Press release for week beginning 8th April

Throughout the week beginning 4^th April 2022 St Michael’s Primary School have been conducting activities to make our school a more eco-friendly place to learn. The activities are leading on from ‘COP27’ which was held at St Michael’s on 9^th March. The Rights Ambassadors and Eco-Council children took over the staff meeting and led the teachers in understanding why climate change is so important and what we can do to help as a school (Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children have the right to a say in issues that affect them). Because of this meeting, all teachers across the school made climate change promises with their classes which are being upheld throughout the rest of the year.

This week, the children across the school have been working on climate change based activities to help spread the message of COP27 and continue to improve the eco message of our school with the aim of working with the local community on this matter. Year 4 have written letters to Kingsteignton Council asking for support for the swifts living in our area, KS1 have been planting lots of seeds to encourage more insects in our school, all classes have been collecting tin foil for recycling (we have currently collected £260 worth and are now running competitions across classes to see who can collect the most), Year 3 have been making bug hotels and Year 1 have designed ecofriendly reusable bags. There is also a campaign across school using the hash tag #TOTL (turn off the lights) to encourage classes to stop using as much electricity when it is not needed.

All of these ideas have been initiated by the children of our school starting with the Rights Ambassadors and Eco council and working down to individual children who have been inspired by the campaign. We will continue to work on this project over the coming months and years; Oli in Year 6 said ‘If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem’. Thank you to Otter Nurseries, Jack’s Patch, for supplying the seeds.

Head of School, Kate Arnold says ‘the children have inspired us to turn off our lights in the office, use less electricity and cut back on our bills in the process. We are very proud of their enthusiasm and maturity in leading our school with this project.’

Exercising their right to a say in issues that affect them, Year 4 are using their English lessons this week to write letters to Kingsteignton Council asking for support in bringing more swifts to our school area. Below is the letter written by Mrs Buff’s English class. Mrs Amey’s English class are working on theirs and will be able to share by the end of the week.

Dear Sir/Madam, 

As a Rights Respecting School, we have been learning about Article 24 which says that we have the right to a clean, healthy and happy environment. We therefore want to protect our environment for the future. We are writing to ask for a grant from the council to pay for more swift boxes in our school area. Please can we have more swift boxes, we don’t want to see the lovely swifts in our area going extinct. 

Swifts are in danger because they are losing their cosy, warm homes, food and water. Swifts often live in the rooves of people’s houses.  Their homes are disappearing because people block them off when they fix their rooves. This is bad because swifts will try over and over again to get their nests back and will eventually die trying even if they can’t get to it. 

Swifts are brilliant creatures because they help look after the environment. They keep insect numbers under control so that we are not overwhelmed with irritating insects. They also eat lots of insects that are troublesome to humans like mosquitos and aphids. There is a problem though- there are less and less insects than there used to be because humans are damaging their habitats and building on areas where they would thrive. This is the swift’s main source of food- they can collect up to 1000 insects at a time when feeding their babies so we must do more to help. 

We don’t want swifts to become extinct because they have been around since the dinosaurs- 65 million years ago (around the time when Tyrannosaurus Rex became extinct). During this time, nothing about the swifts has changed except where they live.  They used to nest in rocky caves and high trees, now they nest under the boards and rooves of houses. They made this change because we have been cutting down trees and blocking caves so that we can have more room for houses. This makes it harder for swifts to nest and causes more problems when they want to come back to the same nests every year. We don’t think it is fair that the swifts homes are being damaged for our houses.  

We can help solve this problem though by building more swift boxes high up so that the swifts can return every summer. We can build more ponds in our area, let grass grow longer and plant more flowers to provide the swifts with food, water and plenty of insects so they can nest, breed and live alongside humans. This would mean we would have more cute chicks and families of swifts will keep going for hundreds of years from now. 

We know you can help by providing us with a grant so we can build swift boxes in our school area. There are already lots of swifts living peacefully in St Michael’s Church and we want to encourage more to our area. We look forward to seeing what you write to us. 

Yours Faithfully,  

Year 4, 

St Michael’s Primary School 

Thinking ahead to COP 27 – when leaders will meet to discuss environmental issues – Year Six helped looked after our school environment by litter-picking, weeding the ‘bee highway’ and making the grounds more presentable.