The Headteacher of SIAL.school, the bilingual English/Italian primary school in London, gives insight on how to make a school or a nursery more eco-friendly and raise eco-awareness among pupils, their families and the wider community.
Children love to ask questions and want to understand the world around them. This gives educators a great opportunity to satisfy their curiosity while developing environmental awareness and creating an ecological conscience.
There is no need to be an expert in the subject or rewrite the science curriculum: encouraging children to observe, explaining the reasons behind things and carrying out simple experiments are basic starting points accessible to anyone.
Introducing sustainability in primary schools
If you would like to support your school’s programme on sustainability, here are a few ideas that you can share:
- Spend more time outside to learn how to love and care for nature
- Organise visits to an Ecological Centre near your school
- Involve the children in recycling at school
- Put up displays about green initiatives involving children in researching the information and asking for their creative input
- Support a charity that protects the environment and/or a local food bank
- Promote food waste reduction at school
- If you have capacity, plant a garden area with bulbs and plants or build a bug hotel and/or bird feeder
Should there not be one already, you can create a Green Committee to conduct an environmental review that assesses how eco-friendly your school is.
Pupils will be able to review everything from the school’s recycling practices to energy usage, to how environmental themes are covered in the classrooms.
This is what we did at SIAL.school, as part of our accreditation as an ECO-school, achieving the Green Flag Award in 2022.
Teachers can also easily link environmental issues to a variety of curriculum areas, not only science. Layering sustainability and climate change into different subjects really enhances the students’ understanding, providing a richer and deeper learning experience.
At SIAL.school our teachers created cross-disciplinary connections with Art, ICT, Geography, Italian and English -for example last year our pupils in Y5 and Y6 worked on an amazing rewriting of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol with an eco waste and pollution theme! Our pupils rewrote the plot, prepared the storyboard for the animation and recorded their voices to narrate an original story of an old man who spent his life showing no care for the environment and suddenly had to face the Ghost of Reuse, the Ghost of Reduce and the Ghost of Recycle.
A brilliant project that the children carried out with much enthusiasm and which definitely left a mark.
Raising sustainably minded and environmentally conscious new generations is crucial in today’s world and we are proud to be doing our part at our school.
If you are curious about our bilingual school, our vision and our values, our next Open Day is scheduled on Thursday 27th April 2023. Find out more here.
With a unique bilingual and bi-cultural enriched curriculum in which the standards set by the Italian Ministry of Education are integrated and complemented by the EYFS Framework and National English Curriculum, SIAL.school welcomes children aged 3 to 11.
The school is located in the heart of London, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, just a short distance from Holland Park: book a private tour and visit the school whenever you like – every day is an Open Day at SIAL.school.
To know more please visit their website or contact their Admissions team: call 020 7603 5353 or email admissions@sial.school.
You may also be interested in this other article by SIAL.School: Promoting Wellbeing Initiatives in Primary Schools
