Welcome To Our New Website!
Welcome To Our New Website!
Birchwood Primary School

Eco Council

 
 
Welcome to Eco Council!
 

Our new Eco Councillors are hard at work already and have been supporting the Tamworth Food Bank collection for our Harvest Celebrations. Photographed is just a tiny selection of your generous donations. Hundreds of items have been collected so thank you to everyone that has donated and made a real difference to the wider community. 

The successful candidates for this year’s Eco Council are:

  • Juniper 2 - Ava
  • Larch 2 - Poppy
  • Oak 3 - Phoebe
  • Maple 3 - Spencer
  • Pine 4 - Autumn 
  • Redwood 4 - Maisie 
  • Sycamore 5 - Sophie
  • Teak 5 - Paddy
  • Willow 6 - Bobby
  • Willow 6 -Scarlet
  • Yew 6 - Finn
  • Yew 6 - Sophie R 

Additional pupils are voted for in Year 6 to support the sustainability checks in Reception classes. Year 1 pupils will join us after the half term break. 

Birchwood Primary Earns the Eco-Schools Green Flag! 

Last academic year, our amazing Eco Council – 14 pupils from Years 1 to 6 – worked hard to make Birchwood a more sustainable and eco-friendly place. With the support of Mrs Bayliss and Mrs Davis, the council led projects that encouraged everyone in school to think more carefully about how we look after our planet. Their fantastic efforts were recognised with the Eco-Schools Green Flag Award – an internationally recognised achievement that celebrates schools making a real difference to the environment. We are so proud of this accomplishment!  The Eco-Schools programme has been running for over 30 years and is now active in more than 100 countries. Here in England, it involves over a million young people every year, all working together to create positive change.

Well done, Eco Council – you’ve set a brilliant example for all of us and if this is something you’d like to get involved in, please speak to your teacher about becoming an eco-councillor for this year! Voting takes place soon!

Eco-council have been hard at work 'Spring' cleaning our school grounds, ensuring that every area of our school is free from litter and rubbish. They have also ensured that any equipment that has accidentally been left out after break or lunch is also returned to its rightful place. Keeping our school grounds clean and tidy, is very important and Eco-council are always sharing their tops tips to keep our school clean and litter free.
What an enthusiastic bunch of club members we have this half term! Pupils in the Eco and Gardening Club have learned about the recycling aims of our school and helped design posters to support their classes, plus spent time getting to know the plants in the school grounds.  We even managed a spot of litter picking. 
Our 2024-2025 Eco Councillors have been elected, congratulations to the children that were voted for by their classmates for demonstrating the great characteristics required to support our green aims.
 
Hazel 1 - Oliver Webb
Elm 1 - Eloise Taylor
Larch 2 - Jacob Mason
Juniper 2 - Fynley Jackson
Oak 3 - Erin Harvett
Maple 3 - Lucie Bayliss
Redwood 4 - Finn White
Pine 4 - Daisy Elliott
Sycamore 5 - Georgia Higgins
Teak 5 - Eva Howard
Willow 6 - Jacon Kelt
Yew 6 - Cassius Johnson
With the help of BASE Skills club members, the Eco Councillors have been busy this half term. They’ve weeded, litter picked and recycled as well as making their own compost plant pots to plant sunflower seeds. We look forward to seeing them grow.
Our Eco Councillors were visited by Ruth from Warwickshire County Council this week and they had a workshop on recycling. Ruth has challenged our team to think of a waste-reducing based competition so watch out for this from September!  Ruth then delivered an assembly to Key Stage 2 pupils and shared the journey our waste goes on from North Warwickshire households. Children got to see the future of waste management and how the state-of-the-art technology sorts our waste.

On Tuesday 21st May, Birchwood’s Eco and School council visited Southfields Farm in Coleshill. Pupils enjoyed learning about how the farm grows crops for different purposes, the importance of wildlife and how animals are used on the farm. They enjoyed testing different soil types and how crops grow in different conditions. We learnedabout how worms are crucial to helping out the farmer and enjoyed making a wild flower journey stick in one of the meadows and bug hunting using nets. Pupils journeyed around the working farm on a tractor trailer, which the pupils said was great fun! In the afternoon, we enjoyed looking after some of the animal residents on the farm such as donkeys, chickens, pigs, lambs, guinea pigs and some very energetic goats! All the pupils represented Birchwood very well and John the farmer praised pupils on their enthusiasm and inquisitive nature. We are very proud of all our pupils that attended. We look forward to visiting again next year. 

It was lovely to see the Eco Councillors supporting each other to make an apple and pear crumble with the fruit they harvested from our orchard. Fantastic and safe knife skills applied from their DT lessons too!
 
Special thanks goes to Mrs Stubbs and Mrs Fisher who supported them.
KS2 children have been working with Darrell Wakelam 3D art pieces to decorate our school. Our Eco Councillors loved this piece that supports our fight against single-use plastic.
A new academic year means the arrival of a new season for our keen gardeners and eco-councillors. Last year’s teams did an amazing job of brightening up our garden and making it more insect-friendly and many bees are still keenly pollinating when the sun decides to shine. We had a great crop of beans and beautiful sunflowers thanks to the science learning in Year 1 and 2 also.
 
Our new club starts next week headed by our newly elected eco-councillors and there is a lot of clearing and pruning to be done as well as getting ready for spring.
 
Congratulations to our new eco councillors:
 
Year 1 - Carter and Albie, Year 2 - Era and Millie, Year 3 - Imogen and William, Year 4 - Indie and Harry, Year 5 - Zachary and Rosie and Year 6 - Harriet and Logan.
Eco-Council have been working really hard at maintaining the Kitchen garden, especially in the hot weather! Each eco- councillor from each group have been timetabled to water the kitchen garden in the morning and in the afternoon. Our sunflowers and gladioli are growing well, and we have started to dead head the tulips that grew beautifully in the Spring. 

If anyone has any watering cans they are willing to donate to our Eco-council that would be amazing. Please pass to Mrs Davis or Mrs Bayliss at Juniper class or Maple Class.

Thanks for reading,

Eco-Council

On Tuesday 16th May, Eco-Councillors and School-Councillors enjoyed a visit to Southfields Farm to find out more about where food comes from such as the crops that are grown in the fields around our countryside. Children enjoyed tractor rides around the farm to visit the different crops. They also enjoyed feeding sheep, bug-hunting, pond-dipping and looking after the animals on the farm. We all had a wonderful time and would like to thank John Plumb, the owner of Southfields Farm, for inviting us back for another year.

Eco and Gardening club has restarted for the summer term and our kitchen garden is underway. Our spring bed is looking beautiful thanks to our efforts in autumn.

We’ve harvested the first crop of rhubarb and cleared the weeds from the beds ready to sow and plant some strawberries, mint, chives, thyme and rosemary. We’re also planning on a pollination station to grow some wild flowers.  

We gratefully welcome any donations of these seeds or plants listed. Please hand them into the office or class teachers for the attention of Eco Council. 

Pupils within Birchwood and across 18 of our Community Academy Trust schools have competed in an ocean art competition to highlight the devastating effects of litter and plastics on our oceans.

Eco Councillors had the very difficult task of choosing one winner from Key Stage 1 and one from Key Stage 2.  They chose based on the important eco message that the piece portrayed.  A huge congratulations to Millie in Juniper 2 and Max in Sycamore 5 and a well done to all participants; it just shows what a great, caring and eco-conscious school of pupils we have. 

 
Year 6 have been writing some brilliant climate change speeches using the knowledge that they have been learning during their 'Frozen Kingdom' topics. They then recorded their speeches using Birchwood Beats radio station. Listen to some of their fantastic work to find out how you can reduce the effects of climate change too. 
 

Since October, Birchwood Eco-councillors has been awarding their 'Eco-Award' each week in our celebration assemblies. Every week, our Eco-councillors have been very organised and committed to checking classrooms to see how classes have been 'eco-friendly' and helping towards saving energy in our school. The class that has the least amount of points is awarded the Eco-award.

Vinnie and Thomas in Year 4 are two pupils who undertake the task of checking classrooms on a weekly basis. They said, "We enjoy having the Eco-award because each class that wins is making an effort to save resources and energy. It is also nice to see each year group celebrate and win the award! Luckily, all year groups have won it at least once! "Well done pupils and staff, keep up the great energy-saving efforts!

Eco-Council

 

Merry Christmas everyone. We’ve had a very busy term getting the school grounds ready for springtime so we will sit back and look forward to the beautiful colours that will start sprouting before we know it.

Members of the Eco-Council have also voted for their favourite eco-friendly tip this Christmas and we love that all the children can get involved in helping to reduce, reuse and recycle.

 

 
Our Eco-award was launched last half-term for the classes that have been keeping an eye on their usage of lighting, water, smart boards and single-use bottles. We have been impressed with how each year group is being ‘eco’ conscious and striving to win the award each week! Keep it up everyone!
 

As Eco-councillors we are always looking for new ways to look after our school and the outside areas. We have been tasked this half term by Mrs Smith to take a look at the ‘Forest Schools’ area, as there seems to be an awful lot of litter being blown in the wind through the fence from our adjacent school. As a group we will put together a plan to tackle this area and then assign eco-councillors an area to be responsible for.

Stay tuned for more Eco-news…..

 

Waste Management Visit from Warwickshire
 
On Monday 17th October, all pupils took part in an assembly to support our eco aims.  EYFS and KS1's assembly helped children make wiser choices about single-use plastic and Ruth recommended reusable alternatives to try instead.  We were astonished at the effort, energy and waste involved in producing a plastic spoon which may be used and discarded after 2 seconds of use. 
 
Sidney questioned 'Why were they even invented?' which just shows our future generations are questioning mistakes made in the past.
Our KS2 pupils enjoyed an assembly about composting and how to start and create our own. Who knew there were so many fascinating creatures and micro organisms living in compost?  Ruth has kindly offered to donate to us 2 large composters which should be producing our own compost in as little as 12-18 months.
Finally, Ruth worked with our keen Eco Councillors to create our very own recycled planters out of newspaper.  We planted some seeds and they will plant these directly into the ground come Springtime. 
With the support of Mr Jackson, our club members have tidied, weeded, hoed and planted lots of areas of our school so Birchwood is looking much fresher for autumn and will look fabulous in Spring. 
​During Autumn 1, our Eco Councillors extended their club to include any other keen gardeners. We had over 50 children apply to join and we’ve had so much fun!  Children have harvested fruit from our orchard, which Year 6 have used for making crumble (there may have been a trade offer involved!)   We’ve made minibeast habitats (with the first resident arriving within minutes) and created posters for our recycling bins. 
During 2022 and onwards our aim is to reduce our energy consumption within school and our councillors undertake daily classroom checks to ensure that we are turning off unused lights and smart boards for example. The most ‘eco-friendly’ class wins an award during Celebration Assembly. 
We have also introduced a weekly ‘Go Green’ message to be read alongside our assembly ‘Thought of the Week’ which spreads key messages to support our aims and to help at home too. 
Birchwood’s new Eco Council have got off to a flying start. We have a very eager bunch of children who are committed to improving our Carbon Footprint.  
 
Our elected Eco Councillors for 2022-2023 are:
 
Y1 - Oliver and Wade
Y2 - Arthur and Adrian
Y3 - Henry and Thomas
Y4 - Thomas and Jasmine
Y5 - Neave and Elsie
Y6 - Mia, Tayla, Darcy and Paige.
 
Special mentions this half term must go to Isaac, Vinny and Romee-Lea who have been especially supportive of the younger council members, so thank you!
The Jubilee Garden was officially unveiled yesterday and our first tea parties were held on the lawn. We look forward to many more in future but can remember this once in a lifetime celebration all year round, for many years to come .

This week has been Walk to School Week and it has been lovely to see how many children (and their adults and siblings) have walked to school or parked a little further away to walk. Not only is this safer for our children, but it is healthier and helps our environment and finances too.

We have lots planned for the Summer Term in Eco Council. On Tuesday, our School and Eco Councillors will have our annual farm trip for the first time in 2 years. (Head over to our News tab to see the photos we took.)

We also have lots of planting to do and a Farmers Market to plan. If you are interested in a hiring a stall please contact our school office.

We will also be most grateful for any donations of seeds and bulbs that we could use in our boxes and kitchen garden.

The Eco Councillors of 2021-22 have been very busy this Autumn Term.
 
They’ve made great strides in helping to improve the recycling in school by helping to empty our new paper recycling bins and they are working to support each class in improving their carbon footprint by checking and turning off lights and taps during lunch times.
 
During the after school Eco Club, some members helped harvest fruit from the orchard and veg from the kitchen gardens. 
 
Another exciting activity was taking part in Now Press Play’s ‘Recycling’ experience; children were transported into a dystopian future brought on by climate change and plastics use. Making us think more about Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
 
They have lots more ideas to help improve the school and are a keen group that will no doubt make a great impact! 
 
Eco Club have had a busy start to the year with both the harvesting and cooking of the pears grown at school.  This week they created spiced pear jam to sell at the Christmas Fair and next week they will be making chilli apple chutney - Delicious!
 
 
'Jar appeal'
 
It's that time of year again when Birchwood Eco club harvest and use the apples and pears to make jams and chutneys for the Christmas fair.  We are asking for glass jar donations to support this enterprise.  If these could be sent into school before the October half term, we would be very grateful.  We are ideally looking for smaller jars of 350ml or less. Thank you for your continued support.
 
 
One of Eco club's first jobs this year was to harvest the carrots, potatoes, onions, marrow, beetroot, cucumbers and broad beans that were ready to harvest.  They then used these ingredients to make a healthy and tasty stew to take home and enjoy with their family.  The Eco councillors helped to wash, peel and chop the ingredients before they were combined with stock and beef in a slow cooker.  Well done Eco club.
 
 
Several children from last year's Eco club travelled across to Hill Top farm near Leamington Spa, to collect their Bronze Food For Life award.  They were presented with their certificate and got a special mention for being the only school in the country to have all their staff trained by the FFL team in cooking skills.  The children picked out some of their most memorable moments to share with other school: the pigeons eating all the cabbages and handing out the tomatoes, lettuce and other salad crops to children across the school at break times.  They were treated to lunch and had the opportunity to take part in activities such as making bird feeders and wellington boot planters for strawberries, creating fruit skewers and exploring the farm.  We are now trying to improve our growing and cooking efforts across the school in order to achieve the Silver standard award.
 
 

Eco club and class councillors went to Southfields Farm on Friday to learn about the farming process.  The children explored different soil types, ground their own flour, hunted for wildlife in meadows, woodlands and ponds, fed the animals and travelled around on a tractor trailer to see the different methods of growing crops.  They were enthusiastic and a credit to the school.  Well done!

 

'My favourite activity was collecting the wild flowers on our journey sticks,' Elsie.

 

'I really enjoyed using the nets to hunt for insects,' Bobby.

 

'The donkeys were my favourite animal,' Lily.

 

  
Team Birchwood have kindly donated some bug homes which we have put up around the woodland area.  With the support of our wonderful grandparent volunteers, we are busily growing crops for our Farmers' Market on Friday July 6th.
 
 
Calling all local producers!
 
Birchwood Primary School is holding a Farmers’ Market on Friday 6th July 2018. We are looking for fantastic food, crafty creations and the people that make them to get involved to bring it to life. If you grow your own food or flowers, bake your own cakes, knit your own jumpers, or anything in between, we want to hear from you.  Each year group are having their own stalls, Smith’s butchers has signed up and we are looking for other community conscious individuals to help make our first ever farmers market a success.
 
If you’re interested in taking part in this super, summery school special, please contact Mrs Webb via the school office.
 
Thank you,
 
Faith and Mia - Pine Class

 

 
Eco Club has moved to after school this half term and the children have started in earnest by weeding and preparing the kitchen garden.  They tended to beans and strawberries that were already present and planted lettuce, carrots, radishes, rhubarb and tomatoes that they are hoping to sell at the school's first ever Farmers Market next half term.  If anyone has any fruit or vegetable plants that they would like to donate, please send them into school to Mrs Webb or Mrs Davis.
 
 The Eco Council and Science Council will be involved in planning a Farmers Market, with a focus on growing our own produce.
 
Eco Councillors took part in an exciting cookery afternoon where they prepared a set of recipes chosen by Warwickshire Educaterers.  Recipes, and photos of the children preparing them, will be published in a booklet that will go out to all schools in the county.