Green Schools

Green Schools
We raised our Green Flag for Biodiversity.
See our two year journey below .
Some of our Classes have just finished working with the artist Orla Bates. Orla came to the school through the Heritage for Schools Scheme. Orla worked with each class for 5 weeks and looked at Art through the theme of Biodiversity. It was a great opportunity to increase the school awareness about biodiversity. In 4th class Orla looked at marine life with the children. They made their own foam stencils of marine life and created faboulous marine pictures with them like jellyfish and seahorses.

6th class learned about insects with Orla. They drew all kinds of insects initially from butterflies to wasps and flies. Then they made clay sculptures of the life cycle of the butterfly. Finally they made their own 3D larger than life insects. All the art work is a credit to the children and their teachers and especially to Orla for her creativeness and talent.
In 2022 First class planted some sunflowers and more recently 5th class did as well. First classes are looking great already. They obviously have great green fingers. Second class have made some bug hotels at the walls of the school. It is starting to look like a bug city in fact. It is wonderful to see all the classes coming on board to increase the biodiversity in the school.
Children have been doing a 'Picker Pass' to help clean up the litter in the areas around their home. Each week one of the pupils brings home the picker pack and collects litter with their family. The pack is passed along to another person the following weekend. They send in pictures of what they collected and say who they went picking with and what they found. Fantastic job to all of first class, for looking after the habitat of the animals in their area by removing the litter.
A school competition was held to get the children to write a slogan for the school about biodiversity. The children from all the classes made a huge effort to come up with clever slogans. Some of the children did amazing art work for their slogan too. In 2022-2023 Ms Harrington and Ms Cleary chose one from each class as the best for a special mention at Assembly and then whitled it down to the three best. Then they asked the Green School's Committee to vote for their favourite. They chose the slogan to the right here. It was the work of three past pupils from 6th class - Heather and Holly Brennan and Budgie Connors. We love it.

Animals, insects, birds and flowers
Biodiversity has magical powers.
Our children have been busy improving their knowledge about biodiversity. 3rd class with Ms Harrington made some bird feeders to hand in our trees to encourage the birds. 6th started making some bird houses. Mrs Cleary cut the wood for them and the children put them together.
Our Green School's committee have been looking at our theme of Biodiversity in our school. Before Christmas 2021 the committee asked all the staff and children in the senior classes four questions about what they know about Biodiversity. The results are below in the pie charts. While most of the children were not fully sure exactly what biodiversity included, they were very knowledgeable about how we might help the animals, sea creatures, insects and plant life of the planet. Our next step is to choose a Biodiversity Slogan for our school (See above for our new slogan).
Third class did a survey of our our school grounds and mapped out the findings in the pictures on the right. They put a key to their maps explaining what animals, insects and plants and trees that they found in our school grounds.
At Scoil Naomh Áine we have completed a two year cycle to get our Biodiversity Flag from An Taisce Green Schools. Just before the Halloween midterm 2021 we elected our committee. Our first task was to see what do the staff and children in our school know about biodiversity - Do they know what it is about? Do they know how we can help? Do they know what we at school can do in our school grounds to help create a natural environment for biodiversity? We are honoured to have received and raised our new Flag in June 2023.
Green School Committee members:
2021-2023

Rathgarogue NS

We raised our Green Flag for Biodiversity.See our two year journey below .

Animals, insects, birds and flowers

Biodiversity has magical powers.

Our children have been busy improving their knowledge about biodiversity. 3rd class with Ms Harrington made some bird feeders to hand in our trees to encourage the birds. 6th started making some bird houses. Mrs Cleary cut the wood for them and the children put them together.

Third class did a survey of our our school grounds and mapped out the findings in the pictures on the right. They put a key to their maps explaining what animals, insects and plants and trees that they found in our school grounds.

Green School Committee members:

2021-2023

We raised our Green Flag for Biodiversity.
See our two year journey below .