2023/24 Green School Committee Members
We are working towards……….
Our 8th Green Flag
Global Citizenship & Marine
The staff and pupils at Geashill NS are working towards our 8th green flag called Global Citizenship & Marine Environment.
The committee members are working hard to:
-Significantly increase the awareness of everyone in the school community of marine pollution.
-Identify how we can reduce marine pollution.
-Increase the school community’s knowledge of the 17 Global Goals.
-Continue the upkeep of the other flag areas.
May 2024
We are celebrating Bike Week from May 13th -17th. On C.O.W. Day or Cycle on Wednesday Day we are looking forward to seeing as many pupils as possible cycling safely to school.
The Flag Awards Ceremony is next week. We are really looking forward to accepting the Green flag on behalf of the whole school!
April 2024
Green Flag Awards Ceremony
We have been informed that we will be awarded the Green Flag for Global Citizenship and the Marine Environment on May 21st next. Congratulations and well done to the Green School Committee and the whole school community for all their hard work!
Marine Week ’24
We had a wonderful week of learning and fun! The Senior classes enjoyed the webinars held on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday about the underwater world and saving seals around our coasts.
On Friday we had our Marine Day, where pupils dressed up as marine characters and shared projects and art work with all the classes.
March 2024
Our assessment visit is March 11th!
We have completed our Marine Litter Survey for Year 2. We compared the results from Year 1 and Year 2 and we were delighted with the results.
Here is a multiple barchart to show the results.
February News
Water Poster and Video Competition:
The deadline for entries is Friday, 8th March 2024.The theme of the competition is Water for Peace. This is the theme that the United Nations have chosen to mark World Water Day on March 22nd 2024..
Information can be found on Green School noticeboard and at this link https://greenschoolsireland.org/water-poster-video-competition-2024/
Marine Creative Writing Competition– This year we invite primary and secondary school students to submit entries inspired by the theme: “Tides are changing”. Visit our website at https://greenschoolsireland.org/marinewriting2024/
There are separate age categories for the competition:
- 1st and 2nd class Primary
- 3rd and 4th class Primary
- 5th and 6th class Primary
The piece may take the form of either a short story or a poem and must be no more than 500 words in length. 1st – 6th class may enter. Entries must be submitted through the online entry form by Friday 15th March. For more information and to read the full Terms and Conditions, please visit: https://greenschoolsireland.org/marinewriting2024/
Global Goals Week: Feb 26th-March 1st
Green-Schools Ireland’s Global Goals week 2024 will take place the week starting the 26th of February. Through our ever-growing Global Classroom programme you will hear from students from Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and UAE for one hour each day throughout the week and learn about the Sustainable Development Goals from each other and what actions need to be taken by us all to help reduce poverty, reduce inequalities and reduce Climate Change.
Starting each day at 10am you and your students will learn about the Global Goals in a fun way culminating on the final day, for some lucky schools to participate, in a peer to peer session with students from Kenya, South Africa and Dubai
Global Goals Week
From February 26th to March 1st we celebrated Global Goals Week.
Our Global Goal projects:
Zero Hunger-
sustainable cities and communitiesGood Health-
Gender Equality – Global Goals
_Global goal 6_ Clean Water And Sanitation
Global Goals 10 Reducing Inequalities
sustainable cities and communities
Peace, Justice, and Strong institutions
Our Wormery
We are feeding our worms every Thursday afternoon. They are growing!
They do not like banana skins but love potato skins, carrot peels and apple cores.
Our New Wormery
On January 26th we our new wormery was installed on our school grounds. Craig Benton helped us to set it up and taught us how to look after the worms. The teachers learned all about the wormery after school too.
Meet the Scientist:
Fifth Class have learned all about different sea creatures like the starfish and the seahorse on Meet the Scientist webinars.
Bottle Top Recycling
Please use our bottle top recycling pin to recycle all your bottle tops.
Our School Garden
Green Code
2 Minute Street Clean- September ’23
We held a 2 minute street clean at the GAA pitch this afternoon. We collected plastic bottles, cigarette butts, food wrappers, cans, glass bottles, plastic bags and paper.
Bike Week ’23
- Cycle to school or cycle with your family on Wednesday 17th April.
- Ask a parent to take a photo of you on your bicycle and share it with your teacher.
Marine Week 2023
The senior classes at Geashill N.S. took part in daily Marine Week webinars. We learned a lot about the following topics:
- Monday – “Exploring Ocean Connections and Ireland’s Marine Biodiversity” with Dr Nóirín Burke, Galway Atlantaquaria,
- Tuesday – “The fun of beach cleaning and protecting the sea” with Flossie Donnelly, Flossie and the Beach Cleaners
- Wednesday – “Ireland’s Marine Protected Areas: What are they, where are they, and why we need more” with Sarah Hegarty, Green-Schools
Take a look at the fun facts we learned:
Monday: (Samuel)
- Noreen Burke
- The Aquarium focuses on native species and on helping sick or unwell animals.
- Invertebrates = animals or creatures without a backbone.
- 90% of animals are invertebrates
- Sea urchins have tube feet but are not soft, it also covers itself with shells to protect itself from the sun.
- Sea cucumbers shoot out their intestines as a defense and then the intestines regrow inside.
- Prawns, shrimp and crabs are all called crustaceans which means they have a hard exoskeleton.
- Spider crabs are the biggest crabs in all of Ireland and can grow up to 12 feet of 3.8 meters.
- There are 5 species of sea turtle in Ireland.
- The deepest point in Irish water is 400 meters in depth.
Tuesday: (Niamh C)
- You can find amazing things on the beach.
- Flossie and The Beach Cleaners found 12 apple watches, 3 iphones, a trampoline, chest hair and 500 euro.
- 70% of the world is water.
- There are 20 species of sharks in Ireland.
- Coral can live for 5,000 years.
- Flossie and The Beach Cleaners found bottles from 72 years ago and plastic bags from 80 years ago.
- The sea takes 20% of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Wednesday: (Conor & Kayla)
- Sarah Hegrty = marine biologist from Co. Clare
- Marine Protected Area = MPA.
- There is less human activity in MPA.
- The island of Ireland is only 1/7 of Ireland’s actual land. 6/7 of it is underwater.
- Ireland has 3000 km of coast line.
- The blue rayed limpet is smaller than your fingernail.
- 50 species in the M.P.A. are endangered.
- 2% of the ocean is protected.
- The target is 30% of the Ocean protected by 2030.
- The most endangered species of shark in Ireland is the Angel Shark.
- Gel in JellyBabies comes from the sea.
Shark by Abbie Turtles Puffins By Kayla Cahill
Basking Shark By Sonny Healion
Our School Garden
We have prepared our school garden for planting. We will sow lots of vegetables. We will plant some cabbage for the caterpillars and butterflies too.
Look at what we found!
Day of Action 1
National Spring Clean –April 2023
The pupils at Geashill N.S. took part in the An Taisce, National Spring Clean initiative on Thursday 20th April. We registered prior to this and received a spring clean pack. We split our pupils into groups and assigned each group an area of our village to clean. We were happy to find a lot less litter in our local area than last year. The litter we collected was gathered in bags and left out for Offaly County Council to take away. We really enjoyed helping out and look forward to continuing this litter pick next year.
Wind Energy Workshop- December 2022
We had a great workshop on wind energy. We learned how the wind turbines are installed and how they will make electricity at the Moanvane Wind farm. Thomas powered the wind turbine by cycling very fast.
Clean Air Week ’22
• You need air to speak – we use our lungs for talking and singing. We have a
voice box in our throat that contains our vocal cords, and just like a wind
instrument we can change the pitch and volume of the sounds by forcing more
or less air through our body.
• If you were to stretch out your lungs and all the air sacs (alveoli) in them on the
ground their surface area would be the same size as half a tennis court!
• There can be between 300-700 million alveoli in your lungs. Alveoli are the air
sacs in the lungs that exchange oxygen into our bloodstream.
• You can increase your lung capacity with regular exercise – like through active
travel! People who have a larger lung capacity can send oxygen around their
body faster.
• Controlling your breathing can help to calm you and slow down a fast heart rate,
especially during or after exercise like walking, running, cycling and scooting.
• Exercise is good for every part of your body, and especially for your lungs and
heart.
• When we breathe, we get energy from air when we breath in oxygen and breath
out carbon dioxide. This process is known as respiration.
• Particulate Matter (PM) is air pollution in the form of suspended particles, PM2.5
and PM10 are smaller in diameter than a human hair and can enter our bloodstream through our lungs.
Here is the letter we have sent to parents, asking for their support for ‘No Idling’ between Nov. 21st and 26th.
2021/2022 Green School Committee Members
Green-School Assessment 14/3/22
Today we welcomed Caroline into our school to carry out our Green-School assessment. Caroline is an Environmental Awareness Officer with Offaly County Council and was very interested to hear all about the work being carried out in Geashill N.S. The boys and girls spoke about their efforts to save energy in the school and their homes, while also raising awareness about what can be done to reduce climate change. They answered all of the questions to the best of their ability and they showed Caroline around the school. We are very hopeful that we may be awarded our 7th flag. The boys and girls all have their fingers crossed!
*************************************************************************
The staff and pupils at Scoil na Croise Naofa are working towards their 7th green flag called Global Citizenship & Energy.
The committee members are working hard to:
-Significantly reduce the amount of single-use plastics in school.
-Identify where energy is being used in school and how it can be reduced or used more efficiently.
SEAI One Good Idea Competition:
The pupils of Geashill N.S. took part in SEAI’s One Good Idea competition in year 1 of working on their new theme. They noticed that most pupils were bringing bottles to school that were being disposed of after just one use. The Green School pupils decided to create their own reusable bottle. They received funding from Offaly County Council, designed and distributed reusable aluminium bottles to all pupils in the school. They travelled to Limerick where they presented their idea to a panel of judges. This was an attempt to move away from single use plastic bottles and is still continuing throughout the school. The pupils have raised awareness about how damaging plastic is to the environment and have encouraged all pupils to continue to use their school bottle every day.
“BottleBusters”
Energy Consumption:
The pupils have also focused on energy conservation within the school and home. They identified areas of energy use within the classrooms and have suggested ways to reduce this energy consumption. Green School committee members have regularly checked the school meter box to ensure we are reducing electricity consumption and also created a sub committee to monitor energy usage in each classroom. Children that live near the school walk when possible and overall the children are more aware of switching electronics off when not in use.
“Classroom Energy Monitors”
The pupils and staff in school have also made a huge effort to revise past themes such as litter and waste, water, travel and biodiversity. A lot of work is ongoing to help create a greener and more energy efficient school. We all want to play a part to help tackle climate change.
Green School Noticeboard
Groundwater Poster Competition:
Congratulations to the pupils pictured below who were selected from all the school entries to go forward for the “Groundwater, Our Hidden Treasure” poster competition. Well done to everyone who designed a poster.
***************************************************************************
We have received 6 Green Flags from An Taisce.
In May 2019 we were awarded our 6th Green Flag for work in the area of Litter, Waste and Global Citizenship.
Meet our new Green School Committee. One representative was chosen from each class to help gain another green flag. This year our theme is “Global Citizenship – Litter & Waste”.
