Green Schools

Green Schools 2023/2024

Meet our new Committee members 

Meeting with Aengus November 23

As part of our no idling campaign, Aengus came to visit us on the 13th of November.
We learned all about the carbon cycle.
We have previously talked about the water cycle but had not realised how important the carbon cycle is to our environment.
We discussed how much our cars, buses and trains are emitting carbon into our atmosphere from burning fossil fuels which is dead plants from thousands of years ago.

No Idling Campaign in Drumfad NS
This year we are promoting a no idling campaign outside our school.
Idling is anytime your car engine is running but you’re not moving, usually 20 or more seconds.

Running a car or other vehicle without going anywhere just doesn’t make any sense.
1. It’s bad for the environment as when the engine is running it emits carbon dioxide.
2. Health- idling makes worse air quality, which is bad for our human health.
3. Money- running your vehicle without moving its a waste of fuel which just burns more of your money.
4. Safety- when vehicles are idling it’s harder for students to hear when other cars are moving and an accident could take place.

We ask that all visitors, parents and staff to the school try an avoid idling for the health and safety of everyone.

Thank you

Green  School Committee

 

Climate Action Week 16th – 20th October 

As part of climate action week the senior room took part in the green schools World Food Day Webinar with Green Schools.

It was amazing to hear and talk about food and how food goes of and how to keep food.

This gave us some inspiration on how to use up food before it goes off.

Together we made French Toast using up bread, milk and eggs which were left at home and needed to be use.

It was delicious and all made using food which we had left at home.

 

Walk to school Week 2nd-6th October 

From October 2nd to 6th it was walk to school week.

Despite the weather we had many children try their best to walk to school or walk home from school.

On Friday to celebrate the week we went on a whole school walk together around our local environment.

As Climate Action Week approaches we talked about our school area. How clean it was because of the bin we have at our school. We thank our clean up crew every day for ensuring our area is clean and tidy to play in.

We had a great time with seniors and juniors together walking and talking.

 

 

 

 

Welcome to our Green Schools page for 2022/ 2023 

 

We are moving onto our next Green Schools flag and its all about Travel !!

Meet our new Green Team – Áoibh, Edward, Oisín, Eimear, Ciaran, Liam, TJ, Annie, Chloe and Adam!!

Aengus came to meet with us on the 10th of October to explain to us what we have to do to gain the travel flag over the next two years.

We are very excited to get started and we could not wait.

So the first thing we have done is completed our survey of how many people walk, cycle, scoot, park and stride to school each day.

We are hoping that our results will change over the course of the two years with more people parking and striding, cycling and walking to our school.

May 2023 

Bike Week

Bike week was a huge success in our school this year. Together with Donegal Sports Partnership and our Green schools co-ordinator Aengus we planned a trip to our local beach with the help of local Gardai to ensure our safe travel.

Each of the children in the senior room along with staff cycled to the beach to complete a beach clean up. When completed we cycled back to school.

Councillor Liam Blaney Visit to Drumfad

As part of our green school travel flag we wrote letter to our local Councillors about our suggestions for helping us travel to school. As a result Councillor Blaney came to the school on Wednesday the 3rd of May.

Here he talked to us about our concerns, heard from both the senior and junior room pupils.

We really enjoyed his visit.

April 2023

The Junior Room are currently learning all about the topic “Under the Sea”. We have found out many interesting facts about the sea and how to travel on the sea using boats as well as under the sea using submarines.

We feel horrible about all the rubbish that is swept out to sea every day. We watched a clip from Sir David Attenborough about pollution around the world. We talked about all the recycling we do and how we have our bins for our rubbish. We created our very own octopus toys and sail boats using recycled materials.

Also to raise awareness we completed our very own “Save our Oceans” posters.

 

March 2023

Aengus Returns for Scooter Week (Scoot to School Green Schools)

On Monday 27th March Aengus returned to Drumfad for a scooter day.

First we talked about how we are working towards our travel flag. We showed him our new bird feeders and discussed all the different types of birds which we have seen using them. We went out to our new compost bin and examined how the compost was being made using our skins of fruit and paper shredding.

Then we went on a walk around the school grounds. We explored each of the trees in our playground which are just beginning to shows buds. We cut a number of branches to show the how the roots form over the next few days.

Next it was onto helmet safety. Each of the children took out their helmets. Aengus talked to us about his experiences of helmet safety and how important it is to always wear our helmets when on our bikes as well as our scooters. Each of the children were fitted for their helmet and straps tightened correctly.

Afterwards it was time to get scooting outside. We were taught the correct way to put your feet on the scooter. We practised taking off and our emergency stops. We began following cones to make right hand turns and then left hand turns before picking up the pace, getting faster and faster.

Each of the children had a fantastic day and we thank Aengus for coming to show us his scooter skills.

 

 

Garda Station Visit 

As part of our big travel challenge we went to Milford Garda Station.

We discussed Road Safety issues as well as challenges to walking and cycling to school.

We explored the interview areas of the station, got locked up in a cell, investigated the Patrol car and all the lights as well as getting to try on the uniform.

It was an amazing experience which we are very thankful. Thank you Milford Garda Station.

February 2023

Big Travel Challenge

For two weeks this month we in the green school committee decided to try get as many children as possible to walk/ cycle / scoot to school from 20th February – 3rd March 2023.

We decided we would choose cycling as our main focus.

We sent an email to all parents about the initiative and informed all the children.

Everyone tried their best over the course of the 10 school days.

We are very thankful to all the parents which helped their children each morning by walking or cycling to school.

Bird Feeders

Letter Writing with Aengus

January 2023

We are busy planning our Big Travel Challenge initiative for February.

We are very excited. We are hoping to complete it from 20th February – 3rd March 2023.

We are asking everyone to get involved and walk, cycle, and park and stride to school as much as possible.

October

This month we had our second Green School Meeting.

Our members met together to discuss the results of our survey.

We discussed our travel board and what items we would like to have on our board and we agreed our committee would change a few items on the board before Aengus comes back to meet us to help us keep on track.

 

November

Aengus has been back with us again.

We all had a fantastic day on Monday 21st of November with Aengus.

We conducted an audit on our school bins.

We created new and exciting bin labels as our old ones had become not fit for purpose.

We also conducted our Walkability Audit around  our school in relation to travel.

We found many different items which could be changed to make it safer for us to walk, cycle or park and Stride to school.

Although the day was not very sunny we still had a great time and really enjoyed our time together as whole school.

Our new step is to get letter writing. We have our list of Top 5 areas for change below . We hope to write as many letters as we can to our local councillors and TD’s to help get a number if items changed for our school area.

January 2023

We are busy planning our Big Travel Challenge initiative for February.

We are very excited. We are hoping to complete it from 20th February – 3rd March 2023.

We are asking everyone to get involved and walk, cycle, and park and stride to school as much as possible.

We are also compiling a list of councillors, county council members and officials for us to send our letters to, In order to help our school become safer to walk, and travel to.

Welcome back to our Green Schools  page 2021-2022.

We have a new Green Team! Here they are.

We are currently working on our 3rd Green Flag which is Water Conservation. We started our work by learning about how to save water in our school by turning off taps during the day and making sure they are all turned off fully when going home in the evening.

We sent home a questionnaire to our parents asking how much water is used daily/weekly/monthly in our homes.

We were so lucky to have Martin McAteer come in to show us where our water meter is located and how to read it each week.

We discovered  how much water we use at school and one weekend we found out that a lot of water of water was being used. Martin then fitted a tracker to our meter to help find out where the water was going and when it was being used. Watch this space for more………

We also had a visit from Hugh Kerr who worked for the Donegal County Council. He did a talk with the junior room and the senior room about the dangers of water, where the water comes from in our area and he invited us to visit the local water treatment plant in Fanad and Milford to see more!

Bernadette has been ringing around checking prices for a water butt for our school which will collect rainwater.  We will hopefully install one soon with Martin’s help so that in the summer months we can collect and use rainwater to water our vegetables and flowers in our school garden!

Our water detectives continue to work on our Green school application each week.

 

May 2022

Great News!!! The Green Team have achieved our 3rd Green Flag on Water Conservation!! Congratuations to them all!! Here they are with our whole school! 

 

 

In Drumfad, we are keen environmentalists, and enjoy learning about environmental care and taking steps to help our planet.  We recycle everything that we can, we use our compost bin for all compostable items and we save electricity by turning lights off when they are not needed and unplugging our laptops after use.

We are currently working on our 2nd Green Flag, with the theme of Energy Conservation. Back in September we set up a  new Green Team for the year 2018-2019. We took on various roles such as :

• Chairperson – in charge of taking the lead during our Green Schools meetings.
• Scribe – taking notes during our meetings
• Power Ranger – making sure our lights were switched off at breaktimes and when we weren’t using them.
• Door monitors- making sure drafts were eliminated and doors were closed as much as possible during breaktimes and during the day.
• Electricity monitors – making sure that electrical appliances that were not in use were switched off, also taking part in reading the meters.
• Art monitors – in charge of art competitions in our school and also doing art work for our display board.

We had the help of two parents on our team too who provided great ideas and support to our Green Team. We set up a Green Schools display board in the hall in our school to create awareness among the pupils. Early in the year we had the pleasure of inviting Aengus Kennedy to our school to give us an Energy Workshop. We had lots of fun during this lesson. We learned about the transfer of energy from one form to another and how we have lots of energy and kinetic energy in our bodies.

Suzanne Bogan came to visit with the Green Team in October. We told her of all the work we had completed so far and she gave us an informative lesson on the Energy Flag.

Later that month we created an Energy Newsletter which was full of tips on how to save energy in our homes!

Our energy newsletter

 

In November we sent out a survey to each family asking them various questions on how much energy they wasted/saved at home. Each family had to make a pledge to make a real effort to save energy together as a family.

In January it was time for a competition in Drumfad N.S. Each child had to create an Energy poster and message. We had 3 winners in the school and they each received prizes sent to us from SEAI.  It was very hard to select a winner as the standard was so high. The teachers at Tamney N.S. selected the winners of the competition. Here are the entries to the competition!

In March 2019 the Green Team had a special visit from Charlie Herron who is in charge of reading our school meter. He took us all outside to the meter box to watch how fast the wheel was turning. He told us that our wheel was moving quite fast as we were using lights, laptops, interactive boards, kettle fridge etc. He told us that the kettle is one of the most expensive electrical appliances to use in a house, followed closely by the tumble dryer. He informed us of a special energy saving kettle that can be bought for our school. We have done some research on these and we are currently comparing the prices of a few different ones for school.

On the 22nd March 2019 we had an Action Day at Drumfad N.S. The Green Team organised that most appliances in Drumfad N.S. were switched off including laptops, lights (as many as possible), interactive boards, the kettle in the staffroom (teachers brought in a flask instead of boiling the kettle). The previous day we read the meters and compared the result to our Action Day! We saved 10 units of electricity on our Action Day. We were so proud of ourselves. Here we are reading the meter on our Action Day!

Our application form was sent away online on the 28th March 2019….

 

Great news !!! We got awarded our Green Energy Flag!!

We had a lovely day out at the awards ceremony where we met other schools who were awarded their flags too!! Some representatives of the Green Team went to collect their flag and also got a lovely lunch afterwards. Here we are on the day….

Our new flag will be raised at our End of Year ceremony.  We hope to see you there to celebrate our achievement with us!