Our school vision for climate education:
Directly linked to our Church School Ethos, we educate pupils to see the awe and wonder in the world around us daily. Through the education we provide our children, we hope to inspire in our pupils a life-long passion and ambition to improve our environment, to work to reverse climate change and to take care and responsibility for their own actions.
Actions we are taking as a school to achieve this:
Environmental Action at St Catherine’s
At St Catherine’s, we are busy working on projects focused on environmental issues. We have a pupil Environmental Focus Group who have created litter picking teams, planted trees, set up composting projects and organised ‘bike to school’ weeks and scooter workshops. Their most exciting project, however, is Bee Keeping. After winning the Cornwall Association of Primary Heads (CAPH) ‘Think Big’ competition, with their Bee Project proposal, two of our staff team – Nursery Manager Heather Bishop and School Secretary Jo Parish – have become trained bee keepers. The Bee Team have been busy fundraising for further equipment by creating beautiful bees’ wax wraps to sell which are great for the environment too! We began our bee keeping club here at St Cath’s in late spring and our wonderful bees produced over 100 jars of honey! Now the pupils are training to gain their bee-keeping certificates. The group are now looking at our sustainability plans considering what they can do in school and beyond.
Climate Action Day January 2023
St Catherine’s C of E School are passionate about caring for the environment and education their pupils all about climate change, environmental issues and encouraging climate action. As a part of that commitment a CLIMATE ACTION DAY was held on Friday 20th. The focus of the day was re-wilding. During the day the children took part in a variety of workshops across the extensive outside grounds of the school.
Activities including learning about ‘REDUCE/REUSE/RECYCLE’…the teacher gave each team a picture or object & we had to run & choose the right category to put it in. Lots of interesting conversations- do you all reuse your cardboard? Does your post come by email rather than on paper? What do we do with our clothes when they’re worn out and food when we’re finished? The children were asked in the morning to keep all their rubbish from snack and lunch time. They then sorted it out into what could be recycled and what could be composted. There were quite a few crisp packets…can these be recycled? The children talked about how we could reduce waste, what could we do as a school?
Later the children made plant pots, using old wellies to plant herbs & wildflowers…a good start to rewilding! They learnt how to use newspaper as an environmentally good way to plant bulb- planting in newspaper than will disintegrate into the soil and provide nutrients into the ground. They also learnt about how rubbish and waste impacts on wildlife. The children made Tippy Taps while learning about water conservation and global water shortages for drinking and washing. Some groups made bird feeders using twigs, garden twine, lard and bird seeds. A simple and effective way to ensure the birds get some food in the cold months! They also created leaf habitats in the trees for animals.
The last part of the day saw the children being citizen scientists. Firstly, discussing our planet has a whole and talked about our oceans, countries and continents. How can we be a citizen scientist? An example, we talked about is the Birdwatchs run by RSPB, collecting information and then storing the data. The children had a go at bird watching as it is Bird Watch Month! The children learnt that an important aspect of being a citizen scientist is communicating and listening. They finished the day making a wooden circle pledge about what their school and they individually would like to try and reduce.