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.

Travel Facts

Travel Facts - Did you know: 

Half an hour of walking every day has been proven to enhance fitness and health.

The trip to school is one of the few opportunities for children to explore new areas independently.

Average walking speed is 3 to 4 km/h for children.

Children are part of the most mobile population group. They cover the largest distances per day on average.

Up to 10 bicycles fit into one car parking space.

2/3 of all urban car trips cover a distance of less than 5 km and could easily be replaced by the bicycle.

It doesn’t rain as much as people sometimes think; it only rains 6% to 10% of the time, mainly during the night.

Cycle pooling for school children is not only a healthy alternative to using the car, but is also fun.

Cycling is fun and helps users to explore their local surroundings.

Public transport, when used frequently, produces less emissions and consumes less energy and space, than cars.

Public means of transport are much cheaper compared to the total costs of a car.

With public transport you can do other things during the trip, like reading, watching a movie, playing a game, text messaging or talking to friends and/or fellow passengers.

Half of all car journeys are less than 3 km.

On average, 42 minutes per day are spent on driving children to different destinations by car.

  

Only children who regularly walk/cycle to school on their own gain the necessary road safety skills.

Most children involved in car traffic accidents are up to the age of 10 years.

Environmental Review

Step 2: Environment Review

We took an initial survey in October 2018 when we began our work on the travel flag. We took another travel survey in February 2019 as part of the Big Travel Challenge. This survey measured how many children walked to school for 10 consecutive days. In December 2019, we took a random, one day survey, to check in and see how well we were doing walking to school for our second year working on the Travel theme. We participated in the Big Travel Challenge again this year and choose walking as our sustainable travel method to compare our surveys and analyse our results.

Green Schools Committee

Step 1: Green School's Committee

Merlin Woods Primary School established it’s Green School Committee in 2011 and to date have successfully attained and maintained three green flags, one for ‘Litter and Waste’, a second for ‘Energy’ and a third for ‘Water’. The school is currently working on its fourth flag which is on the theme of ‘Travel’. In order to achieve this flag we must continue to reduce our litter and waste, keep our energy use down, continue to reduce the amount of water the school uses and raise awareness of transport issues in our community. We began working on the travel theme in October 2018.

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 their green travel ideas. The green team help to show the their classmates different jobs, and explain the action plan.  There are 10 students in total on the committee– 2 from each class level. We also established a sub-committee in each classroom. Their jobs are as follows:

• Energy Detectives
• Recycling Experts
• Water Wizards
• Travel Agents

Students from Junior Infants to 1st 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 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.