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Eco-Schools at YWJS

Congratulations On Passing Your Eco-Schools Green Flag!

June 2022

Congratulations!!!

Fantastic work!

We are very pleased to tell you that you and your Eco-Committee at Yeadon Westfield Junior School have been awarded an Eco-Schools Green Flag.

We reviewed your application and noted the following:

We love your democratic and fair approach to appointing Eco-Committee members. It’s wonderful to see how other pupils played a part in the selection process. It's clear that you've done some amazing Eco-Schools work this academic year, but we would love to have seen your minutes to understand the planning phases. It was brilliant to see how completing your Environmental Review helped your Eco-Committee to spot gaps in your school's existing environmental activity and set ambitious goals. It demonstrates an insightful and self-aware approach to your Eco-Schools work and highlights, at the same time, the stellar efforts that had already been made towards creating a biodiverse school environment. You have clearly given much consideration to your Action Plan. It was concise, SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound) and clearly informed by the findings from your Environmental Review. We love how your young people took ownership of this fundamental task. They did a fabulous job! We love how teachers have carefully and thoughtfully embedded environmental activities into the curriculum. Building bee houses and bug hotels, and improving the marine habitat by involving the children in cleaning out the school pond is a wonderful way to engage and educate while having lots of fun! We were really impressed by your use of whole-school videos and newsletters to promote and involve young people and members of the wider community in your Eco-Schools work. You've clearly looked externally and engaged with different campaigns, people and organisations to provide your students with meaningful and impactful experiences such as tree planting and litter picks. Fantastic work! It's wonderful to see how your three actions inform your Eco-Code. It’s clear that your Eco-Committee took great care writing it. The parent quote is further testament to how your excellent work this academic year has both educated and empowered your students to build on all of their wonderful achievements. Congratulations to you all for your thoroughly-deserved Green Flag with Distinction!

As always THANK YOU very much for your hard work, we are so proud of all our schools and the collective achievements they have made to protect our planet for future generations. We look forward to working with Yeadon Westfield Junior School again next academic year to help you expand on your eco-actions and successes of this year.

Have a great summer break,

The Eco-Schools Team

Eco-schools learning journey

What is Eco-Schools?

In our experience, educators and young people care deeply about environmental issues and have a strong desire to actively protect our planet. However, environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity-loss or plastic pollution are huge global issues and the thought of tackling them can be intimidating, leaving many feeling overwhelmed and wondering ‘Where do I begin?’

The Eco-Schools programme provides a simple, seven-step framework that answers this question whilst empowering young people to make a difference in their school, local community and beyond. Since 1994, millions of young people around the world have worked through the Eco-Schools Seven Steps before being recognised for their efforts with a prestigious Eco-Schools Green Flag.

At Yeadon Westfield Junior School, we have connected our Summer Term activities to four of the Ten Eco-Schools Topics. These topics break large, global issues like climate change into more manageable and directed themes that prompt young people to consider environmental changes that they can make in their school and everyday lives.

Have a look at our learning journeys to see what we learn in each year group. We also link our Eco-Schools work to our geographical skills and fieldwork in geography so please take a look at our Summer Term work linked to this.

Eco Schools

Year 4 - Summer 2 - Eco Schools - Litter pick in the local area and around school

Year 4 - Summer 2 - DT/Science/Eco-Schools - Making lamps from repurposed items

Summer Term 2024 - Year 5 - A Day Out In Esholt Woods

On our walk to Esholt Woods we used our fieldwork skills to study biodiversity. On our way to the woods we looked at physical and human features and plotted them on a map.

In Esholt Woods we identified one area of woodland and described it using the map, scale and key.

We used quadrats to observe the range of plants and animals living in a woodland habitat to gauge biodiversity.

Summer Term 2024 - Year 4 - Class Debate

Our debate was whether McDonalds should build a new supersized eatery on Nunroyd park or not! This links to our English topic and the eco schools topic. Speaking in public - and listening - are difficult skills and the children do well here.

Summer Term 2023 - Year 4 - Global Waste Reduction

The children debated the question 'How can we help and encourage a reduction in waste locally and globally?' Today we worked in groups to produce campaigns aimed at companies that are not very environmentally friendly.  The children came up with ways to advise these big companies how to be more environmentally friendly and produce less waste. The companies the children named have been caught doing 'greenwashing'.

Summer Term 2023 - Year 5 - Another Muddy Puddle Day

Fieldwork - What is the biodiversity of our school grounds and why does it need protecting?
1 - Biodiversity audit of the school grounds. We used a map of YWJS school grounds to find human and physical features.
2 - We then examined the biodiversity of one area of the school grounds by placing a quadrat in that area. We sketched the area, created a tally chart of what we saw and used magnifying glasses to find out more information.

3 - We re-designed the nature garden to maximise biodiversity, remembering the importance of making it pollinator friendly.

4 - In the afternoon we put our gardening skills to work and updated the nature garden, adding new flower beds and redesigning the bug hotels to improve the biodiversity of our school grounds.

Summer Term 2023 - Year 5 - Field Trip To Esholt Woods

On our journey to Esholt woods we used an ordnance survey map to pinpoint physical and human features along the way. In the woods we explored the area by Guiseley Beck using our maps and learning about the features shown on it. In small groups we then used quadrats to observe the range of plants and animals living in a woodland habitat to gauge biodiversity. 

Summer Term 2022 - Year 4I - Summer Muddy Puddle Day

The children took part in a litter survey of the school grounds followed by a litter pick linked to our eco schools topic. After break they did some outdoor maths linked to the topic of properties of shape and drew acute, obtuse and right angles on the playground in chalk. The children went into Jack's garden in the afternoon and sketched what they could see through a view finder, using Monet as inspiration, and created a water colour landscape painting.

Summer Term 2022 - Year 5 - Eco Schools and Biodiversity

This term in Year 5, we have been learning about Biodiversity as our Eco-Schools topic focus. We have learnt about biomes that support low biodiversity e.g. deserts, and high biodiversity e.g. tropical rainforests. Importantly, we have been learning about the effect that humans have on biodiversity and how they can reduce biodiversity by building houses and other infrastructure. We have looked at how we have learnt to balance the human effect on our ecosystems with things like quotas to prevent overfishing and replanting to avoid deforestation. Here, we are building bug hotels, pollinator homes and even bug baths to encourage biodiversity in the school grounds. We have areas for ground-dwelling creatures and elevated ones for others! Despite the hot weather we popped out and back in to create these homes from recycled and scavenged materials.

Eco-Warriors