What is Eco-Schools?

The Eco-Schools programme is designed to be pupil-led, every day the Eco-Schools team have the privilege to learn about impactful environmental actions that have been completed by forward-thinking and innovative young people.

Eco-Schools Intent statement

West Town Lane Academy believes that we play a vital role in developing an awareness and passion for the importance of our local and global environment. Our children are educated about changes and challenges to our environment, which impact on our everyday lives.

We aim to empower our children to work towards a more sustainable lifestyle and help educate them about the importance of being responsible, respectful citizens. Our children receive a broad and balanced curriculum. In subjects, such as Science, Geography, PSHE and Forest Schools, our children are taught the importance of sustaining our world and being aware of the important role which each one of us plays in it.

As a developing Eco-School, our intent is to be part of a growing global movement that seeks to nurture knowledge, curiosity, questioning, critical thinking, researching, investigating, empathizing, creativity and kindness through our adventurous curriculum and extra-curricular activities. This in turn will support the children with understanding, questioning and reflecting upon information given, improving and enriching their individual contributions, and those of their families and school community, towards achieving and creating a better environmental future for their local and global environment. We aim to continuously endeavour to become an eco-friendly school that supports an enhanced and healthier world, by empowering children to become young, determined leaders in promoting and encouraging environmental awareness.

Eco-Schools Implementation Statement

We aim to achieve this by:

• Holding regular Eco Schools meetings with the Eco Warriors, where the ideas of the Eco Warriors and the children which they represent, are considered, discussed and acted upon, where possible.

• Regularly keeping the school grounds clear of litter. We will create a weekly litter picking rota and the Eco Warriors will implement the ‘Loud on Litter’ Scheme and focus on key areas within the school grounds, where litter may be an issue. We will liaise with parents, who already run monthly ‘litter picking’ within our local community, and also with the ‘Whitchurch Wombles’, who work in the local and wider community. Ensuring that our children, their families, the school community and the local community are working together, towards creating a better environmental future and global environment, and environmental awareness.

• Monitoring the waste created within the school.Our Eco Warriors will use Eco Stickers to improve the awareness of, and use of, recycling at playtimes and lunchtimes. They will spend time near our bins and recycling points, supporting children with recycling more efficiently. Our Eco Warriors will speak to the whole school during assembly times, to raise our awareness of the importance of recycling when trying to reduce waste. We will liaise with our school caretaker about the recycling which takes place within the school, and how we can contribute to the success of this.This will enable us to develop our awareness of the importance of a sustainable lifestyle and help educate our school about the importance of being responsible, respectful citizens.

• Developing an awareness of the importance of caring for plants and trees, and the role that plants and trees play in a healthy eco system and environment for us all, whilst also improving our understanding about what plants need to be healthy and thrive. Each class will have an indoor plant, which they will take responsibility for, whilst ensuring that our children are taught the importance of sustaining our world, and being aware of the important role which each one of us plays in it.

Eco-Schools Impact Statement

The impact of this will be:

• Empowering our children and school community with their opportunity to play a vital role, in developing an awareness and passion for the importance of our school, local and global environment, through the sharing of their knowledge, ideas and experiences.

• Contributing to the further improvement and presentation of our school grounds, through the reduction of litter on our site.

• Links built with our school community and local community, with regards to awareness of how we can help to reduce litter beyond our school site, and contribute to an improved environment for all.

• Improved recycling, and awareness of the importance of recycling, for our children and school community.

• Children in all classes will have a role in the care of their class plant, and the trees and plants in our school grounds. This will lead to a greater awareness and empathy of the vital role that plants and trees play in a healthy Eco system and environment for us all, whilst also improving our understanding about what plants need to be healthy and thrive.

Meet our Eco-Warriors

The Eco-Warriors are a group of children, from Year 3 to Year 6, who are passionate and care deeply about environmental issues and have a strong desire to actively protect our planet.

Our Eco-Warriors this year 2023-2024 are... 

Year 3 - 

Year 3 Eco Warriors – Seth, Isabella, Isla

Year 4 -

Year 4 Eco-Warriors – Mollie, Sophie, Milo, Iris

Year 5 -

Year 5 Eco Warriors – Maksim, Sylvie, Robert

Year 6 - 

Year 6 Eco-Warriors – Leo, Jack, Alice, Alice

We have created an Eco-Code, which illustrates the importance of protecting our environment, as a team of Eco Warriors, and also as a whole school community.

Our Eco Code 

Our school is committed to improving our environment.

Using our school grounds to increase and encourage wildlife, is a focus for us this year. 

Realising the importance of biodiversity, we hope to improve our school grounds, with bird boxes and new plants and flowers.

Every person at school can help to protect and improve their local and wider environment, by putting litter into the correct bin.

Children and adults will work together to help raise awareness of protecting and improving the eco-systems in our school pond.

One of our focuses this year is marine life and how we can protect and conserve our water-based eco-systems.

Sharing our school grounds with our local community, and developing the opportunities to work together to protect and improve our environment, will develop our learning and understanding.

Choosing outdoor learning opportunities, such as gardening, and using our outdoor resources and school grounds when learning, help us to understand our environment much better. 

How can we improve our school grounds and environment? Do you have ideas to share with us? We would love to hear them.

Our school and local environment is very important to us and we will work together this year to research and discuss our ideas, so that we can take positive action to improve our environment.

Our focus on litter will continue, with litter picks and recycling awareness.

Learning from and alongside our environment, will help us to understand how to support it today, tomorrow and in the future.

Let's do this together :)

 Marine

Aim

To raise awareness of protecting and conserving our water-based eco-systems.

Action

- Eco Warriors to create a display to highlight how single-use plastics can harm marine life.

- Discuss environmentally friendly cleaning products being used and whether we can make some changes.

-Re-oxygenating and cleaning out the school pond. Fish to be added along with oxygenating plants and a waterfall, once the pond has been cleaned. Visual resources to be added to the pond area . Pond to be used as a resource to support teaching and learning for all classes.

School grounds

To increase outdoor learning through gardening opportunities.

Eco Schools 2023-2024

In Term 1, our Year 6 Eco Warriors completed an Environmental Review of our school. They visited many different members of staff and discovered our areas of weaknesses that we will work to improve on this year.

As part of our work on Biodiversity and encouraging wildlife to our school grounds, Year 4 have designed and made bird feeders, during their Design and Technology lessons in Term 2. We look forward to seeing lots of birds in our grounds, as we also install the new bird boxes over the coming months.

Bear and his brother Lynx have shown great initiative and a super commitment to protecting our environment when they decided to spend time on their weekend collecting litter! Wow, well done boys :) February 2024.

Spring Photography Competition (Easter 2024)

During the Easter Holiday the children were given the challenge of taking a photograph which represents the season of Spring. It could be a photo of an animal in a farm or in the wild, a seasonal plant/flower, a beautiful landscape etc.

We received so many wonderful entries and Mr Robbins will be announcing the winners very shortly in the April/May Newsletter.

Here are a few examples of the amazing entries which we had...

New things happening in Spring 2024

Spring 2024 is going to be an exciting time at West Town Lane Academy with the introduction of new gardening opportunities with a Gardening Club, a new Garden Area, the installation of bird boxes to accompany our bat box and the opportunity to use our newly renovated and re-oxygenated school pond during our teaching and learning!

We will also be running some exciting competitions to support our work on Bio-diversity and encouraging wildlife into our school grounds.

Watch this space to find out more!!

Surveying our grounds and installing bird boxes

Our Eco Warriors conducted a survey of our school grounds, to decide what would be the best locations to put our new bird boxes...

The bird boxes have now all been installed ready to provide a home for some of the birds that use our school grounds.

Design a Wildlife Garden Competition April 2024

The Eco Warriors are running an exciting competition for the whole school...

The would like you to 'Design a Wildlife Garden'. 

This competition is being held to support our focus on bio-diversity, which is part of our Eco-Schools Action Plan for this year.

Your wildlife garden design needs to be completed on A4 paper and handed to your teacher by 10th May 2024.

The Eco Warriors will choose four winners from the entries they receive. Those children will receive a bird box to use in their own garden at home.

Good Luck!!

Checking the grounds for litter after the Easter holiday

The Eco Warriors did a litter pick on Tuesday 16th April 2024 to collect any rubbish that had found its way on to our school grounds during the Easter holiday.

Thank you to them for making sure that our school grounds are litter free and a great place for our whole school community to thrive.

The Eco Warriors have been busy making bird feeders using recyclable bottles. These will be hung around our school ground to encourage birds and other wildlife to use our grounds with us.

Check out our school Facebook Page to see the feeders we made.

Earth Day 

On Monday 22nd April 2024 it was Earth Day. To celebrate this the whole school took part in an assembly hosted by Mrs Franklin.

Miss Davies, our Geography Coordinator, organised a Rubbish Treasure Hunt, as a homework opportunity for children to take part in. Children were challenged to see which class member could collect the most rubbish!

We look forward to seeing who our top treasure hunters were!!

Eco-Schools 2022-2023

Look at all of the wonderful things that our school community achieved in 2022-2023.

Get Loud on Litter!

Get Loud on Litter is a new Eco-Schools project which encourages young people to raise awareness about the impacts of litter on their school, local community and wildlife! It is a positive, fun and proactive project that is perfect for Eco-Committees considering tackling litter this year!

This is something which our new Eco-Schools Committee will be taking part in this year. Watch this space to find out more...

We already have two children in Year 3 who have made a really positive impact on our school, by removing some of the litter they found, before school started this week!!

Thank you!

Thank you to our Year 4 Eco-Warriors, for spending their lunchtime, making our school grounds a cleaner and safer place to play. 
 

Amazing Litter Picking Parents

We have some wonderful families at West Town Lane Academy that have arranged a litter pick around the perimeter of the school and the underpass of Callington Road. The next litter pick will be on Thursday the 6th October and will continue each first and third Thursday of the month.

If anyone is able to help with this wonderful cause, please meet outside of the school office, straight after school drop off, at 9.10 a.m.

Thank you from all of the West Town Lane Academy community :)

Well done to Beatrix and Zahra in 3DS, for caring so much about our school environment. Pictured here with the bag of litter which they collected in our school grounds.

Working together to help protect our environment

We are very proud to be a Rights Respecting School, and have an amazing Rights Action Group. During the year this group participate in and organize a range of activities to fit in with our ethos at WTLA, providing children with a breadth of learning and experience, and setting high expectations. Often the RAG team, the Eco Schools team and the Healthy Schools team work together in order to achieve this.

Our school environment, and keeping it free from litter, is very important to us. On Tuesday 24th January 2023 the RAG arranged a litter pick in our school grounds. Here are some photographs showing some of our amazing RAG members improving our school environment...

Our Year 5 Eco Warrior Alice has been working with the other Eco Warriors to improve the awareness of recycling at break time and lunch time. The Eco Warriors are positioning themselves near to the recycling bins, supporting children with recycling more efficiently.

These children have been awarded an Eco Sticker, by an Eco Warrior, for correctly recycling their rubbish at lunch time.

Well done to Harriet (5TC), Ernie (5D), Jacob (5D), Cruiz (5D), Jack (5D), Olivia (4JW), Oliver (3H), Ellis (3H) and Emi.

Here is a copy of our Eco Schools Rota, which shows when the Eco Warriors in KS2 will be litter picking and conducting recycling/environmental awareness monitoring and talks, with sticker awards...

Our new Eco School initiatives for 2023

The Eco Warriors are going to be working on lots of new initiatives in 2023, to help raise awareness of the  importance of protecting our school, local and wider environment.

We have been thinking about the importance of protecting and caring for trees and plants, and have decided that it would be a great opportunity for hands on learning and awareness, if each class had their own class house plant to care for and support to grow.

One of our Eco Warriors, Alice, is shown here in this photograph, with the survey which the Eco Warriors have completed, to see which classes currently have a house plant.

Our next step is to think about how we may raise the money to make this a possibility :)

Watch this space for further updates...

Spider Plants and West Town Lane Academy

Spider plants are becoming very popular at our school. Following on from our Eco Warriors meeting on the 1st February 2023, our Eco Warriors have been discussing our new 'Class Plant' initiative with their classes. As a result of this spider plants are being brought to school by some pupils, to live within their classroom.

Faye in 5TC has brought this house plant to school, to replace the one in 5TC, which died recently. Thank you Faye :) 

Miss Jones' wonderful friend donated these spider plants to our school. We will be taking care of them and helping them to grow and thrive. These plants will be used to support our Science in Terms 5 and 6, in Year 5.

We now have some wonderful Aloe Vera plants which have been donated by Miss Jones' friend. We are so grateful that they are sharing these amazing plants with us, and the children of West Town Lane Academy.

A new Class Plant for every class

Every class has been given a new class plant today. These plants have kindly been donated by Friends of School. We are very grateful for their support to ensure that our children are able to learn about what plants need to grow and thrive in their environment.

Here are some of the children from 5W and 4W with their new class plant...

We look forward to seeing lots of other pictures, of other classes with their new class plant, very soon...

Earth Day 2023

In our assembly today, Tuesday 25th April 2023, Mrs Franklin and some of the Eco Warriors spoke to the whole school about Earth Day, which was on the 22nd of April 2023. 

They talked about what Earth Day is about, about the importance of caring for our environment and suggested practical ideas, which we can all do to help.

Zahara in 3DS spent a Saturday recently collecting litter in her local environment, and look at all of the litter which she collected!! Well done Zahara :)

What did the W.T.L.A. Eco-Warriors get up to last year? 

Lower School Eco-Warriors

Lower School Eco-Warriors decided that they would like to focus on how effectively we recycle our rubbish at break times. The children looked through the bins, and found that many of the items in each bin, weren't being recycled into the correct bin.

After discussion, they decided upon the following actions for the next few weeks:

- Spend break times educating children where to put their recycling;

- Make larger and clearer labels for the bins;

- Award children with Eco-Awards to encourage positive attitudes towards recycling correctly.

Lower school Eco-Warriors were busy litter picking and recycling carefully. Great job!

Our Lower School Playground is looking much better - thank you!

Lower School Eco-Warriors were in the process of creating new labels for our recycling bins.

Lower School Eco-Warriors started to put our new posters on the bins around the school, and within a few hours, they had already had a huge impact on children recycling more efficiently. 

Lower School Eco-Warriors interviewed our caretaker to find out if their new posters have had an impact on the schools recycling.

KS1 children are recycling very successfully. KS2 have improved, but are not recycling 100% successfully yet. We will continue to monitor this.  

During Term 6, Lower School Eco-Warriors spent their time clearing and cleaning out our school pond, so that the fish can swim more freely and to hopefully attract more wildlife to the pond.

Upper School Eco-Warriors

Upper School Eco-Warriors created the West Town Lane Academy Eco Code. They thought very carefully about what the code should include, and how we would achieve this at West Town Lane Academy.

After discussion they decided that we would focus on the use of electricity within classrooms, and ensuring that we were reducing our use of electricity where possible. As a result the KS2 Eco Warriors went into KS2 classrooms at lunch time to check if:

• IWBs are turned off when not being used.
• Lights are switched off when nobody is in the room.
• Switches are turned off when nothing is plugged in.

They also be monitored water usage in the KS2 bathrooms, as part of our survey, as this was something which the warriors also felt that they wanted to monitor. They checked whether taps have been left running, when they are not in use.

At our Eco meeting today (28th March 2022) our Eco Warriors shared the findings, so far, of their monitoring of the usage of electrical devices in KS2.

This monitoring continued for the rest of Term 4, and the warriors then calculated which is the most Eco-friendly class in each year group. This class was then be awarded a certificate for their super work at helping to improve our environment.

Will your class be the most Eco-friendly? Keep trying hard in this new academic year :)

Eco Award results are in....

Our Eco Warriors collated their results and discovered that 5LW and 4W were the most Eco-friendly classes that term, only using their electrical devices and lighting when it was absolutely necessary.

Well done to these two classes! Our Eco Warriors presented their awards to them, during our Eco Schools meeting on Monday 23rd May.

Raymon and Heer collected 5LW's award on behalf of their teacher and class, and Alfie collected the award for 4W.

W.T.L.A. Eco-Code

Our school cares about the environment.

Understanding how to help the environment is important to us.

Respect, and our rights and responsibilities, mean that we think carefully about what it means to be an Eco-School.

Everyone can help to protect and improve their local and wider environment.

Can you think of a way that you can help?

Our school works together as a team,

Supporting each other to care for our school environment.

Communicating what we discuss, discover and decide in our classrooms, and Eco-Meetings, with our school community.

Home, school and our local community,

Overcoming environmental issues and improving our environments.

One person can make a change,

Lots of people, together in our school, can make lots of changes, to support our environment today, tomorrow and in the future.

Eco-Schools Awards

To raise awareness of Eco-Schools in our school environment, we have created some Eco-stickers, which can be awarded to children by Eco-Warriors and school staff, when they display an awareness of environmental issues within our school environment, or the wider community.

These Eco Awards were printed on stickers that the school were not using anymore, so we were pleased that we could use them in a positive way!

The stickers have been issued to each Eco-Warrior, each class teacher and also to our dinner staff, and can be given out when a child is observed taking care of our school environment, or showing an awareness/interest in it, and taking part in environmental issues locally or globally. 

Clean Air Awareness and Activities

Healthy Schools and Eco-Schools are took part in a Clean Air Awareness Initiative, which was looking at how we travel to school at West Town Lane Academy.

We then looked at how we can help to reduce air pollution near our school, and in our local and wider community, by thinking about the transport we use to get to school, and the changes that we could make to this. We are very aware of the importance of reducing pollution for our planet.

Air pollution provides a direct threat to children's rights to health! Our rights and responsibilities are something which our school community take very seriously. 

We were very fortunate to have the opportunity to take part in a Clean Air Awareness week, starting on Monday the 16th May 2022, where the children took part in a variety of workshops, to learn more about the positive actions which we can take, to improve our air quality.

Here are some photographs showing some of the fantastic activities which the children have been taking part in this week...

On the 7th and 8th of June Perform For Schools held Drama4All workshops, with an Eco awareness theme, for our EYFS and KS1 children.

The children took part in a workshop with a drama teacher who appeared in role as a 'Supa-Dupa' - on a mission to find brave children to train as superheroes, become Eco warriors and save the world!

The children had a wonderful time with Kathryn, learning all about sustainability :)

The Big Battery Hunt!

West Town Lane Academy are taking part in the Big Battery Hunt with Duracell. Make sure you bring all of your old and used batteries into school and place them in the giant battery.

Let’s Recycle!

West Town Lane Academy are becoming even more Eco Friendly! We now have even more ways to recycle at the Academy with our new recycling bins across the school, including food waste bins and plastic bins.