinteoir Annmarie and Múinteoir Oonagh attended a teacher workshops run by An Taisce.
• We set up our Green School committee.
• We monitored and recorded the amount of water being used in the school by talking to Barry, our School Building Manager.
• BAM check for leaks in all school toilets every morning.
• The green school committee has highlighted on our map of the school anywhere water is being used.
• Maintain our Litter and Waste Flag - Reuse orange peel to make potpourri as a third class enterprise project.

• Our second class pupils entered an art competition being run by Galway City Council. The theme of the competition is Keep Galway Litter Free (Coinnigh Gaillimh Glan). Here are some of our entries.

• ·       Guest Speakers:We participated in two one hour workshops provided by Galway County Council. Lieze Fanning from Galway City Council and Sean Corrigan from Irish Water visited the children from 2nd, 4th and 5th class. The children learned all about their local treatment plant, water saving ideas and got to see some very interesting water based science experiments!

• ·       Spring Clean Day: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! 

• Fundamental to all our studies on water is an understanding of the water cycle.  This was the focus in all Geography classes in January 2017.

• We had a visit from the Inland Fisheries Board in May 2017, who taught 5^th class about the fish that live in Irish waters. The fifth class then created a project based on all the new information they obtained and put it on display for all the children in the school to visit!

• Múinteoir Karmel, Múinteoir Damien and a group of children from the older classes decided to brighten up our school by planting and maintaining our inside forest and outdoor gardens. Last year, they created a garden in the foyer of the school to bring a little bit of nature inside. They grew grass and tulips and watched ivy grow, and as the garden evolved, the response to it was very positive. This encouraged the school to enter the garden into Bloom 2017.

• They have also established a vegetable garden and the pupils from The Wise Oaks also help maintain.  They have planted many vegetables and flowers and are making sure they are watered to grow. Look how busy we've been working as a team to look after our garden! Our wonderful team effort has been commended for their effort. ‘Escape Into Nature’ from Merlin Woods Primary School, Doughiska has been created to look like a miniature forest walk.

• Lots of the classes completed excellent work about saving water, making fish, explorers who travelled on the water, the water cycle, science experiments with water and our first class even went on the Corrib Princess for their school tour!

·       We also invited guest speaker – Sean Corrigan again from Irish Water to help children write their own newspaper and create a video based on water conservation and what water means to us. We went to the council chamber in Galway City Hall to a reception to celebrate the launch of 'Slow the Flow e-Booket' on Wednesday the 8th of November 2017 at 4pm. This allowed us to inform the wider public of our water flag work.

Monitoring and Evaluating

Water theme:

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 Barry, our School Building Manager.

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

4.) The green schools committee are monitoring the schools water usage and publishing data on the number received. They are given the water meter rates by the school building manager and formulate graphs on the usage to be displayed on the schools notice board.

5.) 4th class completed a water quiz to assess their knowledge before we began working on our water flag last year. A follow up survey will be completed in June to assess children’s knowledge of water processes and actions.

Litter and Waste theme:

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 - we reused orange peel to make potpourri as a third class enterprise project.

2.) Our second class pupils 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!

3.) 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!

4.) 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 theme:

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.

We have made a list of tips and tricks for the people within our community.

Second Class Water Saving Tips

1. Have a shower instead of a bath.

2. Turn off your taps when cleaning your teeth.

3. Don't overfill the kettle.

4. Make sure that sprinklers spray onto garden beds only.

5. Fix taps when they are broken.

6. Collect rainwater.

7. Don't waste a lot of water.

8. Use more brick paving, less lawns and garden space.

9. Do not put too much tissues in the toilet.

10. Use a bucket when washing your car.

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.

We aim to continue to achieve this by our Green School 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.

While or Green code for the Water theme is:

Come on guys,

Be water wise!

Take the tip,

And stop the drip!

Turn it off all day and night,

Merlin Woods is water tight!

Upcoming Events

Our Walk for Water “Action Day” for school participation and awareness-raising. 

During our day of action, we want to raise awareness of water scarcity and show solidarity with children worldwide by walking a suitable distance carrying a certain amount of water. Safe drinking water and basic sanitation should be accessible to everyone. Women and children in countries around the world walk on average six km a day to access water which is often unclean or simply not there due to drought or abstraction. By walking for water we hope to fundraise for water projects and raise awareness. We have chosen our date, the 15th of November and invited the whole school to participate. We will be walking a suitable distance, based on the class level, around the pitches beside our school. We have promoted our walk on our notice board, during assemblies and in the school newsletter and we are hoping the day will be a great success.

Redo the Water Quiz from October to see if awareness has increased. 

Tuesday 15^th November: Invite parents into our school to show them our efforts to save water and inform them of all our water conservation tips.