Green Schools – Presentation Primary School Waterford

Green-Schools, known internationally as Eco-Schools, is an international environmental education programme, environmental management system and award scheme that promotes and acknowledges long-term, whole school action for the environment.

Presentation Primary School has participated in this programme since 2005 and has successfully achieved the following flags:

Litter and waste
Energy
Water
Travel
Biodiversity
Global Citizenship: Litter and Waste
Global Citizenship: Energy

School Year 2023 – 2024

Presentation Primary school has a proud tradition of participating in the Green Schools initiative.

In September we established a new Green school Committee. We meet every month and discuss Green school issues.

Our first job was to organise a WOW- walk on Wednesday to mark National Walk to School Week. We had a great turn out and are looking forward to organising more.

We are currently working on our eight Green School Flag – Global Citizenship Marine Environment.

We are excited to bring awareness of Marine issues to our school community and learn more about our oceans over the coming school years.

Green School Committee.

School Year 2022 – 2023

June 2023

On Tuesday 13th June we held a flag raising ceremony for the 2 flags we achieved this year – the Green School Flag and the Amber Flag for Promoting Positive Mental health. The members of each committee were also presented with their certificates for all of their hard work this year.Well done to everyone involved.

January 2023

Our Green School Committee have been busy preparing our School Garden for the coming year. We will start to plant our vegetables when the weather improves. They have also been busy litter-picking. 4^th class Mrs O Dwyer won a competition and enjoyed 2 online storytelling sessions from Arran Towers on our Green School’s theme of Global Citizenship: Litter and Waste.

November 2022

Thanks to Ms McKeon and Ms Landers for our wonderful map of the world. We are truly a global school, with girls and boys from all corners of the world.

October 2022

A big well done to all the classes that took part in Climate Action Week. The school was a hive of activity with all classes doing their bit to learn about climate action and changes we can make as a school to save energy. Remember – If It’s Not in Use, Turn off the Juice! We can all play our part and help reduce our energy use!

The Green School Committee did a fantastic job setting daily challenges for the school on the intercom such as nominating an energy monitor in each class, asking classes to research Sustainable goals, introducing our Green Code and informing us about climate issues. Well done, Girls!

Waterford’s mayor, Clr. Jason Murphy visited our school on Thursday 27th October. Members of the Green School committee spoke about their cookbook “Let’s Grow Together”, for which they received a School of Excellence Sustainability Award last year. They also presented the mayor with a copy of the cookbook. It was fantastic to have our hall back in use and to welcome Waterford’s First Citizen.

Our School Green Code – Think Global, Start Local- there’s no Planet B!

September 2022

Thank you to everyone who took part in our ‘Walk on Wednesday’ on 21st September to celebrate ‘National Walk to School Week’.

School Years 2021 – 2022

We are currently working on the Global Citizenship Litter and Waste flag.

Children from various classes have been involved in:

Green School Committee
Renewal of the flags achieved to date
Planning for the various flags
Planting Spring Bulbs and Vegetables
Harvesting Vegetables and Fruit
Baking Apple Crumble with fruit gathered from trees
Maintaining indoor plants
Feeding the birds
Making bird feeders
Observing and identifying garden birds
Butterfly Garden and Wildflower Patch
Insect Hotel
Log Pile
Other agencies e.g. Heritage in Schools, Waterford Area Partnership
Litter-picking
Anti-littering posters
Making Junk Art robots
WOW – Walk on Wednesday
Completing Nationality surveys with their classes
Completing projects based on different countries
Tasting food from different countries
Organising colouring competitions

Spring 2022

Mrs McCarthy’s 2^nd class and Miss Duke’s 6^th class have been working very hard on a sustainability project as part of the School of Excellence Award. Their journey began in the springtime, when our Green School Committee completed a survey in our school and were shocked to realise that a lot of our students in our school didn’t know where their food came from. They investigated this and realised we were importing a lot of food. They wanted to help the environment by reducing the food miles associated with the food being eaten and they also wanted to show people that it’s quite east to grow your own food, from which you can make delicious dishes. They prepared the school garden, and together with their buddies, started growing lots of things. They then worked with Ms Fetton to create lots of tasty and healthy dishes from our garden.

School Year 2020 – 2021

As part of the Green Flag process, we held our Green Day remotely on February 17th 2021. Pupils in every class completed activities on the topic of litter and waste, and were invited to take part in a poster competition based on our Green Code – “3R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) to save our 1 World. ”

Well done to the over 100 girls and boys who entered the competition, and to our 3 winners – see photographs below.

Click here to watch our video Green Day 2021

Well done to everyone who took part in our WOW – Walk on Wednesday on May 12th 2022. What a great turnout – over 100 pupils from Junior Infants – 6th Class!