Month: September 2019

After last weeks strike action we have spent some of our staff meeting time discussing what we have learnt. The children had clearly learnt a lot about the topic and could share snippets of appropriate learning. They could also use a lot of new vocabulary very well, apart from the word ‘carbon dioxide’ which we all had problems saying! They had also picked up on a lot of ecological issues especially around animals and change environments. However, when it came to defining what the term ‘Climate Change’ actually referred to most struggled to do so accurately.

Please click on the links to see our mini clips:

IMG_6265 IMG_6270.TRIM IMG_6271 IMG_6274

So our first point of learning was that, as a staff, we will need to spend some time working on an explanation of what climate change is for young children. Making sure it is simple to understand and articulate for the very young, but that ensures they understand that when referring to climate change we are taking about the heating up of the earth due to the rise in carbon dioxide. The children were very clear about the earth getting hotter, but their conversation was less clear when discussing why. We have identified this as our first task.

The teaching staff were also very eager to get signed into the training and get going with the eduCCate global training. Our first twilight is the 21st October and we should all be fully trained by the end of November.

We were also excited about the positive reaction to the ‘UN-strike’ from parents. No children were withdrawn from the strike and we had many parents discussing how their child had been talking about their learning. Its been really interesting this week to see the difference in the children’s previous knowledge. It has been really clear that the children whose families are really on board and have been verbally in support of our work in this arena, or who themselves have a vested interest, have shined in their lessons. The key to really getting children and family support seems to be to encourage engagement from both children and their parents. So watch this space…

Update:

Dear Parents’

Yesterday, as you know, we informed all parents of our intentions to join the #Fridaysforfuture stike action, with an UN-Strike day. Your response to this has been overwhelmingly positive and we really do appreciate this.
As part of this response a parent, was kind enough, to share with us their views on the matter. This has led us to a slight change in our plans as a response. The view was as such:

If all the kids are sat in class learning about Climate Change, they are not part of the immediate process for change …… it is also educational for pupils to learn, and appreciate, the right to peaceful protest ……. and why it’s so important in effecting change in a democratic society.

To this end, as a teaching staff, we have ponded this response and have made the decision to change our plans slightly. Tomorrow we will also take 10 minutes out of our day to offer, the children in key stage 1, an opportunity to take part in our ‘Song for change protest’. We will ask any child that wishes to join us (no child will be forced to, they will be asked to make an informed choice), after being taught about peaceful protest (at an age appropriate level) to raises their voices in song. Children will take part in our ‘Song for Change protest’ altogether, on the field, as a sign that they would like to see our leaders take action about Global warming.

Year 1 and 2 children will be sitting on the field for 10 minutes, sharing their learning from the day and singing our climate change song. If you do not wish your child to take part, please just let the teacher know.
(as educators we have made a decision to only do this with Year 1 and 2. We felt the children needed a certain amount of maturity, in order to make a chose as the whether they wanted to take part). As always, if you have any worries or concerns, please see Miss Cowan.

Letter to our parents:

Climate Change Strikes on Friday 20th September

Greta Thunberg (a leading young activist in the Climate Change arena) and leading youth strikers for climate action from across the world has recently called for young people to join a global general strike on 20 September, this has been labelled #Fridaysforfuture.

About #FridaysForFuture
#FridaysForFuture is a movement that began in August 2018, after 15 year old Greta Thunberg sat in front of the Swedish parliament every school day for three weeks, to protest against the lack of action on the climate crisis. She posted what she was doing on Instagram and Twitter and it soon went viral.
On the 8th of September 2018, Greta decided to continue striking every Friday until the Swedish policies provided a safe pathway well under 2-degree C, i.e. in line with the Paris agreement.
The hashtags #FridaysForFuture and #Climatestrike, spread and many students and adults began to protest outside of their parliaments and local city halls all over the world. On Friday 20th September 2019 leading youth Climate Change groups and Greta are asking pupils and schools to join them in demanding climate change action by striking once again.

Greta Thunberg has said, “We’re asking adults to step up alongside us,” the youth strikers. “Step out of your comfort zone to make this a turning point in our history. This is about crossing lines”.

For us as a school we do not see that asking any child to miss school for the day is a good idea. We believe that actually, what would be much more effective is if schools put some time aside on Friday 20th September for teaching children about climate change. This would hopefully encourage parents and children to get involved in the debate and may evoke local action, which in turn may affect more national response.

So to this end we will be supporting #FridaysforFuture by having an ‘Unstrike’ day and using some time, on this day, to spend with children thinking about how they can get involved with Climate Change action (believing education is better than striking). Please watch the Friday Note Home to see what we get up to.

Well, I cant believe that we are already two and a bit weeks into the new term.

We have busy  settling children into new classrooms, learning routines and getting to know each other. While in the background the staff worked on ensuring our new climate change scheme of learning was embedded in our planning.

I spent the whole of the first week and a half preparing for Audit. This means preparing lots of paperwork and organising papers from the last four years. Unfortunately we did have to speak to the audit team about the amount of paperwork and photocopying the process involved. This was a huge issue and when replicated across the whole education system would mean many trees being cut down.

Last week we also were the recipients of the news that our long awaited classroom building was now at an end. Ideal homes and Beightons arrived on site last week and have begun the ground works ready for the building to arrive,  sometime in a few weeks. Unfortunately this has meant the removal of a row of conifer trees and two apple blossom trees (once we get nearer to the building arriving). As a climate change school this has been upsetting, but we have promised to replant once we take back our school site fully.

This week the children also got involved with the company skip2Bfit. This was a healthy living and eating workshop, around skipping. However, as always we spoke with John the guy who was delivering and discussed our Climate Change work. He made a promise that the child who re-used their Blueberry plastic container for snack the longest, would receive a price from him. He also left us a blueberry plant to put in our school grounds. So we have already begun to mitigate for our loss of tress!

Plans are now being made for September 20th and #fridaysforfuture. But that’s a whole different blog!

Today is my first day back in school (with other people, I have actually been in for the last five days working in my office alone!) Our teacher’s and support staff have two INSET days and then our children return Wednesday.

So in our training today, we have covered all the same ground as usual including Staff handbooks, timetables, diary dates, safeguarding rules etc. However, today we have also begun to dip our toe in our new ‘Climate Change ‘ curriculum. Staff have spent most of the day revising their existing curriculum planning to ensure ‘Climate Change’ is well and truly on our school curriculum. This is not just as a bolt on to what we already do. But will, well and truly, become part of the curriculum we offer everyday.

Staff were all up for doing this, and in discussions both formally and informally through out the day, made a commitment which just blew my socks off!

Today, every member of staff in our school has made a commitment to complete the full Climate Change teacher course before the end of the Autumn term. This means all of our leaders, teaching staff, support staff and pastoral staff will join me, the first UNCCheadteacher, in become accredited Climate Change teachers. This will make us the first school in the UK to make this commitment. All of this without any pushing from me. How lucky am I and the children of Bolsover to have such dedicated staff?

We will make a difference one step at a time!