After another fantastic year for our annual Conservation Awards, we spoke with Vale Infant School; winners of the Best School Award, Young Conservationists of the Year and the People’s Choice Award in 2018.
How does it feel after all the hard work so far?
We are absolutely thrilled to be honest and are still in shock that we won 3 of the awards! A lot of work has gone into the woodland area over the past year and more recently from all Year groups within the school and it is really great to receive recognition for this. It was also wonderful to receive the Peoples Choice Award and know that we have the support of the school community behind us. Very pleased, we are still smiling!
You must be very proud! How have the Vale School pupils reacted to their success? The school as a whole must be excited?
Yes we are extremely proud of the project and all the hard work that the children and school staff have put in to make this possible. The whole school is excited about the awards. We contacted the school after the awards presentation and Mr. Hind announced it over the loud speaker at sports day followed by 3 cheers from the children and parents! A DoJo story was also sent to all parents with a picture of all the awards and we have received some lovely positive comments from this.
We’re passionate about young people being involved in conservation for the future of our islands environment. Do you think that your success at the awards will open the door for more education on conservation in the future?
Absolutely! I think that this is just the start of our journey into providing rich learning experiences around conservation and the important reasons behind conservation. Each year group has been involved with the project whether it was planting the trees, making willow arches, looking after the area or studying the soil within the woodland and they have been fully immersed in their learning. Our curriculum states that outdoor learning is an entitlement to all children so this ties beautifully in with learning about their environment and biodiversity. We feel strongly that our children need to learn about their environment in order to care and respect it for future generations.
How will you look to spend the prize monies to help develop the project? (Best Schools £500 / People’s Choice £500 / Young Conservationists £250)
We are looking to spend some of the prize money on getting good quality bird cams for a number of our bird boxes within the woodland and nature garden area. They will hopefully link to our computers/iPads etc so that we can log on and watch what is happening in the nests from wherever we are! We are going to sow the wildflower seeds we won, within the woodland area to produce some rich pollinating areas. We are also putting some prize money into a new conservation project which is hopefully going to get off the ground in the autumn term which is to create a pond and relative habitats for a variety of animals. This is an exciting new project which will bring with it many more learning opportunities and environmental awareness.
How can the public keep up to date with your project activity?
The best way for the public to keep up to date with our project and how it develops is via our website: http://www.valeprimary.sch.gg
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