Eco Team 2023 - 2024

Developments at the Maes-y-Coed Allotment Wildlife Garden

Visit to Maes-y-Coed Allotment Wildlife Garden

Last week we visited the Maes-y-Coed Allotment Wildlife Garden. We couldn't believe the difference since our first visit. 

Lots of hard work has taken place to transform the overgrown and muddy plot into a calm, tranquil area where nature can flourish.

Mark showed us around and talked about the different features, including the pond, bird and bat boxes and other homes to encourage lots of wildlife.

Next week we are going to start planting in one of the raised beds.

In our Eco Team meetings we have researched the type of vegetables that we will be able to grow, look after and harvest before the summer holidays. 

Potato Planting

Here are some photos from the second stage of our potato project (link with Pontypridd Town Council).

This week we planted the different varieties of potato into repurposed containers, such as bags for life, wellies, sacks and tyres. 

Mrs Sheppeards class have been very busy planting their variety of potatoes in the large tyres too. We are very grateful for their help at this busy time.

Results of Our Litter Poster Competition

We were very pleased with all of the entries we had in for our Litter Poster Competition.

It took a long time for us to decide the winners, runners up and highly commended.

The winning posters will be copied, laminated and displayed in our local community to remind everyone to put their litter in the bin or take it home.

Winners

Year 1/2  Connor

Year 3/4  Poppy

Year 5/6  Ivan

Runners Up

Eva

Teimi

Neili 

Highly Commended

Jess

Niamh

Rebecca

Hazel-Grace

Oneli

Sofia

Ponty Potato Project

We are taking part in the Ponty Potato Project run by Pontypridd Town Council. Local schools have been invited to grow different types of potatoes in repurposed items. The Eco Team will take part in every stage of the process from chitting to eating.

We will be adding more photos after completing each stage.

Visit to our Community Allotment

We have now visited the wildlife garden at Maes-y-Coed Allotment. We met with Mark who explained the plans for the garden and how we can be involved.  

Our school will be very much a part of the Wildlife garden. Our next task is to think about how we can make some bug hotels and a hedgehog house. 

Litter Poster Competition

One of our Eco targets is to help improve litter in our local community.

We are having a competition for pupils to design a poster to encourage people to put their rubbish in the bin, rather than dropping it on the floor.

After the closing date, the Eco Team will be judging the posters, laminating them and putting them on display in our local community. 

Please keep a look out for them after half term. 

Links with Maes-y-Coed Allotment Association

Recently Mark from Maes-y-coed Allotment Association told us that they have had a grant from Keep Wales Tidy. This will be used to transform an unused plot into a Wildlife Garden for use by Allotment Members, local schools and members of the Pontypridd Ministry

The project will include some raised beds which our

school will be able to use. We will be able to grow, care  for and harvest produce. A pond, wildlife meadow, wildlife habitats and a small orchard of fruit trees will also be part of this project. 

We are visiting the allotment next week so that we can follow it’s progress and be a part of the development of the wildlife garden.

More Sorting for Terracycle

After having a large delivery of crisp packets, bread wrappers, chocolate wrappers and coffee bags all from our local community, we have been busy sorting all of this recycling into different bags. 

We then weighed it and boxed it up ready for Mrs Davies to send to Terracycle.  

Visit to the Food Pantry at St. Catherine's Church

 The Super Ambassadors and representatives from our Eco Team and School Council visited the Food Pantry at St Catherine's Church.

We discovered it's a community warm space where people can eat and enjoy some company.

We look forward to working with them in the future.

Waste Minimisation

As part of our Waste Minimisation Target to reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfill sites, we have been busy sorting the recycling collected from our local community. We have been separating and sorting chocolate wrappers, crisp packets, biscuit wrappers and pens.

Mrs Davies has boxed up and sent away some of these items to Terracycle who will pay us money and turn our recycling into new products. This week we have sent 22kg's, reducing the amount of waste we are sending to landfill sites.  

Our Action Plan

After doing our Environmental Review we have put together our Action Plan.

This term we are looking at three main areas of Health, Well-being and Food, Litter and Waste Minimisation.

We have already completed some actions towards our targets. 

At the moment we are planning assemblies and preparing PowerPoints and posters for our target linked to Litter. 

We are also continuing to sort and organise our recycling from the community. Mrs Davies will then send this to Terracycle, stopping all this waste going to landfill.   

Harvest Donation Day

This year for Harvest we worked together with the Super Ambassadors to plan a donation day for Pontypridd Foodbank.

We rang the foodbank and spoke to Mandy on speaker phone. She told us that the foodbank would welcome any donations, but they were in particular need of toiletries, fruit juice, tinned meat, tinned fruit, custard, rice pudding and jam.

We then sent a Parentmail asking for donations and we also visited each class to speak to the children about our plans. 

On Friday we couldn't believe how many donations came into school! So we would like to say a GREAT BIG THANK YOU!

It took us a long time to load everything into Mrs Roberts car, because it was far too much for us to carry. Then we walked to Pontypridd Foodbank where we met Mandy who is in charge, and some of the volunteers. 

We had a tour and found out about the running of the foodbank and the help it gives to our local community.

Presenting to our School Governors

We have made a short video to tell our School Governors what we've been up to since May, when we last presented to them.   

Our Environmental Review

Meet the Eco Team 2023 - 2024

Hello everyone, we are the new Eco Team members for this school year.

We are Morgan, Mefin, Oscar, Cian, Ava, Priya, Griff, Kobi-Lee, Morgan, Razvan, Olivia and Chace.

Our photos will follow shortly.

Our first task is to do our environmental review where we look at different things around the school to see what might need improving. 

We will also be going in to each class to remind the childrem that we are a 'Healthy School' and to give tips and on healthy snacks and healthy lunchbox ideas.

Green Flag Award

At Maes-y-Coed we are celebrating after being awarded our First Green Flag, as part of the Eco Schools environmental education programme.

We were visited by Mrs Julie Giles of Eco Schools Wales who looked at the work our Eco Team have been working on. This included transport issues, waste minimisation, encouraging healthy eating and reducing litter.

Our Eco Team spoke about different actions they had undertaken towards achieving their targets and took Mrs Giles on a tour around our school.

We were absoutely delighted when she said we had achieved the award. 

We have informed pupils through our celebration assembly. Parents have been told through our newsletter and Twitter and our certificate can be seen in our Noticeboard cabinets.

Our lovely Green Flag will be displayed on our flag pole in the yard, in the coming days.

Gardening Club

After school gardening club have been working really hard.

They have grown lettuce, potatoes, beetroot, cucumber, carrots and tomatoes as well as many different plants. Some of these have already been given out in the community, with the rest going to the food bank, when they are ready to be harvested.

Pupils have grown some plants from seed as well as caring for tiny seedlings and helping them to grow into thriving plants.

The children have continued to develop our eco area, trying to make it a haven for minibeasts.    

They have used some of the flowers to decorate areas around the school. The remaining plants were sold on a very successful stall in our recent Hwyl yr Haf.   

Walk, Cycle, Scoot to School Week

Many children, parents and staff have walked, cycled or scooted to school this week. One staff member, Mrs Davies, caught the bus rather than bringing her car.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us in helping to make a change.  

Our Eco Code

We have been busy creating a new Eco Code for our school. 

We spoke in assembly to ask for ideas then met together to make our code.

We tried different designs and changed some of the words around until we thought it was right.

We have linked it to our Eco song 'A Great Big Change' which everyone knows. 

Please have a read and see what you think.  

Foundation Phase Assembly on Parking and Pollution

Some of the Eco Team have been busy telling the Foundation Phase children all about how they can stay safe and healthy around our school. 

The Eco Team showed a PowerPoint about parking and pollution.

The children answered questions sensibly and understood that is dangerous to park right outside our school.

They also learned that it is unhealthy if people leave their car engines on.

They said they will remind parents and grandparents to park sensibly and safely.    

Assembly on Dangerous Parking & Pollution

The Eco Team recently did an assembly for KS2 pupils all about the dangers of parking on the yellow zig zag lines outside our school. This is part of our work on our Transport target.

They also talked about their aim of stopping people leaving car engines on when dropping off and collecting children from school, to cut down on pollution.

They created their own eyecatching PowerPoint and used all their own words. 

Pupils listened well and took part in the discussion after the presentation.

One of the main messages was: 'Don't be a fool, parking outside of school'.

The children were told to go home and tell parents and grandparents about the things they can do to help keep us safe and our air clean.

Our middle block assembly will follow shortly.  

Presenting to Governors

Recently we made a video to show our school governors what we have been working on since we last reported in February.

Please take a look at our script and PowerPoint presentation.

Our video will appear here shortly.

Easter Egg Waste Challenge

We want to say a big thank you for all the Easter Egg recycling you sent in to school recently. All the packaging has now been weighed and we are waiting for the results to see which school has collected the most recycling per pupil. 

This waste will now be recycled instead of possibly ending uo in a landfill site.

This is linked to one of our Eco Targets on 'Waste Minimisation'.  

Working on our Targets

In our last two Eco Team meetings we have been busy preparing Powerpoints to show in assembly, about the work we are doing on air pollution and road safety. 

Some of us are creating Parentmails and others are making posters to inform of our future walk to school week. 

This work is linked to our Transport target.

Easter Egg Waste Challenge

We are taking part in the R.C.T. Easter Egg Waste Challenge again this year. This is part of our target on Waste Minimisation. We are reducing the amount of community waste going to landfill sites. We are also hoping we might win a prize! 

Eco Team Poster Competition

One of our targets under the 'Transport' section of our Eco Schools Topics, was to organise a poster competition. This is to remind people not to leave their car engines on outside our school (helping to cut pollution) and to prevent people parking on the yellow zig zag lines outside our school (increasing safety).

A few weeks ago the Eco Team delivered information about the competition to each class and took part in an assembly.

 More than 70 pupils entered the competition which meant it was very tricky choosing the winners.

The winning posters will be laminated and displayed to remind everyone of their important message and the winners will receive a small prize.

Well done to Ffion in Y5 who created the winning poster.

Razvan in Y3 came 2nd in the competition.

James in Y6 was voted in 3rd place.

Frankie in Y4 and Reya in Y2 were both highly commended.

Well done and thank you to everyone who took part.

Have a look at some of the poster competition entries from year 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Transport Survey

Recently members of the Eco Team took part in a transport survey. This was to gather data for one of our targets under the 'Transport' section of the Eco Schools Topics.

Our target is to reduce air pollution around our school by encouraging parents to turn off their engines when dropping off or collecting pupils. 

Another of our targets is to increase pupil safety on the road outside our school by discouraging parents from parking on the yellow zig zag lines. 

We will be reporting back on our findings in the next few weeks.

Community Litter Pick

Last week the Eco Team joined forces with all the other pupil voice groups, to take part in a community litter pick, to help improve our local area.  We did this as one of our targets under the 'Litter' section of our Eco Schools Topics.

We focused on the area around Sardis Road as it is a route used by many people in the local community.

We used our litter pickers, purchased with a small grant from Pontypridd Town Council. We just couldn't believe how much litter we found!

We aim to do a community litter pick regularly, joining forces with all our pupil voice groups.  

Please take a look at our photos. (They will follow shortly)

Visit to Allotment

We have recently visited our local allotment to purchase some produce for us to grow in school.

We met Mark, who was very helpful and gave us some growing tips. He also said we were welcome to visit the allotment again to speak to local members for their advice on planting and growing.  

Presenting to our Governors

We have recently done a presentation to our school governors reporting on what we have been doing since October.

Please take a look at our PowerPoint Presentation and read our script (until we can upload the video).

Sorting the Community Recycling

Mrs Davies and some eager volunteers in year 3/4 have been busy sorting some of the recycling we receive from our local community. 

        RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 

On the weekend it was the RSPB's 'Big Garden Birdwatch'.

This was the world's biggest garden wildlife survey.

Last week some of our Eco Team visited classes to tell them all about the project and encourage people to take part.

The project involved counting the birds that land in your garden over the period of an hour. Only birds that land were counted, not those flying past.

There is still plenty of time to submit the results of your bird count. You have until 19th February. 

To download a useful birdwatch guide, please go to rspb.org.uk/birdwatch

Our Eco Team will soon be taking part in the Big Schools' Birdwatch, counting the different birds that land in our school grounds. An update and photos will follow soon.

Swifts in Schools Project

Yesterday we had a visit from Mr Kerry Rogers from the Swifts in Schools Project. He visited us to identify a suitable location in our school to put a bird box to encourage swifts to nest.

After a tour of the school grounds with Mrs Roberts and our Eco Team, a good location was found.

Swifts are very clean birds and their nesting box will be extremely high up, so it will not cause us any problems in the yard.

The number of swifts has declined in Rhondda Cynon Taf so this project will hopefully see a rise in the number of swifts nesting in our area.

Road Safety Wales Competition

In September 2023 the speed limit on roads where people live, or regularly walk and cycle, is going to change. A new 20mph speed limit will come in.

This new speed limit will help reduce collisions on our roads, make our streets nicer places to be and encourage more people to walk and cycle.

Road Safety Wales and the Welsh Government are asking school children to design a 20mph sign that can be used outside schools, to remind drivers of the importance of driving within the 20mph speed limit, helping reduce the danger to everyone. 

The Eco Team have visited the Year 5/6 classes to tell them about the competition and let classes know the rules. The winning design will be chosen after the closing date at the end of January 2023, with the winner receiving £250!!!! 

Here are just a few of the entries.

Presenting to the Governors

This week we made a video to show our school governors what we have been doing since May 2022. This video was then shown to the governors in their meeting.

Please take a look.    

Environmental Review

Our Eco Team have been carrying out an Environmental Review. 

They have been working in pairs or threes to do research around the school and to answer environmental questions.

From this review targets will be made to help improve our school environment and our schools impact on the planet. 

Healthy Eating Assembly

Last week we did an assembly in the top block to encourage everyone to make healthy choices for their breaktime snack and their packed lunch.

We made our own PowerPoint and decided what we were going to say.

This week we did an assembly for the younger children in the middle block. Then they sang their healthy eating song 'Cauliflower's Fluffy'.

Seeds for Spring Planting

We have bought seeds from our local allotment ready for planting in our Eco Area next Spring.

We will be planting some flowers to attract bees and we will be planting some vegetables. We will be donating these to Pontypridd Foodbank like we did last summer. 

Eco Team 2022 - 2023

Community Champion Recycler

Very well done to Evie Morgan in Year Six for all her hard work in our local community. For many months she has been collecting recycling from family, friends and neighbours and at the end of term she brought it all in to school. 

This extra recycling has helped us achieve the weight we need to send materials to Terracycle. 

Well done Evie!

More Planting in our Eco Area

After harvesting our potatoes and onions, we thought our Eco Area looked a bit bare. So today we planted a few more flowers to make the area look more attractive and also to attract more pollinators. 

Sorting our Recycling for Terracycle

We receive lots of items for recycling from the local community. 

These need sorting into separate bags and boxes before being sent to Terracycle.

This takes a long time.

It was quite tricky today because the wind kept blowing the wrappers everywhere. 

Pontypridd Foodbank

After harvesting our vegetables we decided to donate them to the Pontypridd Foodbank. We took them to the Riverside Foodbank on the Broadway where the organisers were delighted with our fresh produce. 

Harvesting our vegetables in our Eco Area

This week Mrs Davies and the Eco Team harvested the potatoes and spring onions that were planted in our eco area in the spring. 

Maes-y-Coed Walk, Cycle or Scoot to School Week

It is fantastic to see Rea Reynolds from Y1 walking to school today.

Well done Rea!

It is brilliant to see Lottie Loring Y3, Priya Jacob Y3 and Ava Jacob Y1/2 riding their scooters to school. Well done girls!

Super to see Leo Ahearne in Y3 walking to school today. Well done Leo!

It is fantastic to see Tommy Parfitt from Y3 cycling safely to school this morning. Well done Tommy!

It is great to see Frankie Mellor in Y3 riding her scooter to school today. Well done Frankie. It's also great to see Tilly Mellor walking to school. Well done Tilly. 

It is wonderful to see Mia Vaughan from Y3 riding her scooter to school this morning, just like her sister did yesterday. Well done Mia. 

It is great to see Libby Vaughan from Reception class enjoying taking part in our walk, cycle or scoot to school week. Well done Libby! 

It is fantastic to see Phoebe Angus in Y1/2 walking and riding her scooter to school this morning, along with her sister Lexi Angus in Y5/6. Well done to both of you!

It's fantastic to see Dillon Harvey in Y4 on her way home from school on her scooter. Well done Dillon!

Easter Egg Recycle Challenge

For the last few weeks the Eco Team have been visiting classrooms to collect all of the Easter Egg packaging sent in from home. This was for the 'R.C.T. Easter Egg Recycle Challenge' where prizes are given for the schools that collect the most recycling per pupil. 

On Friday two ladies from R.C.T came to look at what we had collected and allowed some of the Eco Team to help with the weighing and recording of results. 

We will have to wait a few weeks to get the final result, but we would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has helped us by sending in their recycling. We think an awful lot of Eggs were eaten in Maes-y-Coed!!

Please have a look at our photos below.   

                   Our Recycling Area

Our journey with Terracycle so far....

With all the support we have received from parents, grandparents and the wider community, we have sent over 98kg of recycling to Terracycle. This has so far raised enough money for us to purchase plant pots to create an ECO area in our junior yard. We are also supporting other community groups with recycling with items we don't send to Terracyle due to them being our local drop off points.

The hard to recycle items are broken down and recycled into furniture and used in parks etc.

Live Outdoor Lesson

Back in October, Year 3 took part in a Live Outdoor Lesson run by Keep Wales Tidy.

It was on the theme of litter, one of the Eco Team's targets. 

They went out into the community on a litter pick.

Back in the classroom they sorted the litter and created graphs using j2Data on Hwb. Some of these were sent to Keep Wales Tidy who mentioned Maes-y-Coed Primary in the second part of the lesson later in the day.   

Eco Team Autumn Term 2021

Back in the Autumn Term we used one of our Eco Team meetings to look through a seed catalogue from our local allotment. We made a list of flowers and fruit and vegatables we would like to grow in the school yard as well as the allotment.

We tried to choose things that would be easier to grow and would not need a greenhouse. 

Mrs King then placed our order with the allotment committee. 

Presenting to the Governors

This term we had to do a presentation for the governors.

We had to talk about things we have done in the last few months.

Please take a look.