Green School
CONGRATULATIONS!
Monday the 19th of May was a very exciting day for our school. We were awarded our second Green School Flag. The ceremony took place in Croke Park Conference Centre. Ms.Farrelly, our Green School Co-ordinator and three students from our Green School Committee were chosen to represent the school at the ceremony. We were one of ninteen schools from County Wicklow to receive a flag on the day.
The Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, made a speech and awarded each school their flag and a framed letter of congratulations. The Minister commended the pupils and staff of the schools for their achievements. “Attempting to reach the standards necessary to be awarded the green flag is a significant undertaking.” he said. “I am delighted to see young people like you doing a very important job in helping to make our environment as clean and healthy as possible. With all your good work on litter, waste, energy and water you are creating an improved environment for everyone and are helping in the fight against climate change.” Minister Gormley added.
Our photos show the flag being presented to our students by the minister along with representatives from Repak and An Taisce. The second photo shows the three girls arriving back at school with the flag-a very proud moment!
Our Green School Committee 
Two members of each of the 18 classes from first to sixth are elected in September of each year by their classmates. Because our classes are re-grouped annually, it is necessary to elect a new committee. This also gives an opportunity for new people to spread the green gospel each year. They not only do green school tasks, such as emptying and washing compost bins and monitoring all bins, but they are also responsible for informing their classmates about green school initiatives each month.
We have 4 teachers (Ms. Dagg, Ms.Farrelly ,Ms .Lyons and Mrs. Hassell) and 2 parents (Helen Rafferty and Siobhan Robinson ) on the committee. One parent is also on the Parents Association Committee and informs them of Green School initiatives.
Green School News 08-09
This was a very busy year for us because we are not only have we beenworking our way through the programme on energy conservation for our second green school flag but we are also applied in April to retain our green school flag based on reducing litter and waste.
We did an audit of the school grounds in November and we set 2 new goals: to reduce the amount of chewing gum being thrown near the entrance of the school and to find some gardeners who might have some free time once a week to supervise us while we maintain the vegetable plot and the flower beds. Any takers? If you would like to help us improve our gardening skills, please contact Ms. Farrelly in the school.
We also checked our bins and found that we are still putting plastic in our waste bins when we should be putting it in our recycling bins! We are still wasting too much electricity on hand driers and too many paper towels. So another goal is to have everybody bring in a face cloth which can be used as a hand towel. We will be making graphs to show how much we have reduced our waste over the year.
We have been very busy saving energy too. We turn off lights and close doors as often as possible. Mr. O’Doherty has installed special reflective panels behind all the radiators to reduce heat loss and lower our energy bills.
We are having fun doing experiments about energy e.g. exploding volcanoes and rocket balloon races. We recently had a science and energy day in school demonstrating different experiments. We hope that by learning more about energy, we can learn how to conserve it and help our planet.
If you want to save energy too, you can check out websites like www.sei.ie or www.powerofone.ie.
Our Trip to the Recycling Centre
The girls from Ms. Farrelly’s class, Ms. Flanagan’s class and the Green School Committee recently went on a trip to the recycling centre on Boghall Road in Bray. Please read Shauna’s account of the trip below.
Our class went to the recycling centre on Tuesday the 24 of February. First a lady talked to us about fossil fuels, things we can do to help the environment and much more. After that we played a game. We got into teams and took turns standing on the mat, almost like a counter! Not long after that we did four different experiments. My favourite experiment was where you mixed vinegar and baking soda together in a bottle and put a balloon at the top. Give it a shake a you will notice that the balloon is growing bigger! Before we left the recycling centre each of us were given a box of colouring pencils (the box was a mobile phone) and a leaflet full of advice for travelling to school. This was probably the best tour I have had so far!
By Shauna Galligan
