We did it! Silver awarded to Hampton Hill School

Yesterday we had our Enviroschool Silver Reflection day.
First we welcomed the Enviro Facilitators on to our school with a powhiri. It was so wet, we had it in the hall.
 Then we came up to the library and introduced ourselves before looking at all the different enviro-related things our school is involved in. (There are heaps – you can see them on our mural outside the library.)
 We talked about the enviroschool guiding principles and how everything we do links in really well with the silver paragraph.

Silver Paragraph
 We have a clear, shared Whole School Vision and we are working together creatively to make it happen. There are obvious signs of all the Guiding Principles in our school, across all the areas of school life. We have a sense of inter-relatedness/ whanaungatanga in terms of our school, our community and our environment. Our sustainable practices are being kept up and are growing; we are branching into new aspects as well as going deeper with existing ones through student-led enquiry. Students are fully involved in planning and making decisions about actions. We are tracking our progress and can show that more change has happened. Our work has involved lots of people in our school as well as parents, whānau and other community members.

 We are really happy to be the first Enviroschool at the Silver stage in Tawa!
By Tupou.
Silver Reflection Day on PhotoPeach

Plastic Bottle Greenhouse

Water Conservation

Enviroschool Silver Reflection

Enviroschools has 5 guiding principles - 

Empowered Students are enabled to participate in a meaningful way in the life of their early childhood centre or school. Their unique perspectives are valued for the knowledge and insight that they bring, and they are supported to take action for real change.

The principle of Learning for Sustainability recognises the types of teaching and learning that foster student empowerment, decision-making, action and sustainable outcomes.

The principle of Māori Perspectives honours the status of tangata whenua in this land and the value of indigenous knowledge in enriching and guiding learning and action.

Respect for the Diversity of People and Cultures acknowledges the unique gifts, contributions and perspectives of individuals and groups, reinforcing the need for participatory decision-making in Enviroschools.

Sustainable Communities act in ways that nurture people and nature, now and in the future, to maintain the health and viability of our environment, society, culture and economy.

There is a lot of evidence of all the Guiding Principles in our school, across all the areas of school life. 

This is really exciting, and something we have been building on for a number of years. We are now ready to have an Enviroschool Silver Reflection. 

These 5 key areas are what we need to show-

INCREASING range of depth of learning/action

MAINTAINING what we are doing

EXTENDING projects and participants growing

CONNECTIONS developing and integration

Visitors from the Enviroschool organisation will be coming to our school on Wednesday 10 December. They will be looking at what we have been up to. Hopefully they will see enough evidence to award us with silver!

New signs!

When you are next at our school, you might notice new signs around the place.
We have been practising our observational drawings, along with help from Finn last year, now have signs naming plants and birds around here.

Then there was mulch, mulch, and more mulch!

We have been given a huge truck-load of tree mulch- yahoo!
It is going to be used on our paths around the vege garden, planters, and the spare parts pit

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Upgrading our vege gardens

The blue planter boxes have seen better days and we've decided it's time for a bigger vege patch. Liz and Mrs B marked out our area and we dug into the turf to make the area larger. One of the original planter boxes is staying and the rest are now being used as edging for the larger garden.

Schoolgen

Solar Panels

We have become a schoolgen school and will hopefully put together a new blog for this, but for now, here are some photos of our launch

Looking at soil

We sifted different types of soil and looked closely at it through a hand lens in Discovery today. Great seeing microscopic animals!

Room 3 is an Enviro-class.

Our strawberry plants were all dead. We decided we needed something else in our garden.

We pulled out the old plants. We pulled them out by the roots.

We used a fork to loosen the dirt. We found worms and spiders.

We put the weeds in a bag so we could put them in the compost. They will break down to make more soil for our garden.

Now we have pulled out the weeds and dead plants we are going to plant something else.

We are thinking about planting some carrots.

Room One on Enviro duty

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