Eco School - Empowering Children and Teens to Improve Our Environment
Stone Hill School is a Green Flag Eco School. This means that we have an international accreditation which recognises, rewards and celebrates the environmental achievements of our young people.
Eco Schools is a charity passionate about engaging young people in environmental education and action. They do this by providing a simple, Seven Step framework that guides, empowers and motivates pupils to drive change and improve environmental awareness in their school, local community and beyond.
The Eco Schools Seven Step framework aims to place young people at the heart of environmental action and is the main reason why the Eco Schools programme is the largest educational programme in the world, as relevant today as it was when established in 1994. The Seven Step framework supports young people of all ages and abilities to work together to plan, deliver, monitor and evaluate environmental actions in their school. Participating in the programme:
Engages young people in important environmental issues.
Demonstrates to pupils that environmental actions can be enjoyable, social and rewarding.
Teaches responsibility and generates a sense of community.
Develops the skills and knowledge young people need to play an active role in protecting our environment now and throughout their lifetimes.
Empowers pupils with the belief that they can have a positive impact on our planet.
Enables schools to green their entire curriculum.
Independent research has also found that pupil participation in Eco Schools leads to: increased confidence, development of leadership skills, improved behaviour and greater motivation at school. It creates the next generation of innovative, inspirational environmentalists and tells local communities that a school, college or nursery is forward-thinking and actively engaged in protecting our planet.
Find out more – https://www.eco-schools.org.uk/
Seven Step Framework
The seven Eco Schools steps are designed to make environmental actions pupil-led. Working through each of the seven steps is designed to be done in a single academic year.
We have successfully achieved our first Green Flag Award by carrying out the following 7 steps:
Eco-Committee, the pupils and adults responsible for leading all things ‘Eco’.
Environmental Review, an annual review of our learning environment.
Action Plan, our plan for environmental actions in our school.
Curriculum Links, how environmental issues are taught across our curriculum.
Informing and Involving, including all pupils, staff members and our local community in our Eco Schools work.
Monitoring and Evaluation, measuring the impact of our projects from our Action Plan.
Eco-Code, a rallying call that everyone can get behind!
2023 – 2024 Eco Committee
Stone Hill School Eco Committee meet at least once every half term to talk about all things green. This is led with great enthusiasm by Miss Lea; our Eco Committee aims to develop environmental awareness across our school community and to care for and develop our local environment.
Lower School
J Rowe
J Krakowski
L Armstrong
C Moore
Staff
Mr Gallafent – Chair of the Governing Body
Miss Lea – Eco Schools Co-ordinator
Ms Chapman – Deputy Headteacher
Upper School
R Foster K Robinson-Steer
J Smith L Rollings
D Gervis B Vickers
A Moxon J Reed
C Deakin H McDonald
Please click here for our latest minutes
Environmental Review
The Eco-Committee must complete an Environmental Review covering the Eco Schools ten topics. We complete an Environmental Review every year.
Results of the review are discussed by the Eco-Committee and communicated with the whole school through assemblies and to our local community via SeeSaw and newsletters.
Action Plan 2022 - 2023
The Eco-Committee produces a detailed Action Plan each year.
The plan contains timescales, who is responsible and how eco work will be monitored and evaluated.
The Eco-Committee shares the Action Plan with the rest of the school and it is displayed on our Eco display.
Linking to the curriculum
Please click here, to see how Eco Schools is mapped across our curriculum.
Planet Potato Man is our Eco Mascot - designed by Max Brinkhurst.
The school completes in-depth work on at least three of the Eco Schools ten topics each year, one of which must be energy.
Project work 2021 - 2022:
The Great Green Read - 8th to 12th November 2021 (Waste)
Doncaster’s Great Green Read was a project from Doncaster Stories (National Literacy Trust).
The project helped pupils to explore environmental issues with virtual author visits, fun quizzes, activities and a free book for every child. The project also involved a creative competition and a Q&A with Ed Miliband with questions from children across Doncaster.
Every child in school received a copy of Protect the Planet by Dr. Jess French. In school we launched a creative competition, together with fun quizzes and activities so that everyone could explore and enjoy the book together.
Our pupils thoroughly enjoyed the creative challenge and were inspired to take action. Some of the projects created by our pupils included making animal house from recycled wood, creating a video about marine conservation, growing our own food and using this within our cooking lessons and making Christmas decorations from natural resources. Our winning project was created by 9LE, who used recycled denim and other fabrics to create Christmas wreaths and baubles. 9LE sold these items across the school community and donated all proceeds to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park- 9LE's chosen environmental charity.
Click here for more information.
Click here to view some photographs of us working on this project
IKEA Environmental School Project 2021 – 2022
IKEA have invited all schools across Doncaster to get involved in a project aimed at creating a better life for many people and the local community. The competition challenges schools to create an environmental/sustainability project in their school based on one of the following focus areas:
Biodiversity
Transport reduction
Energy reduction
Water saving
Waste reduction
Food saving
The budget is up to £2000 per school. IKEA will choose 3 finalists who will be invited to the IKEA site in Armthorpe to present their project in a “Dragon’s Den” style day for the selected school. Click here to see full details of the project.
Our Eco-Committee launched a challenge in school for each class to consider what our school project could be. Our pupils came up with some fantastic ideas, ranging from having indoor plants in all classrooms to installing electric vehicle charging stations in our school car park. The Eco-Committee to a vote and agreed upon the development of Animal Homes and Shelters, a project designed to help us attract more wildlife into our school grounds. Click here to see our submitted application.
Check back soon to find out how we are getting on with this project.
Operation Christmas Child 2021 - December 2021 (Global Citizenship)
As part of our learning about Global Citizenship, we took part in Operation Christmas Child 2021. Miss Eames enthusiastically coordinated this project, encouraging pupils and our wider school community to kindly donate small toys, hygiene items and school supplies that could be packed into shoeboxes and shipped to children around the world who have been affected by war, poverty, natural disaster, famine, and disease.
These gifts bring joy and happiness into children’s lives around the world each year, children who are often living in bleak and difficult circumstances. With the support of our school community we were able to fill 40 shoeboxes which have been shared with children around the world. Click here to find out more. This project has supported our pupils to understand what it means to be a global citizen; someone who is aware of and understands the wider world – and their place in it. At Stone Hill we support pupils to take an active role in their community and work with others to make our planet more peaceful, sustainable and fairer.
Click here to view some photographs of us working on this project.
Informing and involving
We have a prominent, designated and up-to-date Eco-Board detailing all our Eco-Schools work.
Our Eco-Committee communicate with school through assemblies, through class discussion and feedback and by sharing our eco-committee meeting minutes.
Our whole school has the opportunity to participate in Eco-Schools work throughout the curriculum. We will be having an Eco-Schools week later in this academic year.
Please click here for a presentation of school grounds
Monitoring and Evaluation
In order to achieve and maintain our internationally recognised Eco Schools Green Flag Award our Eco-Committee must:
Monitor and evaluate the success of projects in our Action Plan for our three chosen topic areas.
Communicate our monitoring and evaluation outcomes to the whole school and evidence of monitoring and evaluation must be displayed on our Eco-Board.
Here are some examples of our monitoring and evaluation evidence from previous years:
Litter – Community Litter Picks
Action:
Children participate in regular litter picks in the community working with partners from DMBC and other local special schools.
Impact and Evaluation:
Pupils complete regular litter picks within the school grounds and in the community. Pupils take photographs of the litter they have collected as evidence of their impact on the environment.
Click here to view litter collection.
Marine – Beach Clean-Up
Actions:
Children from across school visited Fitties Beach, Cleethorpes to take part in a beach clean-up. The event was organized in partnership with North East Lincolnshire Council.
Impact and Evaluation:
Children collected 4 bags of waste (black sacks) from the sea, beach and shore line within a 2-hour period. They took photographs as evidence of their efforts. These photographs were shared with all pupils during our Eco Week Celebration assembly to show the impact of their effort.
School Grounds – Children Improve School Grounds
Actions:
Children improve the school grounds by developing the outdoor learning area and outdoor kitchen.
Impact and Evaluation:
Pupils are enjoying using the new and improved outdoor learning area and outdoor kitchen to enhance their learning across the curriculum.
Eco-Code
The school has an agreed, adopted and displayed Eco-Code – click here to view our Eco Code.
The Eco-Code is displayed on the Eco-Schools notice board and in all classrooms.
The Eco-Code is known and understood by the majority of our pupils and staff.