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New theme: 8th Green schools Flag - Global Citizenship and Marine Environment
Dear parents,
Our new Green Schools Committee is busy working towards securing an 8th Green Flag for our school next year.
This year our theme is Global Citizenship and Marine Environment. The Marine environment is a precious resource that we all depend on and need to protect. It is estimated that 10 million tonnes of litter end up in the world’s oceans and seas each year.
70% of this marine litter is on the seabed, 15% is floating in the water and 15% is what we find on our shores. Marine litter consists of a wide range of materials including plastic, metal, wood, rubber, glass and paper. However, it is dominated by plastic which accounts for 80% of the items found on beaches.
Our ‘Say No to Plastic’ campaign will focus on the many steps we can take to reduce our use of plastic and we will keep you informed of these via our school website and on our Green Schools Noticeboard.
We will all be learning about:
What are the main sources of marine litter in our environment?
What are The impacts of marine litter on a local and global scale?
How can we help to prevent marine litter?
What is the impact of climate change on the marine environment?
Ms. Reilly and her Green school committee are working really hard to maintain all we have learned from our previous flags. Our two Green School Committee members in each class have loads of jobs that they do on a daily basis. They maintain and empty their classes compost and paper bins and they monitor their classrooms energy usage aswell. The Green school committee members all take turns to litter pick after each yard. They are doing a great job!
Our current Green School Committee
Look AT what out green schools committee have been up t0 recently!
Ms. Reilly and the Green Schools committee are also organising a Slogan Poster competition to get us thinking about how we can help the marine environment. This Slogan Poster competition is an opportunity for parents and pupils to work together at home on the theme of Global Citizenship and Marine Environment. This poster will be given as homework next week on Monday 14th of March and will need to be completed and handed back into school by Monday 21st of March.
Two winners with the best slogans and art work will be chosen from each class. Three overall prizes will then be chosen from all our class winners. Good luck everyone!
The Global Citizenship and Marine Environment slogan competition winners were:
1st Place – Sean Cassidy, Ms. O’ Dea’s first class
2nd Place – Kian Kelly Nolan, Mr. Kennedy’s second class
3rd Place – Olivia Gainsford, Mr. Gibbons’ second class
Two winners with the best slogans and art work will be chosen from each class. Three overall prizes will then be chosen from all our class winners. Good luck everyone!
The Global Citizenship and Marine Environment slogan competition winners were:
1st Place – Sean Cassidy, Ms. O’ Dea’s first class
2nd Place – Kian Kelly Nolan, Mr. Kennedy’s second class
3rd Place – Olivia Gainsford, Mr. Gibbons’ second class
Well done Sean! Thanks to everyone who took part in our competition.
See above for more of our amazing competition winners!
Green Schools Code
"Protect the beauty of our seas, get rid of litter properly please!"
Our new Green code will be on display in every classroom window in our school. Please take a look!
Well done again Sean on your winning slogan!
Well done again Sean on your winning slogan!
Beach Clean with Flossie and the Beach Cleaners
Mr. Gibbon's class has been chosen to take part in a beach clean-up on Monday the 14th of March. We will be travelling by bus to Killiney Beach where we will meet Flossie and the Beach Cleaners to help us to do the beach clean-up. We are so excited about going on our first ever beach clean!
Flossie and the Beach Cleaners are a registered marine environment charity and they are going to educate us about plastic pollution and how we can all make a difference for a cleaner seas and a brighter future!
Flossie and the Beach Cleaners are a registered marine environment charity and they are going to educate us about plastic pollution and how we can all make a difference for a cleaner seas and a brighter future!
Mr. Gibbon's class had a fun time at the beach clean with Flossie and the Beach Cleaners. We picked loads of rubbish and we noticed that there was loads of plastic and micro plastics on the beach. Flossie and the Beach Cleaners showed us examples of a plastic bottles that were 30 and 50 years old. It was scary to see that the bottles were still fully useable. We now know that it can take 500 to 1000 years for a plastic bottle to decompose.
It is so important to say "no to plastics".
In Scoil Aonghusa Junior we use reusable lunch boxes and water bottles and we chose a lunch company Glanmore Foods that is committed to being an Environmentally Friendly company. They strive to reduce packaging where possible. They achieve this in a number of ways, including: Use of a reusable tray to distribute their lunches. They use minimal packaging and recyclable material where possible. This has helped us reduce our use of plastics and we will continue to strive to decrease our plastic usage at school and at home!
See our Instagram account for more pictures of our beach clean @scoilaonghusajnr.com
See below for information on how to do your own 2 minute beach clean #2minutestreetclean #2minutebeachclean
It is so important to say "no to plastics".
In Scoil Aonghusa Junior we use reusable lunch boxes and water bottles and we chose a lunch company Glanmore Foods that is committed to being an Environmentally Friendly company. They strive to reduce packaging where possible. They achieve this in a number of ways, including: Use of a reusable tray to distribute their lunches. They use minimal packaging and recyclable material where possible. This has helped us reduce our use of plastics and we will continue to strive to decrease our plastic usage at school and at home!
See our Instagram account for more pictures of our beach clean @scoilaonghusajnr.com
See below for information on how to do your own 2 minute beach clean #2minutestreetclean #2minutebeachclean
https://greenschoolsireland.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2-Minute-Beach-Clean.mp4
Our Green schools notice board informs and keeps our school up-to-date with all Green School developments
This year, the children of Scoil Aonghusa Junior have been very busy working towards our 8th green flag ‘Global Citizenship and Marine Environment’.
All classes have done a huge amount of work on researching marine environments, sources of marine litter and promoting an action to reduce it in an age appropriate way.
The Junior Infants classes focused on 1) Recycling in our school 2) Plastic in our oceans and how it affects our marine life. 3) Marine environment – they named four animals that live in a marine environment and how we can keep them safe.
The Senior Infants classes focused on 1) Investigating a source of marine litter and promoting an action to reduce it. 2) How to stop pollution in relation to the marine environment and 3) researched our top tips to save the earth – save energy, save water, reduce, reuse and recycle.
The First classes looked at 1) What they could do to help reduce marine pollution? They also named three things that they can do to help this process 2) Plastic in our oceans and how marine life is affected 3) They picked an everyday item – Plastic bag and researched it – Where does it come from? What impacts does its production have on the marine environment?
The Second classes researched 1) The Great Pacific Garage Patch and how it has occurred. 2) How long it takes for common marine litter items to break down in the environment. Do natural products such as paper take as long as plastics? 3) Investigation of a beach clean – what items did they find and where these sources of litter come from?
See below for some lovely child friendly informative videos that could help your child understand more about Marine environments and Marine litter and what we can do to help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8adtdg0N2-g (Ocean animals for kids)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFPoIU5iiYQ (A Whale’s Tale – it’s a lovely animation)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI3ZnImdBCE (My plastic bag, A children’s story about a plastic bag)
- marine environment (sea creatures, beaches, ocean etc.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8adtdg0N2-g (Ocean animals for kids)
- Marine litter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFPoIU5iiYQ (A Whale’s Tale – it’s a lovely animation)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI3ZnImdBCE (My plastic bag, A children’s story about a plastic bag)
Have a look at below at the pictures to see the ways in which Scoil Aonghusa Junior continues to work on previous themes of Litter and Waste, Energy, Water, Travel and Biodiversity.
Below is our some of our previous work from another flag.
Green school assembly
To celebrate all the work that the children have put into working towards our sixth green flag, Ms Reilly organised a special assembly.
In the assembly we reminded everyone of the different concepts we had explored such as plastics in the ocean, fair trade and reducing/reusing/recycling.
Another topic we discussed was global citizenship. We are lucky enough to have children from many different backgrounds in our school and some of them stood up to tell us how to say hello in their native language. It was great fun trying to pronounce the words!
Ms Cunningham spoke to the children about her visit to a school in South Africa where she was working with the Niall Mellon Trust. She has been visiting all the classes showing them pictures of her trip and explaining the differences between schools here in Ireland and those in South Africa. The children are really enjoying learning all about it.
To celebrate all the work that the children have put into working towards our sixth green flag, Ms Reilly organised a special assembly.
In the assembly we reminded everyone of the different concepts we had explored such as plastics in the ocean, fair trade and reducing/reusing/recycling.
Another topic we discussed was global citizenship. We are lucky enough to have children from many different backgrounds in our school and some of them stood up to tell us how to say hello in their native language. It was great fun trying to pronounce the words!
Ms Cunningham spoke to the children about her visit to a school in South Africa where she was working with the Niall Mellon Trust. She has been visiting all the classes showing them pictures of her trip and explaining the differences between schools here in Ireland and those in South Africa. The children are really enjoying learning all about it.
Scoil Aonghusa Junior working towards 6th Green flag! March 4, 2018
This year, the children of Scoil Aonghusa Junior have been very busy working towards their 6th green flag-
‘Global Citizenship, Litter and Waste’.
The children have been busy exploring themes such as:
Fairtrade
The children explored how everyday items are produced such as chocolate and bananas. They engaged with stories of banana farmers in Columbia and discovered that farmers in some countries are not treated fairly when it comes to selling their produce. The children learned that it is important for us to support fairtrade and even identified some fair trade products when they were shopping with their parents.
We watched a video explaining fair trade and how we can help called ‘Freddy and Flora’s quest for fairness’
You can watch it here:
https://youtu.be/dFpeIi-YAnMhttps://youtu.be/dFpeIi-YAnM
Above is some of the work on fairtrade that classes have on display around the school.
Other classes focused on exploring the differences between Ireland and other less well off countries. They looked at the privileges we have in our country that we sometimes take for granted and discovered that not all children in the world have the same such privileges. We were lucky enough to have Tony from Trocaire come to our school to speak to us about a little girl called Kumba living in Sierra Leone. We learned that Kumba has a very different life to ourselves and that it can be quite hard for her at times.
Even though we are always excellent at keeping Scoil Aonghusa clean and green, we used this opportunity to remind everyone of the importance of recycling, reducing the amount of non-recyclable materials we use and the importance of conserving water and energy. We have been doing so much work on earning our green flags over the last number of years and we all realise the importance of keeping up the good work.
We revised the items that could be thrown into our paper and compost bins and members of the green schools committee monitored rubbish levels in classes every day. Children from various classes also worked hard to make sure the yard was clean and tidy after each break by using litter pickers daily.
Energy monitors made sure to remind teachers to turn off lights and monitors when not in use and leaky detectives made sure that we were not losing any water through dripping taps.
The children were also excellent in coming up with ways to help the environment in their own homes and brought these important messages back to their parents.
We revised our last flag, ‘Biodiversity’ and children were reminded of all the work that we had done in our school garden such as making a bug hotel, a bat box, bird houses and planting lots of colourful flowers.
The children also watched videos about the damage that plastics are doing to the environment, in particular to the seas and oceans. They discussed ways that we could begin to help such as reusing shopping bags and coffee cups and to stop using plastic bags in our lunchboxes
You can watch videos on how plastic is affecting our planet by clicking on the links below:
Plastic Planet (a video for children)
https://youtu.be/73sGgmZoMBQ
National Geographic: How we can keep plastics out of our oceans.
https://youtu.be/73sGgmZoMBQ
Discover Primary Science- D053 – Step 1 – Invite a Science Speaker to your School- The Moon and Sixpence Theatre
Strand: Environmental Awareness and Care
Here at Scoil Aonghusa we have been taking part in the Green School’s initiative for over a decade now.
We take looking after the world around us very seriously indeed!
The school has just been awarded a certificate and the fifth green flag based on biodiversity.
Here at Scoil Aonghusa we have been taking part in the Green School’s initiative for over a decade now.
We take looking after the world around us very seriously indeed!
The school has just been awarded a certificate and the fifth green flag based on biodiversity.
The sixth green flag is all about litter and waste and the effect this has on a global level all around the world.
This is a copy of our Green School statement:
This is a copy of our Green School statement:
On the 3rd of April we invited the Moon And Sixpence Theatre to the school.
They did a rendition of Little Red Riding Hood with an environmental awareness twist.
The Big Bad Wolf was throwing rubbish all over the forest.
The pupils were shouting up at him that it is not very good to throw your litter on the ground and to always put it in the bin!
There were songs about the importance of throwing litter in the bin and recycling.
The children really enjoyed the performance and joined in all the catchy songs.
The show reminded them of the importance of throwing our waste in the bin, recycling and taking care of the world around us for a better future.
They did a rendition of Little Red Riding Hood with an environmental awareness twist.
The Big Bad Wolf was throwing rubbish all over the forest.
The pupils were shouting up at him that it is not very good to throw your litter on the ground and to always put it in the bin!
There were songs about the importance of throwing litter in the bin and recycling.
The children really enjoyed the performance and joined in all the catchy songs.
The show reminded them of the importance of throwing our waste in the bin, recycling and taking care of the world around us for a better future.
The Moon and Sixpence Puppet Theatre specialises in performances of primary schools.
Young children never tire of the traditional fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White or Jack and the Beanstalk. They are particularly delighted to have these familiar stories played out before them, with references to their school, locality and what they are learning about. The students genuinely brought the story to life.
We look forward to having them at our school again next year!
Young children never tire of the traditional fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White or Jack and the Beanstalk. They are particularly delighted to have these familiar stories played out before them, with references to their school, locality and what they are learning about. The students genuinely brought the story to life.
We look forward to having them at our school again next year!
Discover Primary Science – D053 – Step 5- Show and Tell-Science Day in Scoil Aonghusa Junior
Science Day at Scoil Aonghusa Junior
On Tuesday the 28th of April 2017, Scoil Aonghusa Junior held its biennial science day.
Parents and members of the local community were invited to the school to see science demonstrations,experiments and investigations that the pupils had been working on throughout the year so far.
Past pupils from Scoil Aonghusa Senior were invited on the day also.
Above are a variety of photographs to show case all the displays, work and learning that took place before and on the day:
Mr. O Neachtain’s second class pupils teaching and learning about floating and sinking
Ms. Buckley’s second class pupils learning about chemical reactions and showing others how to make a lava lamp
Mrs. Canavan and Mrs. Clifford’s first class pupils showcasing their investigations into sound
Mrs. McAdam’s first class pupils sorting, learning and explaining the term “transparency” using different materials and a torch
Ms. O’ Donoghue’s first class pupils made paper helicopters
Mrs. Howard’s senior infant pupils investigating and discovering the world of magnets and what they can do
Mrs. Allen’s senior infant pupils sorting, investigating, teaching and learning about the properties of materials
Mr. Keniron’s senior infant class showing how to design the best type of bridge
Ms. Kelly’s senior infant class investigate fruit!
Ms. Kelly’s senior infant class investigate fruit!
Mrs. Cronin’s junior infants play “Pass the Parcel”. They teach and learn about materials and how to describe them
Ms.Hickeys class teach and learn about materials and investigate “Which Ball is the Bounciest?
Living things!
On Tuesday the 28th of April 2017, Scoil Aonghusa Junior held its biennial science day.
Parents and members of the local community were invited to the school to see science demonstrations,experiments and investigations that the pupils had been working on throughout the year so far.
Past pupils from Scoil Aonghusa Senior were invited on the day also.
Above are a variety of photographs to show case all the displays, work and learning that took place before and on the day:
Mr. O Neachtain’s second class pupils teaching and learning about floating and sinking
Ms. Buckley’s second class pupils learning about chemical reactions and showing others how to make a lava lamp
Mrs. Canavan and Mrs. Clifford’s first class pupils showcasing their investigations into sound
Mrs. McAdam’s first class pupils sorting, learning and explaining the term “transparency” using different materials and a torch
Ms. O’ Donoghue’s first class pupils made paper helicopters
Mrs. Howard’s senior infant pupils investigating and discovering the world of magnets and what they can do
Mrs. Allen’s senior infant pupils sorting, investigating, teaching and learning about the properties of materials
Mr. Keniron’s senior infant class showing how to design the best type of bridge
Ms. Kelly’s senior infant class investigate fruit!
Ms. Kelly’s senior infant class investigate fruit!
Mrs. Cronin’s junior infants play “Pass the Parcel”. They teach and learn about materials and how to describe them
Ms.Hickeys class teach and learn about materials and investigate “Which Ball is the Bounciest?
Living things!
