2012 OUR CONTINUED JOURNEY AS A SILVER ENVIROSCHOOL

2012  ECO AGENTS REPORT

OUR CONTINUED JOURNEY AS A SILVER ENVIROSCHOOL

This year our learning focus is "Making Connections" under theme of Globalisation.  

Our inquiry is about our connections to our own identity, other cultures and countries and the environment and the impact of these on us and the lives of others.

This year our Envirogroup want to track our progress by measuring change in the areas of waste, water and landscape.  Are we making a difference??

We also have the task of working towards achieving our next steps as were identified in our reflection from last year. 

To achieve our next steps;

1.  Every class has been assigned an area of responsibility that they will maintain and develop. 

2.  We will encourage everyone to bring a water bottle and litterfree lunchbox.  An Eco Agent is assigned to each class in the school to support them in this and to monitor their progress so that we can discover if we are making progress.

3.  Every assembly the Eco Agents present messages and give rewards for those students that are caught following our care code.

4.  Every newsletter has environment messages and information for our parents and community. 

Projects this year;

WASTE AUDIT

This year the Enviro group organised a schoolwide waste audit so that we could find out how much of our waste is recycled and how much has to go to the landfill.

On Wednesday every class collected their classroom waste and the Eco Agents gathered up all the worm food, compost and recyclable materials to weigh and count. 

First we sorted it into these categories, recyclables, compost, worm food, landfill.
Next we weighed it all and found out that we makd 15.6 kilograms of rubbish a day.  6.5 kgms of waste goes to the landfill, but the really good news is that we are recycling 9.1 kilograms of our waste. The Eco Agents go to the classes every week to show them how to sort their waste properly and to encourage everyone to bring a litterfree lunchbox and a drink bottle.  

TRIP TO THE BOTANNIC GARDENS 

PAPER RECYCLING
This year we have continued to recycle our paper and cardboard using Paper 4 Trees scheme.  Every classroom has a green bin for all their classroom recycling.

RONGOA GARDEN
The Envirogroup have been learning about how Maori used the native bush to make  medicines before there were chemist shops.  We read a book "Koro's Medicine" and then we started to research to find native trees that Maori use to make medicines to help them when they are sick.  We want to make a rongoa garden down on our back field when we begin planting in July.


TREE PLANTING WITH THE COUNCIL
On a very windy, cold Thursday 7 June the year 4 students helped plant native trees on the Elm Park Reserve next to our school.  The Council provided the trees and spades and we put in a lot of trees during the 2 hours of planting.  After we finished we got a bottle of water and an apple.  It was muddy and fun!

SILVER ENVIROSCHOOL SIGN ASSEMBLY
On this exciting day the 24th of May we were to officially recieve the sign that says we are a Silver Enviroschool.  We welcomed our visitors into the auditorium with a powhiri.  We listened to speeches about the work we have accomplished and how we have taken action to make our school more sustainable.  Mrs Jessep, Mr Finn and Mrs Warren presented the sign to Mrs Plowright and the Head boy and the Head Girl spoke on behalf of all of us.  We cheered when we saw the big sign.  Afterwards we had morning tea and took our guests on a tour of some of the projects we have worked on.  It was an exciting day and everyone was happy.

ELM PARK SCHOOL IS A SILVER SCHOOL BECAUSE….

Everyone in our school is involved in working towards our whole school vision, projects on our vision map and designing our school care code.    

This year, as a result of our whole school inquiry about water, a range of actions have been explored and employed by students to conserve water and improve the quality of our waterways.  Students have included their families and encouraged and educated them through home water audits, 4 minute showers and adjusting the flush on toilets, beach clean ups and stream trips.    

With a deeper knowledge of our impact on the wider environment students have changed some of our practices and introduced more sustainable systems for our environment -

e.g. washing yoghurt pots in buckets not storm water drains

Collecting wastewater from the drinking fountains to use on gardens

Stream clean up team (Eco Warriors)

As a result of audits and monitoring in our school, students can see the progress we are making, have identified problems and initiated changes to address these.  Practices and projects begun in previous years have been continued, refined and developed to become more efficient and involve more people. Some of these are

Native tree Planting

Compost

Worm Farm

Weekly audits of litterfree lunches

Recycling paper and other waste

Shade house

  

All the guiding principles inform our learning and practices.  We have strengthened the Maori Perspectives guiding principle by gathering information about Maori world view, the language and their traditional practices around water and the environment.   The whole school visited our mountain, river and sea to make connection with places in our school pepeha and connect to our role as kaitiaki.  Our Maori enrichment students have become an expert resource in each class and introduced Matariki for us.  

We are a diverse school with many cultures, languages and perspectives and all of these bring a richness to our conversations and action planning.  At the end of the year we celebrate with our cultural concert.

Our next steps are to create an awa to record our journey as an enviroschool.

We will continue the native planting and developing this area to include a pathway and information about our trees.

Encourage everyone to bring water bottles to school.

Maintain and develop the exisiting areas 

e.g. Michael Ungerer garden

Sensory garden

Vegetable gardens

Shade house plants

Lizard gardens

Share information with our community

e.g lessons on compost and worm farming

Information signs

Movies and Blogs
PLANTING THE BACK FEILD

In July we began the second stage of our tree planting plan. Everyone in our school helped plant the trees including teachers and parents.  Over the last month lots of us have been mulching around the trees to kill the grass and help keep the moisture in the ground as Summer approaches.

We have planted a selection of native trees to attract more birds and insects into our school grounds.  We have also planted a manuka tree tent, a rongoa section (Maori medicine), and a lot of harakeke so that in the future we have flax for weaving.

 

 

2011 WE ARE A SILVER ENVIROSCHOOL!

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2011  HIGHLIGHTS

At the end of the year we reflected on all the actions we had taken throughout the year, the projects we have maintained and extended and all the learning we have done to achieve these.  Our reflection group decided that we were a silver enviroschool.

ELM PARK SCHOOL IS A SILVER SCHOOL BECAUSE….

Everyone in our school is involved in working towards our whole school vision, projects on our vision map and designing our school care code.    

This year, as a result of our whole school inquiry about water, a range of actions have been explored and employed by students to conserve water and improve the quality of our waterways.  Students have included their families and encouraged and educated them through home water audits, 4 minute showers and adjusting the flush on toilets, beach clean ups and stream trips.    

With a deeper knowledge of our impact on the wider environment students have changed some of our practices and introduced more sustainable systems for our environment -

e.g. washing yoghurt pots in buckets not storm water drains

Collecting wastewater from the drinking fountains to use on gardens

Stream clean up team (Eco Warriors)

As a result of audits and monitoring in our school, students can see the progress we are making, have identified problems and initiated changes to address these.  Practices and projects begun in previous years have been continued, refined and developed to become more efficient and involve more people. Some of these are

Native tree Planting

Compost

Worm Farm

Weekly audits of litterfree lunches

Recycling paper and other waste

Shade house

  

All the guiding principles inform our learning and practices.  We have strengthened the Maori Perspectives guiding principle by gathering information about Maori world view, the language and their traditional practices around water and the environment.   The whole school visited our mountain, river and sea to make connection with places in our school pepeha and connect to our role as kaitiaki.  Our Maori enrichment students have become an expert resource in each class and introduced Matariki for us.  

We are a diverse school with many cultures, languages and perspectives and all of these bring a richness to our conversations and action planning.  At the end of the year we celebrate with our cultural concert.

Our next steps are to create an awa to record our journey as an enviroschool.

We will continue the native planting and developing this area to include a pathway and information about our trees.

Encourage everyone to bring water bottles to school.

Maintain and develop the exisiting areas 

e.g. Michael Ungerer garden

Sensory garden

Vegetable gardens

Shade house plants

Lizard gardens

Share information with our community

e.g lessons on compost and worm farming

Information signs

Movies and Blogs  

2011 - OUR CONTINUED JOURNEY TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE SCHOOL

2011 - Eco Agents Report

This year our learning focus was "Our World Our Water". We began with a visit to our local waterways and identifying ways to act as Kaitiaki / guardians to these.

Projects that developed from our inquiry were
Stormwater Drains

We have been learning about stormwater drains with Sally from Watercare. If we put paint, food, soap or oil down these outside drains it will go to our stream and then out to the sea. This can pollute our waterways and hurt marine life. Only put rain down the drain and some people are painting multi-lingual signs to remind us what to do.

WATER BOTTLES

We have been learning about water because it is so important to us and the World. To save wasting water we need to bring a reuseable water bottle to school to save water from going down the drain at the drinking fountains. If you forget your drink bottle you can drink from the drinking side of the fountain not the tap side. This is using water wisely.

FLUSHING TOILETS

We have been learning about how toilets flush and how much water goes down the toilet. We want people to use a brick in the toilet to save flushing so much water and only use a half flush. We told Mrs P the Principal to change the toilets to use less water and when she has money she is going to do this. We put posters up to show others what to do.

WASHING YOGHURT POTS

We learnt that when we wash our yoghurt pots at the drinking fountain the yoghurt goes down the stormwater drain to our stream. This not good for the invertebrates in the stream. Now we collect water from the drinking fountains in a bucket and wash the yoghurt pots in this waste water. We tip this water onto the gardens.

LITTERFREE LUNCHBOXES

Our aim is to have the whole school bring a litterfree lunchbox. This is because we are an enviroschool and we want to reduce the amount of rubbish going to landfills. Lunchboxes should have food items in reuseable containers, or materials that can be recycled.

WORM FARM

We have worm food bins where food for the worms is collected from school lunchboxes. The food is put into the worm farm. The worms turn our food into worm tea which we put on our plants and also we well to our patents and community. We put the worm castings onto our gardens to help our plants grow.

PLANTING ON MOTUIHE ISLAND

The year 5 Syndicate went to Motuihe Island to plant trees. We planted 200 trees that will give homes to birds and insects. We wanted to do this because it is fun and we want to help improve the environment in Auckland. We were lucky to see a dog there named Rua and he hunts kiwi but he does not hurt them. He has a bell on his collar so the owner knows where he is. Last year there were 15 spotted kiwi let go on the Island and the Ranger is using the dog to find out if they are still alive.

LIZARD GARDEN

Our school has an environmentally friendly lizard garden. It is to protect skinks and geckos from predators and give them a place to live. We want to stop the extinction of lizards. Recently we have put mulch down to make a path and weeded the garden. We have built more lizard hotels which they can bask on.

NATIVE TREE PLANTING

We have begun planting native trees around the back field. The plan for planting began last year with the year 4 Syndicate. We have planted these trees for several reasons. Some are to attract more native birds and insects, for shade and shelter and for us to learn more about the native trees and wildlife. We named the trees and also wrote information about the trees and some of us even adopted and named a tree!

ECO WARRIORS

We have created a team that is called the Eco Warriors. Every Thursday we set off with our tongs and gloves to the creek to pick up rubbish and

food scraps. We do this because we don’t want rubbish to go into our creek. The fish and eels and other invertebrates will be harmed or go away. We don’t want our creek polluted.

ARBOR DAY

The year 4 syndicate planted 250 trees for Arbour Day in the Elm Park Reserve. There were leaves all around and we tried to plant as best we could but it was hard because it was muddy and slippery! We planted flax, cabbage trees, manuka and kanuka to attract more native wildlife to our community.

STORMWATER DRAINS

We have been learning about stormwater drains with Sally from Watercare. If we put paint, food, soap or oil down these outside drains it will go to our stream and then out to the sea. This can pollute our waterways and hurt marine life. Only put rain down the drain and some people are painting signs to remind us what to do.

SORTING OUR WASTE

In every classroom we have a paper bin for used on both sides paper, a waste bin for items that have to go to the landfill, a compost collection container and one for worm food too for when it is wet and rainy days. We have to use paper on both sides before we recycle it. This is because we will be chopping down trees and won’t have oxygen or places for animals to live and it costs money to make paper. We have a large green bin for flat clean paper. Parents can put their newspapers and junk mail in it and we get money from the recycling company.

COMPOSTING

Last year Room 18 class built a compost bin and this year we are making compost. The worms do not like citrus fruit peels so we had no place to put them and also we had waxed paper, pencil shavings and autumn leaves. These will turn into rich black soil for our gardens. This year Room 18 is collecting compost items from each class in a blue wheelie bin and then they empty this into the compost bin. The F.B.I.(Fungi, Bacteria, Insects) help them make the compost with for us.

HIGHLIGHTS

At the end of the year we reflected on all the actions we had taken throughout the year, the projects we have maintained and extended and all the learning we have done to achieve these.  Our reflection group decided that we were a silver school.

OUR BEGINNING JOURNEY TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE SCHOOL

WELCOME TO THE ELM PARK SCHOOL ECO AGENTS BLOG

Who Are We?

We are chosen by our classmates to form our school Envirogroup. We represent our class at meetings and have a real interest in the environment. We report information to the whole school in assemblies and newsletters and encourage the whole school to be involved in working towards a sustainable school. We make decisions and help others to achieve their environmental projects.

We have had a long journey to get to where we are now and before we report on our amazing current projects and achievements it is best to start at the beginning........

Our Journey As An Enviroschool From 2005 to 2010

Written by the Envirogroup Co-ordinator

2005

A group interested in keeping our stream clean worked with Wai Care and Ms M. during this year.

A gardening group was also created and worked at lunchtimes to improve the gardens and grow vegetables as well as flowers and ornamentals. This sparked an interest amongst the students in the environment and sowed the seeds for becoming an enviroschool.

2006

The first Envirogroup was officially formed and included Ms M, Mrs A, 25 students from year 4,5,6, and was supported by Mrs J Environmental Coordinator from the ARC. and the Envirogroup helped to plant trees on the Logan Carr reserve an ink cartridge recycling system was set up.

Projects for this year;

Herb, flower and vegetable gardens were created throughout the whole school by the students by re-designing and re-making existing ones.

Mosaic tiles were made by seniors and decorated with symbols and patterns representing different cultures.

Juniors painted a tile wall of plants and flowers they had learnt about at the Botannic Gardens.x

The Endeavour class won the future-in-tech competition with the water feature we installed by the international office.

We came 3rd in the Manukau Beautification Charitable Trust Best School Gardens project award.

2007

This year the whole school learning focus was "Celebrations".

This year the envirogroup members included student representatives from year 3 upwards. They became known as the Eco Agents and also included Ms M and Mrs A. Mrs J from the ARC supplied a badge maker and an the first Eco Agents badge was designed and made by the group.

Projects this year were

Maintaining the gardens created last year. Gardening tools were purchased for this purpose and every class "adopted" an area to care for.

"Switch it off " campaign was initiated by the Eco Agents with the aim to save electricity useage. Classes assign monitors to switch off everything in classrooms when not needed.

Painting the storm water drains was undertaken in parts of the school playground to ensure only water went down the drain.

The Eco Agents began presenting information at School assemblies and introduced a reward system for students that were "caught caring for our environment".

Hanging baskets were planted up and cared for by the Juniors.

A small worm farm was begun and the worm tea and castings used on the gardens.

2008

This year the whole school learning focus was "Making A Difference".

The Envirogroup this year again was made up of chosen members from Years 3-6. The National Bank sponsored t-shirts for the Eco Agents and we made badges again with Mrs J's badge maker.

Projects for this year were;

Mercury Energy donated a worm farm which would recycle all the fruit and vegetable waste from students' lunchboxes, handtowels from the toilets, coffee grinds, leaves and garden waste. The Eco Agents designed a system to collect this waste from the whole school. The worm tea was collected in bottles and the castings put onto our gardens. The excess worm tea was sold at the gate or by order to our school community. A waste audit showed we were able to reduce the amount of rubbish we were sending to the landfill by half - from 60kg to 30 kg.

An Enviroday had everyone involved in activities in the environment.

Our whole school production centered around a river journey and included many environmental aspects.

2009

The learning theme for this year was "Changes" and the Eco Agents lead the whole school in creating changes to our practices, knowledge and actions within the environment.

The Eco Agents initiated "litterfree lunch" days and encouraged the whole school to change the choices they made in the way they brought their food and drinks to school in order to reduce our landfill waste. They introduced the Zero Waste Wally award along with Pekepeke and Putiputi, all soft toys that are awarded to classes with the most litterfree lunchboxes.

Recycling became a focus and lunchbox yoghurt pots were collected, washed and put in the recycling wheelie bin.

The Envirogroup consisted of representatives from years 3-6.

The projects for this year were;

Maintaining the edible gardens and worm farm which the eco agents organised with the help of classes.

The middle school designed and created a new garden by Room 12 and planted black planter boxes with edibles.

The boys class designed and created a lizard garden to attract lizards and provide a habitat for them.

The Senior School students took part in a graffiti project and painted out tagging in our area. They also work with the police to monitor the speed to traffic passing our school and encouraged drivers to drive safely.

The "Green Team" was started with the help of Mrs V, Mrs H, and Mrs A. Students volunteered to help care for the environment in their lunchtime. Tasks included weeding,watering and fertilising gardens, sweeping paths, collected dead leaves, picking up rubbish.

The whole school was involved in the "Great NZ Spring Clean" and were highly commended in a competition organised by the Manukau City Council in conjunction with this project.

2010

HIGHLIGHTS  - We are a Bronze Enviroschool!

Towards the end of this year the Envirogroup reflected upon the actions and practices taken in our school this and previous years and compared them to those that describe a bronze Enviroschool. After gathering evidence and much discussion it was agreed that we are a bronze enviroschool. At an official celebration day organised by the Auckland City Council chosen members of the Envirogroup collected our bronze enviroschool certificate.

This year the whole school was involved with a year long inquiry on Sustainability beginning with the unit "Me In My Environment". This unit connected us with our school environment and every class began to record their learning journey for the year in an Enviro Scrapbook. Ideas on how to take action for a more sustainable school were generated, then collected and collated by the Envirogroup to develop a whole school Vision Map. A Vision Statement was also written to guide our practices and actions. These were adopted by the whole school community when the Eco Agents presented it to the Board of Trustees.

This year the Eco Agents also took part in an Arbor Day planting organised by the Council at Lloyd Elsmore Park and attended a day at the Botannic gardens learning how to grow and care for plants and the many ways Maori use the native flora. They won third prize in the garden sculpture competition with their garden robot made from recycled materials.

They continued to deliver environmental messages to the whole school at assemblies and through the school newsletter informed the community of their progress. They maintained our paper and plastics recycling systems and as a result of auditing our waste sent to the landfill promoted a whole school litterfree lunch on every Thursday. This resulted in classes auditing their own lunchboxes and the beginning of schoolwide litterfree lunchboxes for everyone, everyday.

Projects for this year;

The worm farm became the responsibility of the year 4 classes to maintain and administer as begun in previous years.

A native tree playground to increase native tree numbers and attract more birds and allow students to enjoy the area was designed by the year 4 syndicate.

A compost bin was designed and built by Room 18 students.

The boys class extended the lizard garden and added an information board to it.

Senior classes took action to improve the adjacent Elm Park Reserve and near by Pakuranga stream through the "Adopt A Park" and Waicare programmes. Herb and ornamental gardens were designed and created. A weather station was set up and data was regularly collected and sent to N.A.S.A.

The year 5 classes went to Motuihe to help plant natives in a restoration project begun on the island and went to Tiritiri Matangi to learn about the native birds and restoration on that island.

Junior classes adopted a garden area to redesign, plant and maintain and worked on attracting birds into the playground by designing and creating a range of different bird feeders. A tyre garden was developed at the back of the new library by the year 2 classes.

Year 3 classes created a butterfly house and grew swan plants to increase the monarch butterfly population.

The Green Team was continued from last year with enthusiastic volunteers keen to make a difference in the playground environment.

During the year the whole school was involved in special Enviro days, a trip to Barry Curtis Park, writing our school pepeha and Matariki celebrations and our annual Art exhibition was themed around the environment.

2010 - WE ARE A BRONZE ENVIROSCHOOL

2010  HIGHLIGHTS

At the end of the year we reflected on all the actions we had taken throughout the year, the projects we have maintained and extended and all the learning we have done to achieve these.  Our reflection group decided that we were a bronze enviroschool.

ELM PARK SCHOOL IS A BRONZE SCHOOL BECAUSE….