Today we begin!

Tonight is the start of our staff, here at school, beginning to revise our curriculum plans for September and for 2019/20. We have a climate change plan that will need to be slotted in, alongside other subject areas. We have revised our curriculum intent and we are ready to start the journey of ensuring our children are really ready to take on the world!

This year we have included Climate change learning as part of this vision – encouraging children to make a difference to their world.

With our new knowledge from the UNCCLearn programme and CCTeachers Academy we really will make a difference.

 

And so it begins…

On Friday, not only did I start our schools first climate change blog, but I also wrote out to parents to explain what was happening. I have added a section to our weekly newsletter and have promised to add something climate change related each week. This came about because last week I made a pledge to act now on the CC Teachers Academy facebook page. This is what it said…

As the first UNCCLearn teacher in Derbyshire and one of the first head teachers in the country, I wanted to share my Climate Teacher pledge with the group (CC Teacher’s academy on Facebook).

I am the headteacher of a three form entry infant and nursery. We have been on this journey since the start with Harwood education, Melanie Harwood and Denise Meissner. It’s been a long year, with many curriculum changes from joining the postcard challenge in September to finishing the accreditation in May. I am now ready to take the next climate change step, after becoming UNCCLearn accredited teacher. My pledge to ACTION!!! Here goes…

I pledge that in the next few weeks and months I will:

  1. Promise to create a Early years climate change resource list, alongside YPO.
  2. I will create a climate change page on our school website to share our curriculum work so far (EYFS and Key stage 1).
  3. I will add a section to our weekly newsletter to share our progress, message or climate change thoughts with our community.
  4. I will contact our local support business (Smurfit Kappa) to get them on board.
  5. Over the summer I will create a EYFS climate change blog (and share it in our website).

My aim is to spread the message to my children, staff, community and to teachers everywhere that we only have one world and no second chance with it. No matter how young we are we can all make a difference. Every step forwards is a step to a stronger world.

What’s your climate teacher pledge?

So I am already ahead of my plan by starting this blog! I just need to remember to add to it on a regular basis.

Thought for the day:

What if every teacher across the world pledged to make a difference, in their school, to support Climate Change? Maybe schools can move mountains one pledge at a time. I will certainly be encourage my team to make their own pledge.

This idea came from some work I found, on a google trawl, on a website called Connect4climate  (see link below). It is from 2015, but still relevant. My plan for the future is to get my staff, parents and children to make a yearly / termly commitment to climate change (plus i loved the picture, simple but effective).

https://www.connect4climate.org/initiative/pledging-takeon-climate-change

 

In September 2018 our Year 1 and 2 children did this as part of the Guinness World record attempt, see below:

Record-breaking Swiss Alps postcard sends message against climate change

The display easily set the Guinness world record for the number of postcards strung together in a single image.
A massive collage of 125,000 drawings and messages from children around the world about climate change was rolled out on a shrinking Swiss glacier on Friday 16th November 2018, smashing the world record for giant postcards.

The mosaic of postcards, measuring 2,500 square metres (26,910 square feet), was laid out in the snow on the Aletsch glacier in the Swiss Alps, at an altitude of 3,400 metres.

The event aims to “boost a global youth climate movement ahead of the next global climate conference (COP24) in Poland”, next month, said the WAVE foundation, which organised the event in cooperation with Swiss authorities.

The display easily set the Guinness world record for the number of postcards strung together in a single image, beating the last record held by a collage of 16,000 individual postcards

Let’s get started…

This year we at Bolsover Infant and Nursery School made a pledge to beginning looking at our school’s commitment to climate change and reviewing our climate  change curriculum across school.

In the Autumn term the children (in key stage 1) made their very own commitment on a postcard, about how they could help lower the worlds temperature. Some children promised to use less resource ie: water and electric, some promised to walk or scooter to school instead of drive, others promised to do some planting. In the spring term all of the children spent a week learning about how they could help ‘save the world’.

Since then I have been working hard to become one of the first teachers and head teacher’s in the country, and definitely the first in Derbyshire, to become an accredited United Nations Climate Change teacher. This I achieved in May and have now become a member of a select group of only 80 accredited teachers leading on the climate change initiative in the UK.

Over the coming months we will be reviewing all our planning and looking at making bold steps into ensuring our children know they are making a difference to the world. Recycle bins have been order and plans are definitely shaping up.

This year we have also continued our work with ’Smurfit Kappa’, they have been really supportive in helping us to use more recycled materials in and around school. You may have seen our Sports’ Day’ podium that has added to our recycled garden furniture of chairs, benches and palate vehicles. We also took delivery, a few weeks ago of our new (recycled) tyre tables/chairs and the plans for them are afoot. Our immediate plans are to add a new section to our newsletter so that we can share our plans, thoughts and new learning with our community, as well as start this blog to share this with the world.

We look forward to seeing what we can achieve together…