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                        GREEN SCHOOL- THAT'S OUR RULE!

Green News for June

Wednesday 17th June 2015 was National COW Day (COW: Cycle on Wednesday/Weekdays) and we here in St. Brigid’s we began National Bike Week with Third and Fourth Class, Ms Casey, attending the official opening of the new Cycle Path between Chapelizod and Palmerstown. This path is off road and is for pedestrians and cyclists alike. The ribbon was cut by the Mayor of Dublin South County Council, Fintan Warfield, with a little help from the girls of St. Brigid’s G.N.S. We know this will be a great asset to our community and hope that it will encourage all to cycle.

On Wednesday we encouraged all our girls who could to cycle to school to help reach the target of 5,000people cycling to school. We had a great turn out with over 30 girls cycling to school. Well done girls! On Thursday 18th of June, our bike safety trainer, Barbara Connolly, together with other cycle safety officers took our fifth classes on a free cycle safety lesson, on the roads around our school. These girls had participated in the 6 week course run in our school and was a great opportunity for them to put their skills into practice.

The Green Team is busily gathering up paper, batteries, stamps and cards from classes to be recycled. Our compost bins on the Junior Yard are now ready and the compost will be emptied during July to help improve the soil on the Junior Yard. We hope to do more planting next year in this area. It is with great sadness that we say ‘farewell’ to our wonderful sixth class green girls, Áine, Laura, Katie and Shannon. They were an inspiration to the rest of the team and we hope they stay green in the years to come. A big ‘Thank You’ also to all of you who support our many green efforts over the year. Beir Bua! E.Casey

(Posted June '15)

Walk to School Week

National Walk to School will take place from May 11th to May 16th.

An Taisce Green-Schools’ National Walk to School Week is a country-wide initiative which will result in thousands of pupils, their parents and teachers walking to and from school, to celebrate the environmental, health, social and financial benefits of active travel on the school journey. This is the seventh year Green-Schools has run National Walk to School Week, which will be promoted to over 1500 participating schools.
 
Minister for Transport, Tourism & Sport, Paschal Donohoe TD launched the week in Ballymun with the help of students from Scoil an tSeachtar Laoch’s Green-Schools Committee:  “Encouraging our children, at an early age, to consider more sustainable ways of getting to school, other than the car, is essential. National Walk to School Week makes walking all or part of the way to school a fun experience and teaches our children the health and environmental benefits attached to doing so. This programme has been developing, year on year, and I am confident that this year it can surpass all others in terms of the number of children that will travel to school by foot during this week. Other walking initiatives undertaken by Green-Schools across the year, such as Walk On Wednesday Days, Feet First Fridays, ensure that the lessons we are teaching our children are being promoted year-round and not just for one week during the year”.
 Building on the success of last year’s National Walk to School Week, Green-Schools hopes that schools will help achieve the target of 20,000 pupils walking to school all over Ireland on National WOW (Walk On Wednesday) Day on May 13th. Last year 41,000 students, in schools registered with Green-Schools, walked all or part of the way to school: the highest figure recorded to date.

St. Brigid’s hopes to be part of that fantastic number so we would encourage all those who can to walk to school that week and especially on  May 13th!

 

Green News - April '15

As part of Eco-week, run by South Dublin County Council, third and fourth class were visited by Emma Murphy. Emma works for a charitable group called ‘Amawele’ which means ‘Twin’ in Xhosa a language spoken in South Africa. ‘Amawele’ link SDC schools to rural South African schools educating both sets of students on food security, sustainable development and environmental awareness. Their vision is to develop meaningful partnerships between school communities in South Africa and Ireland, enabling the learning sharing and experiencing of local knowledge and issues. It is hoped that this will promote global and local learning exchanges and enhance an understanding of life in each other’s world.

Emma told us about the townships in South Africa and explained how some children live there. We also learned about the schools in these communities, the food the children eat at school and the lessons they study. However it was even better coming from the horse’s mouth, so after break we made a skype call to a rural school in South Africa and asked the students there our own questions.

Firstly we introduced ourselves in groups of four and the students from South Africa introduced themselves. Then we asked questions and they asked questions! We were amazed that there were 1001 students in their school and they were amazed that our school was an all-girl school! As we are studying energy this year for our seventh Green Flag we asked them about electricity and energy in the townships. We really learned a lot about their life and perhaps we will twin with a school. Watch this space!

 

Green News - March '15

We celebrated our ‘Day of Action’ or ‘Green Day’ as it is known in St. Brigid’s on Friday, March 20th. Talk about fifty shades of green…we definitely saw about seventy! The girls looked fantastic in their green outfits. Some even created energy efficient cars, light bulbs, thunder storms and wind powered turbines!   Some of our girls dressed in their national costumes which were beautiful. They explained the colours and symbols on their costumes and were very informative. Thank you girls for putting in such an effort!

 Unfortunately events in space, the solar eclipse, left the morning a bit dark for our walk through the community but this did not dampen our spirits and thanks to all the guardians ,parents, aunties, uncles, grandparents and friends of St. Brigid’s an enjoyable walk was had by all.

Back in school we had a prize giving for the absolutely fabulous ‘Energy Monsters’, ‘Energy Guzzlers’ and ‘Energy Superheroes’, designed, drawn and manufactured by our wonderful girls in St. Brigid’s G.N.S. The girls put a lot of effort into reusing materials to make these fabulous creations which are now on display throughout the school. We then had our ‘ceolchoirm’ where each class performed an item about green issues or an item as Gaeilge for Seachtain na Gaeilge. Some of the senior classes even made up their own raps and songs about recycling, reusing and reducing. Congratulations to you all.

 Ms Casey our Green Schools co-ordinator had some good news and some bad news for the girls. Bad news is we need to work on cutting down our electricity consumption in the school by turning off lights and computers when not in use. Good news is, six classes kept their complete set of twenty stickers for composting since January. This is a huge turnaround from last year and all the teachers were delighted…no homework to correct!

Thank you again to all the adults who helped to make our Green Day a truly special occasion this year.

(Posted Mar '15)

Green news - Jan '15

Welcome back to another Green Year in St. Brigid’s! We have been very busy carrying out our Electrical Audit in the school to find out how we use energy in school and how we might save some energy and more importantly  some money! We counted all the electrical appliances in the school and the amount of hours the appliances are running in the school. We will use the wattage to work out the amount of money we are spending and then try to see where we can cut down. Check out www.greenschoolsireland.org and go to the energy audit section. There it will give you a rough estimate of how much it costs to run electrical items! You could save money. Remember never leave anything on standby. It’s still using energy and wasting money. Phone chargers still use 20% power even if your phone is charged!

Ms. Casey’s third and fourth classes were in charge of the Water Theme and produced some really interesting posters for the Green Board and school environment, reminding us all of the importance of water and how to save it.

Here are their Top Tips!

  • Have showers instead of baths and save water.

  • Only fill the kettle to the amount needed. You will save water, energy and money!

  • Use a bucket to collect rain water for your indoor and outdoor plants.

  • Never use a hose in the garden. It uses toomuch water.

  • Wash your dog in the garden and you will water your plants and grass at the same time.

  • Using full dishwater uses less water than letting the tap run to wash items individually.

  • Always have a full load in your washing machine.

  • Never let the tap run when you are washing your teeth!

  • Use a basin in your sink!

  • Reuse your bath water to wash the dog!

 

 

We are also running a competition to promote our energy theme. Junior Infants to Second class can draw or paint a Super Energy Saver or a Wicked Energy Guzzler! Third to Sixth Classes can draw, paint or make from recycled materials a Super Energy Saver or a Wicked Energy Guzzler. Entries by Monday 9th of February please.

Updated Jan 2015

Green News -  Christmas 2014

 

We had a busy time this half term getting our Action Plan ready for the year ahead. This is a plan of the work we are undertaking in St Brigid’s to achieve our seventh green flag for Global citizenship: Energy. This plan will be ready after the Christmas break and will be displayed on our Green notice board. We received a lovely letter from the Peat Conservation Trust based in Lully more Co, Kildare thanking us for collecting cards and stamps which is used to raise funds to protect our boglands.

Sixth class and third/fourth Classes also had a talk with Ms Fiadh Mc Dhonnchadha an environmental scientist currently studying for a master’s degree in NUI, Maynooth. She gave a presentation about Green Issues especially the role of conservation of water and energy and was extremely impressed with the wealth of knowledge which our girls already displayed on the subject!

We ask you to remember to think Green this Christmas-recycle Christmas trees properly and think Fair Trade when buying presents. Thank you again to our Green Team, Ms Casey and to you for your continued support.

Green School Committee

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Welcome to another Green year. As you know last year we achieved our sixth green flag for Global Citizenship; Litter and Waste. This year we are again going global with our new theme Global Citizenship; Energy. Our new Green Committee who were elected by their classes are busily coming up with ideas for our environmental review and action plan to help us achieve our seventh flag in 2016.

Our new committee are Áine,(Chairperson), Laura (Vice-chairperson), Katie (Secretary), Shannen ,Tara,Jessica,Ellie,Kirsty,Carlie,Isabelle,Zoe and Jessica. Each senior class is in charge of teaching a junior class how to recycle paper, batteries, stamps, birthday cards, corks and compost. Each class is also in charge of maintaining a flag. Our theme for this month,October, is Travel. We are encouraging all our girls and their parents/guardians to travel to school in a green way. Our Silver Boot award will be awarded each week to the class that makes the biggest effort.

Updated Oct 2014

C.O.W. Day / Bling Your Bike! 

September 24th 2014

 

Green News - Sept '14

 

A heartfelt ‘Thank You’ to all those who made our COW day 2014, such a huge success. We had over 280 ‘wheeled vehicles’ on the premises and many were ‘blinged’ to within an inch of their handlebars! The Green team worked hard to make the day run smoothly. We used the opportunity to make this day not only about cycling, but about travelling in a green way. Every class was visited by our wonderful Lollipop Lady, Dee who explained about crossing the road carefully and safely. Our Junior Classes were also visited by Mr Donoghue and Ms Ní Annracháin who showed the girls their bikes and our middle classes were visited by Mr Darragh Zaidan, an international cyclist while the Gardaí visited our senior classes to talk about safety on the roads among other issues. We are continuing our WOW and COW days with the awarding of the Silver Boots every week to the classes who travel in a green way to school. We also remind everyone to recycle their batteries with us in St. Brigid’s as we start our work on the seventh green flag for Global Citizenship, Energy. A huge thank you to Ms Casey and the Green team for all their hard work. Cycle safety lessons will begin for fifth classes after the mid-term break. Thank you again for your continued support.

 

Green Day 2014- Global Citizenship

​​Every year we have a Day of Action or Green Day. This is usually around St, Patrick’s Day where the girls come to school dressed in green, reflecting the current theme being worked on by the school..

 

 

Green Award Ceremony

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On Tuesday 20th of May 2014, Róisin, Chelsea and Ms Casey went to collect our Sixth Green Flag in The Helix in DCU. There were over 70 schools there from South Dublin and Wicklow.  Some schools were receiving their first Green Flag and we along with five others received our sixth. There are over 70 countries now involved with Green Schools. Lots of the ideas we used in St. Brigid’s are now being used in China!

 

 
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