Langham Primary has been awarded a Green Flag!! Well done to the Eco Team and the whole school for your hard work. The Green Flag accreditation recognises, rewards and celebrates our schools’ environmental achievments.Mrs Harrow said that she felt very proud of what Langham Primary had done, over the years, to help the planet and hopes that everyone will carry on caring and thinking about the environment now that she has retired.Mrs Harrow said that she felt very proud of what Langham Primary had done, over the years, to help the planet and hopes that everyone will carry on caring and thinking about the environment now that she has retired. Our Story We have an Eco Team that is made up of children from Years 1-6, who have volunteered, and a staff member (Mrs Harrow). The children are really keen! Mrs Cowie is also helping us this year which is fantastic! This year we will be working towards our Green Flag by following the 7 steps of the Eco Schools Programme. We have done an Environmental Review of our school and have made an Action Plan with actions that are doing. You can see our Action Plan by clicking on the file on this page. Our 3 Eco Schools topics that we are looking at this year are Waste, Energy and Transport. We will continue to do lots of different things to improve our school environment and to improve sustainability.The Eco Team are also responsible for making sure that everyone is following our Eco Code and that everyone in school knows what we’re doing and joins in too! We have been trying to encourage everyone at school to save energy by turning off lights and closing doors. Each class has Energy Monitors, so hopefully we will save lots of energy! We have also been trying to get the staff to do less photocoying, which is not an easy task! Our Top Tips for Saving Energy Turn off lights when you’re not in the room or when they are not needed. Use energy-saving light bulbs. Use natural light instead of electric lights, where possible. Use natural light instead of electric lights, where possible. Turn your car lights and engine off if you don’t need them on. Get a timer switch to turn electrical items on and off. Close doors! Keep the heat in. Close the curtains to keep heat in! Put extra clothes on instead of turning the central heating up, or ask an adult to light a fire. Don’t leave the TV and other electrical appliances on stand-by use the switch at the wall when you turn it off. Wash clothes at 30° not 40°. Walk or use a bike instead of the car. Share lifts in the car with other people. Take a quick shower instead of a bath. Turn off chargers when not in use. Only boil as much water as you need in the kettle. Make sure the hot tap is fully turned off! Keeping your fridge and freezers full means they don’t have to work as hard to stay cold and so they use less energy. Insulating your loft and walls can save energy and save you up to £300 a year! Buy eco-friendly machines when you need to replace something, like a washing machine or fridge freezer. Look at the energy ratings for them. Before After We have recently repaired the bug hotel in the Wildlife Area as it was looking a bit derelict! The bugs will hopefully enjoy visiting now. Take a look at the before and after photos above.In June we did an assembly about how to reduce waste by following the 5 Rs. These are REFUSE, REPAIR, REDUCE, REUSE and RECYCLE. It’s important to try to follow the 5Rs in order: if we don’t buy things in the first place there will be less waste, if we repair what we already have we won’t need to buy new things and throw old things away. Use less and reuse things if we can as this stops things ending up in landfill and finally, recycle anything you can. The whole school now know what the 5Rs are!!! New Trees planted 2021 and 2022!! Mrs Harrow planted some small trees in the Forest area during lockdown in March and with the help of some children in Class 3 and a child in Class 2 she also planted 5 fruit trees. These were part of the ‘Orchards for Schools’ project run by the Tree Council. Four are on the school field, near the existing orchard area. They are apple, pear and plum trees and there is a cherry tree in the Wildlife Garden. The children have been watering them regularly to make sure they grow well and Mrs Harrow made sure that the grounds people who cut the grass didn’t go near them by roping off behind them for a meadow area. This grew really well in the summer and was cut down in the autumn. We hope to encourage more wildlife by leaving this area to grow wild again this summer.Mrs Alston, the chair of FOLs, donated 2 Discovery apple trees to the school to commemorate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The eco-team, with the help of Mr MacDonald, planted them in the wildlife garden. There were also herbs, like chives, lemon verbena and mint (that smelt amazing) that were planted too. The bees loved the flowers on the chives and were buzzing around as we were planting them! Big Battery Hunt * WE ARE STILL COLLECTING USED BATTERIES!!*A while ago we took part in a campaign called the Big Battery Hunt.In school the Eco Team did an assembly to show how important it is to recycle batteries and what happens when people do not.Everyone was challenged to find and collect as many USED batteries as possible!Each family had a collection box to fill with as many used AAA, A, C and D batteries as they could find and we entered the competition. We didn’t win but we did stop around 4000 batteries from going in to landfill, so well done everyone!We are still collecting batteries for this year’s Big Battery Hunt, and every child will bring a box home to put your used batteries into, so please keep bringing them in and putting them in the large container in the entrance hall. Big Schools' Bird Watch 2022 In February the Eco Team once again took part in the Big Schools’ Birdwatch. We identified birds that visited our school grounds and counted how many we could see. See the graph to find out what we saw and what we saw last time we took part, in 2020. You can also see the results that we got in 2019 and 2017. Unfortunately, in 2021 we were unable to take part due to the national lockdown. Great Big School Clean In March 2019 the Eco Team took part in Keep Britain Tidy’s Great Big School Clean. This was part of the Great British Spring Clean 2019. We look forward to being litter heroes again soon! In the meantime, make sure you take your rubbish home with you and remind others to do this too ! We went out on a litter pick in the school grounds and in the village. Five members of the eco team did a fantastic job of finding litter within the school grounds. We even tidied up the car park and put the leaves out in the garden waste bag which the bin men collected for recycling! We noticed that nearly all the rubbish we found was plastic wrappers and packets. Three eco team members went along School Road to the community centre, picking up lots of litter. Again it was mostly plastic, as well as take away cups, food packaging, cans and glass. Most of us loved using the grabbers and we were all fantastic Litter heroes!!Last year’s eco team did an assembly about Litter. See their Powerpoint below the slideshow. We are proud to be Litter Heroes and make our school and community environments better places for us and wildlife.