The overall aim of the Eco- Council is to help Woodlea develop as an Eco school and become environmentally friendly. It is a great opportunity for the children to become actively involved in the way the school is run.

The council benefits the whole school because it provides opportunities for pupils to communicate their feelings as well as influence decisions that are made.

Councillors develop skills such as confidence, communication and negotiation. It is the responsibility of each councillor to ensure that they express both their own views and the views of all the children from their class. 

Our Eco-Council representatives for 2023/24

Eco-Schools Green Flag
We have made the decision to work towards Eco-Schools Green flag Accreditation. Our eco members will work through the seven-step framework that has been designed to raise awareness of environmental issues whilst empowering our children to make a positive difference by taking lead on environmental actions and projects in school and our local community.

What happens at each step?

Step 1- Time to form an Eco-Committee

Step 2- Complete the Environmental Review

Step 3- Create and work on Action Plan

Step 4- Curriculum Links

Step 5- Informing and Involving

Step 6- Monitoring and Evaluation 

Step 7- Create an Eco-Code

Step 8- Green Flag Application Window Opens 

We had a visit from Louise who delivered a whole school assembly about the declining numbers of swifts, but more importantly she educated us in how we can help!  Our eco club has committed to raising money to support the valuable work that they do.  Woodlea will be installing several Swift boxes in spring 2024, they will be playing a call that attracts nesting birds, hopefully we will have our own chicks to watch fledge in the summer.  
For further information please visit www.actionforswifts.com or the RSPB. 

Our previous project

We enlisted the help and support of our school to collect a monumental amount of plastic bottle tops to create a recycled piece of art. It was a large job sorting all of the tops into colour and size, but thankfully the children at Woodea’s After School Club gave us some of their time to sort the bottle tops. We then arranged the tops onto the canvas to create our mosaic. 
 

it was lots of hard work from everyone involved and we’re very proud of how many bottle tops we saved from going to landfill. 

In the Spring term, we heard about Keep Britain Tidy's new campaign and decided to take part. We pledged 8 bags of rubbish that we had picked and tidied from around the school grounds to the #GreatBigSchoolClean on the 25th March. Our amazing Eco representatives have been going out with their litter pickers to fill our bags and keep our environment clean. We took part in Sarah Roberts's live stream and learnt all about why it is so important to pick up after ourselves because it takes a single piece of plastic up to 450 years to decompose. 

Also, we found out that litter can harm the animals around our environment when they get stuck or eat something they shouldn't. 

Our past projects

When we met in Autumn 1, we talked about what we could do as a school to reduce the amount of rubbish being sent to landfill. We realised that while plastic bottle tops can be recycled, many facilities don’t have the machinery to do so. This means that they end up going into landfill anyway. 
We decided to make it our effort to collect as many bottle tops as we could from all around school to be able to create a piece of art work that represents our school and our efforts to make our community green. We found some beautiful examples of recycled art that we are using as our inspiration.

We have welcomed some new neighbours to our field. Our #ecocommittee designed and built a #bughotel to help local insects and wildlife. We can’t wait to see who moves in 🐛! Our bug hotel has been built using recycled pieces of wood as we believe in reusing, reducing and recycling when we can. We understand how important to our environment mini beasts are. They are essential for pollinating our flowers and crops as well as providing a food source for local predators. Our bug hotel will provide a snug, safe place for insects to hibernate. It is full of dark crannnies and different structures, they brilliantly replicate the kind of features lots of mini beasts and other small animals look for in our gardens at home.