Eco School

Environmental advocacy is something that we are passionate about at Beaver Road. Through the lens of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the themes of biodiversity, sustainable living and conservation are at the front and centre of our learning, living and citizenship.

'Voices for change' was this year's Global Goals theme, in acknowledging the urgency of our Eco conversation and action.

We responded through:

Campaign work - a week long programme of protests and direct action to educate our community about clean air and safer travel 

Sustainable building and eco brick construction     

'Life on Land' - community clean-up and litter picking   

Switch-off fortnight - saving energy 

Sustainable living - UNICEF Honesty Shop

We established our Eco-School collective In March 2021 and the children have done a great job of leading our school community on our journey towards a sustainable lifestyle.

Our Eco reps regularly lead assemblies and campaigns, and have guided the rest of our Beaver Road students in carrying out an environmental review. Every class was given a topic to review. The committee studied the environmental review and then voted on three topics. We got a shout out on the Eco-Schools website!

The topics chosen for our Beaver Road Action Plan are biodiversity, energy and marine.

On Earth Day we raised £420 to spend on our sustainable garden, and on Ocean Day we raised £480, which we donated to sealifetrust.org. We also made this a day for creating art works and objects out of recycled materials, in an effort to prevent some waste from entering our oceans, and to raise awareness of how our actions can affect marine life. We enjoyed sharing our creations with one another in a whole school zoom assembly.

Our sustainable garden is evolving nicely, and we have even harvested lettuce, potatoes, carrots, corn and tomatoes. We have built a bug hotel, and have many happy customers.

In November we took part in "switch off fortnight" and the World Warriors enjoyed informing the rest of the school how we could change our behaviour to save energy. They monitored the energy meters, and made stickers to remind people to switch things off. 

We also planted a yew hedge at our Junior School in November, together with Barlow Medical Centre. This took place on two Saturday mornings, and brought many members of the community together, as well as providing some beautiful greenery that will eventually grow into a "green screen" to help clean the air and shield the site from traffic pollution. 

Some of us took part in Ecobrick training on zoom in January, and we are going to make some plant pots out of eco bricks. Information will shortly be sent out about this activity, and students are invited to join the event, along with parents and carers.

We have started to do litter picks at both schools, using litter pickers bought with money raised on Earth Day. These have been well attended and enjoyable. 

In March we planted 20 wild cherry trees at our First School site, as part of the nationwide campaign to "plant a tree for the Queen's Jubilee".  All year groups were involved, and many classes chose to name their trees. The trees were kindly provided by treeappeal.com. We are planning to plant some more trees at the Junior site in October. 

We visited Talacre beach for Ocean Day, taking our litter pickers along with us. We are determined to make our planet a cleaner and healthier place for all living beings!