Crinkill N.S. participates in the Green Schools Programme, this is an initiative that is run by An Taisce. Green Schools is an environmental education programme that promotes and acknowledges long term whole school action for the good of our environment. This is a programme designed to educate pupils, staff and the wider school community on how to be more environmentally friendly in our local area and beyond. The Green Schools programme is broken down into 8 core themes and each theme has its own separate flag that the school has to strive to achieve. The school works on each theme for two years during which time the children and staff are educated on the theme. A green flag for that theme may be awarded to the school once an assessment has taken place. This assessment is to indicate whether the school has met all the different objectives necessary to achieve the flag. To date in Crinkill National School we have earned 5 Green Flags: Litter/Waste, Energy, Water, Travel and Biodiversity. We are currently working towards our 6th flag which is based on global citizenship and litter/waste. Each year a green schools committee is set up. This committee is made up of two representatives from each class from 1st to 6th. Meetings are held regularly to discuss actions that can be undertaken by the school community to help us achieve our goals. The committee members bring the messages from the meeting to their class grouping and the older children pass on the messages to Junior Infants and Senior Infants.
For each theme we have to come up with a new motto . Our motto for our biodiversity flag was “Animals and plants we need to keep. If we don’t the earth will weep. We have a competition in the senior classes to come up with our school motto for each theme.
As part of Green Schools we are recycling batteries for the Laura Lynn foundation in association with WEEE Ireland. Each classroom has a battery box that children can bring in used batteries from home and they will be recycled.
Here we have some photos of some Green Schools Activities-these are activities that take place in the normal run of the school year as Green Schools is intrinsically linked to the school curriculum.
