Remember to look after your sunflowers this Easter.  Slow and steady wins the race! 

Thanks to Matilda for organising this competition and making £60.50 for the school.

Our active Eco Alert group strongly believe that every voice and every action can make a difference. Here are some of the initiatives the children have promoted in the Spring term 2019:
 The Big Battery Hunt: recycling batteries. Each year, as a country we throw away about 600 million batteries. Over 20,000 tonnes of batteries end up in landfill sites – that’s as heavy as 4000 elephants. So far, we have had to arrange one collection due to the amount of batteries collected. We are still collecting and the more we get, the better for the environment, the less we are polluting the soil and water, the more materials can be reused (zinc, steel and manganese) and the more chance we have of winning prizes for the school!
 Matilda’s sunflower competition: Matilda in Y2 has planned and organised a project where children brought in a recycled plastic pot, paid 50p for soil and a seed and are involved in growing their own sunflower seed. Stage 1 of the competition will be measuring the tallest sunflower after a couple of months and Stage 2 will be once they have been planted out at school and they are at the flowering stage. Matilda planned the competition and then has promoted and implemented it making a total of £60.50 for the school.
 Protect our Planet (POP): the Eco Alert group have carried out a day dedicated to learning about ‘Plastics’. The normal curriculum was collapsed for the day and children across the school were involved in activities to promote their understanding about Plastics. This was supported by Delmeza and the team at Education Team from Recycle Devon.
 Bottle tops: promotion of domestic collecting of plastic bottle tops through LUSH – these can be sent off for recycling.
 Harry’s inhaler collection point: Harry in Y6 has organised the collection point for inhaler and spacers. Families can deposit their old inhalers and spacers in the monster bin in our school entrance and these will be recycled.

Protect Our Planet (POP) day: Devon Waste Education team – Demelza, Alex and Sally - ran workshops for different year groups throughout the day. Years 3, 4 and 5 learned that plastic was first invented in 1907. On average, plastic takes about 500 years to break down. This means that every bit of plastic that has ever been invented still exists today (112 years on) somewhere on our planet. Children learnt about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that is an island of rubbish the size of Germany, Spain and France combined. We were also introduced to many alternatives that we could use to help cut down our use of single-use plastics: bamboo toothbrushes, reusable bags, metal or paper straws, reusable wrappers rather than cling film, bamboo cutlery instead of plastic throw away cutlery, making our own natural hand scrubs, use of soap instead of soap liquid, not using wet wipes and many more.

We saw pictures of animals that have been harmed by plastic. An albatross chick had died because the chick’s parents had been feeding it plastic (this was because they did not know the difference between plastic and food). The chick had a stomach so full of plastic that it could not eat any other food and died through starvation. We saw a picture of a seahorse who had attached itself to a cotton bud. We saw a picture of a turtle, named Peanut, because it had grown into the shape of a large peanut due to it being stuck in the plastic that holds cans together. The turtle had to have an operation to help it to recover.

The children and adults in Years 3, 4 and 5 made natural hand scrubs out of household ingredients: sugar, lemon, honey, coco powder, lavender drops, oats, olive oil. The smell was fresh and the children and adults were impressed with how soft their skin was.

Our Year 2 Eco Alert group organised an activity where children bought in some plastic waste from home and they made it into something different. Hermione made her bottle into a bird feeder. Matilda got the whole school involved in learning two songs ‘the 3R’s’ by Jack Johnson and ‘Everyone Can make a change’.

Year 6 did some amazing art work of which some is displayed in the school lounge. It shows wildlife in their natural environment with stomachs full of plastics, amazing landscapes ruined by litter and plastics. Year 6 and Reception children buddied up together for part of the day to do activities together based on plastic pollution.

Year 5 reused lots of plastic to make scarecrows with our marine plastic theme. These will be entered into Devon County Show scarecrow competition.

Years 1 and 2 enjoyed a ‘Pirates against Plastic’ workshop where they were doing a treasure hunt around the school grounds and found pictures of birds and animals that needed help – a gull with fishing net stuck in its beak, a seal with a plastic bag over its head etc. They understood what damage single-use plastic is doing to our environment and talked about ways of stopping these.

The Eco Alert team did a litter pick around the school grounds and were surprised by the 4 bin bags of rubbish we found that has been dropped by our own school community.

All in all it was a very busy day and one where we all learned a great deal. It made us think about what a difference one individual can make by taking small changes and will support the further work that the Eco Alert group will be leading in school next term.

Today in school has been POP day (Protect Our Planet).

Our creative Year 3 Eco Team helped to plan and organise the activities that Year 3 did throughout the day, the focus was on plastic pollution.  Lily, Ozzy, Maisie and Matthew planned a great activity to show how difficult it is for animals to know what is food and what is plastic.  They had small pieces of plastic mixed up with small pieces of food and used their thumb and for finger (as the animal's mouth) to scoop up bits of food and put it into a bowl (representative of the animal's stomach).  The children saw, even with their great eye sight, how difficult it was to not pick up the plastics and get the plastics in their bowls (stomachs).  

Today our new Eco Alert group met for the first time this year.  We talked about what an 'agenda' was and what 'minutes' are and finally 'actions' (the most important part).  We discussed what the children in school wanted the Eco Alert group to do and what the Eco Alert group wanted to do themselves.  Each class was given a book to record their actions and what their class respond to these actions.  These are our first meeting actions:

1. Find out what classes know about plastic and the environment

2. Make sure every class has a scrap paper tray

3. Y4 and Y6 to empty the recycling bins

Next meeting agreed: Monday 8 October 3pm, School lounge

The Eco Alert group have been nominated for this year 2017-2018.  We meet approximately every other week with Mrs Whalley.

So far, we have had 4 meetings:

Meeting 1: name decided and talked about the role of the Eco Alert group

Meeting 2: litter audit - we did an audit of in school and in the school grounds.  We decided on a grading for litter in our school.  

A - Litter free

B - Mainly litter free except for some small items

C - widespread litter 

D - heavy litter

We graded the classrooms as B.

We graded the outdoor environment as B.

We graded our shared indoor areas as B-

We graded the dinner hall after lunch time as D.

Meeting 3: we decided on an action plan based on the litter gradings.

Meeting 4: Y4, 5 and 6 Eco Alert met to plan an assembly to talk to children about our litter audit findings and some action that we want to take.

Eco Council is helping our school by recycling the White paper that is in the green bins . We are trying to stop the trees being cut down and encouraging children to use both sides of their sheet of paper. We try to make sure that only white paper goes into these recycling bins and not other materials such as coloured paper that doesn't rip white. We are also trying to save electricity around the school when the classroom is not in use.
Faye, Austin, Theo and Kitty

At the beginning of the Autumn we set up an Eco-Council. There are two representatives from each class in Years 4 – 6. So far we have looked into the safe walk to school, which will hopefully encourage more children to walk to school.
We have undertaken a Waste Audit of the school, where we investigated how much rubbish the school produces in 1 day. We have discovered that as a school we need to get better at recycling and we are now looking into ways we can improve this.

Today we discussed the ideas that children classes had talked about during their Class Learning Forums.

Class Learning Forums happen on a weekly basis.  They are a time when children talk about class/whole school issues.  They use a 2:6:2 format.  2 minutes to introduce the issue, 6 minutes to decide on strategies and 2 minutes to choose and reflect on the expected impact of implementing the strategies.

Years 1-6 are going to trial 2 strategies:

1. Team Try-it: this will be one book that is shared by the table.  Anyone who wants to practise a spelling will try it 3 or 4 different ways to see which one looks right.  They are going to circle the one they try.

2. Spelling nudge: if someone is not sure which one, they will gently nudge the person next to them, who will have a look at the spellings and decide which one they think is right.  They may try this with another person and an adult if they need further support.

Our School Learning Team representatives will share the strategies with everyone in their class and trial them.  They will report back at the next meeting.

Next meeting: Tuesday 28 November 1pm

The School Learning Team have been nominated for this year.  Each class (from Years 1-6) nominate one girl and one boy to represent their class.  Children need to put themselves forward for this role, describe why they would be great for the role, then the class have a secret vote to decide who will do the role for the next year.

So far, the team have met 4 times this year, approximately once every other week.

Meeting 1: Miss Greenslade came to survey opinion of the School Learning Team about lunchtimes in the dinner hall, what they like about it and what they would like to change.  Miss Greenslade has also spoken to all our Meal Time Assistants with the same questions.

Meeting 2: The team fed back ideas from their classes.  These ideas were then collected by Miss Greenslade who put an action plan together to progress with people's ideas.

Meeting 3: we talked about spellings and asked all School Learning Teams to hold a Class Learning Froum on this topic about spelling strategies that helped them

Meeting 4: the team fed back their ideas.  These will now be collated and we will ghold an asselmbly about everyone's sugestions.

Today the School Learnig Team met to plan what they want to do next year.  These are the things they want to get involved in:

Making class profiles - they will be given to any new children who join the class and we will also put them all together for a whole school class profile book.

Red spot, green spot problems - training for School Learning Team on these and then leading assemblies to talk about these.

Collect a pool of art to represent our school.

Create a School learning Team newsletter.

Today we had to feed back the questions that our classes wanted to ask the candidates for tomorrow's Reception class interviews.  We cannot reveal them to the world incase we want to ask them in the future and a prospective candidate is reading this!

Year 6 did ask the questions, they selected 3 to ask and asked each of the 4 candidates then fed back to Mrs Whalley with their thoughts.

Today we had to feed back on www (what works well) in our writing.  Below is an overview of what we talked about:

We know how to write letters

We use our talk partners a lot

We always have time to improve our writing

We have pupil voice, meaning we guide what we are writing about

There is always a clear audience for the writing

We use rally robin

We use working walls to help us

We use video clips to inspire us

We use dictionaries and theasuaruses

We use a cursive style of handwriting

We use purple pens to edit

We choose how to present our work

We have targets to remind us about what we are trying to improve.

We use hot and cold tasks

We self assess our learning

We do quick writes

We talked about ebi (even better if) with our writing.  Below is an overview of what we talked about:

more spellings to learn

more choice of what to write about

have a smaller table each

lined pages

We had to ask our classes why people should come to Exminster Community Primary School.

Here is an overview of what was said:

Nothing is impossible

Teachers and staff are helpful

Friends help each other

Friendly, fun and fiar lessons

Inclusive

It is safe

Everyone is happy

Inspirational teachers

Good education

Diveristy

GOAL time

We raise money for others

We learn new things

Tie to play and learn

We have good fun

We have our Rainbow Values

The new School Learning Team have been meeting every 2 weeks since the beginning of term.

We have been talking about GOAL (Get On And Learn) time, what is working well and what we enjoy about it.  We have also been looking at what we want to do to develop it further.

We have been discussing writing in school and what we enjoy about it plus what would make it better.

We have been formulating questions to ask prospective candidates for a teaching job.

Our meetings follow a 2:6:2 formula.  This means we spend 2 minutes explaining the issue, 6 minutes with possible solutions and 2 minutes deciding which solutions to try.

Our pupil voice is fed back to staff through staff SHOUT OUTs and staff meetings.  We each have jobs to go back and discuss with our classes.

Our Year 5 and 6 School Learning Team are being trained as Learning mentors where we will be meeting younger children to talk about what they are proud of in their learning.

The School Learning Team were invited by the Parish Council to the planting of a Red Maple tree on Reddaway Drive today to celebrate the Queen's 90th birthday. Children helped to put down compost and plant the tree, donated by the RSPB, alongside the Parish Council and members of the Parish.
Lara commented, "Right in front of the tree, there is a sign that was made by Jeremy, remembering the Queen's birthday."
Jasmine said, "I will remember it is a big birthday for the Queen. It will have big, beautiful leaves."

Children In Need

The school council would like to thank everyone for the support they showed on Friday for ‘Children In Need’.

The children looked bright and colourful and certainly brightened up the day.

With donations from non-uniform and the cake stall after school we raised a total of £394.24.

Thankyou once again for your continued support

School Council and Mrs Roberts

We are back!!!!

This is the first blog of the new School Council at Exminster!!

We met for the first time this week to discuss 'What a school council member does'

We arrived very keen to participate, all proudly wearing our school council badges.

We discussed what happens at the meetings and how we will feed the information back to our classes 'circle time'.

We began the meeting by introducing ourselves and saying something about us. We then began to plan what our future meetings would look like.

Mrs Roberts then took photos of us all to display on our classroom doors and on the school council board in the hall.

Our first task was to choose a charity for the year! We all gave our ideas and voted for the top 8 to take back to our classes to vote for the top 2!! We are going to bring those top 2 to our next meeting and vote for the top 1 as a council. We are really excited about planning events to raise money in the future.

Watch this space for future updates!!

School Council

We have had a really busy term on the School Council.

During February and March we were asked to be part of the interview process for our new year 1 teacher Mr McGlynn and for our new headteacher Mrs Whalley.

We were very excited to have the opportunity to ask them a variety of questions from;

Why did you want to be a teacher? to, How would you deal with an injury involving blood?

We are looking forward to the summer term very much as we have planned a non-uniform day to raise money for our charity 'The Little Valley Animal Shelter'. We will be asking the children to come to school dressed as an animal, bring a toy animal to school and finishing with an animal themed cake stall.

We are very proud to be School Council members as it is a very responsible job to have in school. Our weekly meetings involve us all getting together to share our classes views on issues within the school. In return Mrs Roberts tries her best to solve the issuses, if not she always knows someone who can!!!!! 

We look forward to writing more blogs in the future when we have more fun things to share!!!

School Council and Mrs Roberts

                                                 School Council 2013-14

Towards the end of September all the children in the school had the opportunity to nominate themselves to become a school council representative for their class. This is always a difficult decision for the children, not only nominating themselves but also voting for the right people for the job! Each class nominates a boy and a girl to be 'their voice' for that year. We meet every 2 weeks on a Thursday lunchtime in Mrs Roberts room. If we are lucky we get some 'beetle juice' or a treat!! Our job is to communicate ideas back to the meetings that come from our circle time/SEAL sessions. This may include issues that need to be resolved, or good things that have been successful.

At the beginning of December we had a vote to choose our 'Charity for the Year' it was a tough decision as we started with 10 charities but could only select one. The winning charity was 'The Little Valley Animal Shelter' in Exeter. Little Valley is owned and run by the South, East and West Devon Branch of the RSPCA and is located on the outskirts of Exeter. The Shelter, founded in 1991, supports the work of local RSPCA inspectors by caring for and rehoming over 1000 of the neediest animals from our local area every year. We are hoping to arrange a visit to the shelter for the children once the current refurbishments have been completed. The children currently have lots of ideas of how to raise money for them, including a non-uniform day with a pet theme! a mini Easter fayre to include handmade Easter themed items, toys, books, cakes and a café.

The children are very proud to be council members within the school and you will see them wearing their badges on their jumpers with pride.

More recently the children have organised a Christmas jumper day where they raised just over £200 for the Philippines Typhoon Appeal, and together with the book sale organise by the Year 6 children, just over £300.

Well done school council keep up the good work!!!