Menu



Green School

 

Green Flag Raising Ceremony

We held our Green Flag Raising Ceremony on Friday, June 20th. We worked extremely hard over the past

two years to earn this Green Flag for the Travel theme. This is the fourth Green Flag our school has earned.

Senator Michael Mullins came to the school to raise the flag and commended the children for their

hard work over the past few years. Each child was presented with a certificate, a goodie bag and

some yummy cake!! A huge thank you to Mrs Mary Grealy for helping us to achieve this Green Flag. 

 

Carpooling School of the Year 2014

St Catherine's NS, Aughrim, won the Carpooling School of the Year Award at the Green-Schools Travel Competition. The award was gien in recognition of the wonderful work the school has done in the area of carpooling and green travel in general!

Front Row: Holly Costello, Ciarán Reddan, Avril Deely, Stuart Madden

Back Row: Patricia Oliver (An Táisce), Minister Alan Kelly TD, Mr Dara McAleer (Principal)

 

Green Flag Committee 2013/14

 

 

Members:

1st Class: Caoimhe Dunne

2nd Class: Niamh Keighery

3rd Class: Ruth Manning

4th Cass: Aoife Keighery

5th Class: Alisha Manning

6th Class: Amy Manning 

 

 

  

Green-Schools

 

Green-Schools is an international environmental education programme, which promotes long-term, whole school action for the environment.  There are seven themes within the programme:

  1. Litter & Waste

  2. Energy

  3. Water

  4. Travel

  5. Biodiversity

  6. Global Citizenship

  7. Climate Change

We have completed the first 4 themes and have been awarded Green Flags for each.

 

The Green-Schools programme is based on Seven Steps:

  1. Green-Schools Committee

  2. Environmental Review

  3. Action Plan

  4. Monitoring and Evaluation

  5. Curriculum Work

  6. Informing and Involving

  7. Green Code

 

Green-Schools Report 2012-2013 

Seven Steps

Our school is undertaking the Green-Schools Travel Programme which runs over two years.  The aim of the Programme is to encourage students, teachers and parents to walk, cycle, park ’n’ stride and carpool instead of using the private car on the school run. 

We have a Green-Schools Committee which oversee the programme.  There is a representative from each class on the Committee.  Here are our Committee on their first task delivering information on what the ‘Travel Theme’ entails:

1st Class:  Micheál Keary, 

2nd Class: Chloe Greene

3rd Class: Avril Deeley,

4th Class: Holly Costello

5th Class: Stuart Madden

6th Class: Emer Loughnane, Mark Jennings

 

Many events have occurred throughout the year.  Emer Loughnane and Mark  Jennings from The Committee were busy conducting surveys to investigate how our pupils travel to school.  

We have had hugely successful WOW days where children walked to school together.  Walking and cycling to school makes children more alert and ready to face the school day.  We participated in National WOW day on the 15th of May 2013. 

A highlight of our Green-School Programme was a ‘Cycling Training Course’ delivered by a company called Safer Cycling Initiative.  Pupils from 4th, 5th and 6th class learned how to cycle safely on our road. Check out our photos in the Gallery Section.

 

 

  Great News!!!

We are delighted to have been awarded our third Green Flag for the water theme. The National Green Flag Award Ceremony took place in the Sheraton Hotel, Athlone on the 24th May. This flag represented two years of hard work with the theme of water. Our school was proudly represented by Ms Egan, Oscar Jarvis ( 2nd Class), Sinead Hanley ( 4th Class), Nathan Ward ( 5th Class) and Kieara Dunne ( 6th Class). We have loads of photos of our students working very hard in our Gallery Section.

 

Pictured are: Graham (Green Schools Co-Ordinator), Kieara Dunne, Sinead Hanley, Nathan Ward, Oscar Jarvis & Ms Fiona Egan

 

WOW Day

On March 21st 2013 our school took part in its first WOW Day. The teachers, pupils and parents all parked the cars at the Interpretive Centre in Aughrim and walked to school together. Despite the bitterly cold day it was a great success and, most importantly, the children enjoyed it! We're all looking forward to our next WOW day on April 17th.  

 

 

 Green Flag Water Update

 As there was new taps, cisterns and sinks installed in the new bathrooms, we wanted to check that there were no leaks. We took a metre reading one Friday evening in March. It read 0101528m3. We read it again on Monday morning. It read 0101562m3. This showed a difference of 34m3. Due to the fact that the cleaning lady was in on Friday evening, a number of teachers stayed late that evening and the principal was in early that Monday morning, we came to the conclusion that there was no leak.

We wanted to see what students attitudes were like in the school towards water consumption so we decided to put a questionnaire together. We then sent it home to each household. As a committee, we were shocked with the findings. They included -

 1) 25% of pupils didn’t turn off the tap when they are brushing their teeth.

2) 58% of pupils didn’t use a stopper in the sink.

3) Only 20% of pupils in our school recycle rainwater for watering plants| washing the car etc.

4) 57% of people use a hose and not a bucket when washing the car.

We displayed these findings on the Green Flag Notice board to make people aware that we needed to be water smart.

                                                                 

         

 

We carried out an experiment in each class and asked the children to do it at home. “Investigating how much water is wasted when the tap is left on while brushing our teeth”. These were our findings – Water we use (on average) when the tap is left on while brushing – 3 litres (3000ml). When the tap is turned off while brushing, we used 500ml showing a difference of 2,500ml of water. We now know that by leaving the tap on while brushing, we waste up to 2 ½ litres of water.

  

We took water metre readings regularly to see how much water we use daily, weekly and monthly. We used 442m3 of water in one week between the 16th and the 20th of January. We wanted to reduce this weekly average.

-We then looked at the toilet cisterns in the school. We found that a lot of water was being wasted unnecessarily. We then decided to put plastic bottles in the cisterns in order to reduce the volume of water in each flush. We also got a water butt up and running. We now use this recycled water for watering plants/ flowers and cleaning art equip e.g. paint trays etc. The water detectives in each class make sure that no tap is left running and that everybody remembers to use the water butt when we can.

- After doing all this, we decided it was time for another metre reading. We all hoped that we had done enough to reduce our weekly average. The water metre read 0107605m3 on Monday, the 20th March. We read this again on Friday evening and it read 0107924m3. This showed we used 319m3 of water this week, showing that we had saved 123m3 (123,000 litres) in our weekly average.