Keeping Brightside Green

The Green Team

The Green Team at Brightside NI School have a special job to help Miss Jones, Miss Buck and Mrs Beck to take care of the environment in and around school.  The Green Team meet every two weeks to discuss ideas, plans and do jobs around school! Please see the action plan below to find out our plans for this year or see our Eco-Board display in the hall for more information. 

Green Team 2024/25

Autumn 1 - This half term the y1 and y2 pupils applied to become part of the Green Team. Miss Jones and Miss Buck were so impressed with all of the application forms, and they chose 2 pupils from each Key Stage 1 class (see picture below). The Green Team are very excited to get started and help improve our school grounds and environment. The children met with Miss Jones and Mrs Beck to discuss their roles around school, and share ideas for the following academic year. During the first meeting, we discussed the importance of preventing food waste to link to learning about harvest time throughout school. 

Autumn 2 - This half term the Green Team met with Miss Jones and Mrs Beck to discuss their roles in school. They decided to create a new logo for the Brightside Eco Code and worked hard drawing their designs. They voted which one they liked best. The Green Team also thought about ways they could reduce the amount of litter around our school grounds by becoming Litter Monitors. The Green Team have also organised a litter pick to help tidy up the school playground which all classes will have the chance to be involved in. 

Spring 1 - This half term the Green Team met to start planning Green Week and think about ideas that each class could do to raise awareness of looking after our environment and ways that we can help our planet. The Green Team have also started designing and making posters to display around school to encourage and remind other children to turn off the taps when finished, recycle, and ensure all food waste gets put in the bin after playtime. Miss Jones signed our school up to complete the Big RSPB Birdwatch in schools, which all classes in reception, Y1 and Y2 took part in as part of Green Week. This allowed us to observe and document the types of wildlife we find in our school grounds, and Green Team also thought about how we can make our school grounds more anmal-friendly, such as making bird feeders.

Spring 2 - This half term the Green Team have completed another litter pick to ensure our school environment is kept clean and safe. The children have also been thinking about how we can use recycled products in our learning at school, for example, the Year 1 children made Tudor houses using recycled boxes and how we can use them to make products in DT. The Green Team will be starting to think about plans to improve our school garden area in the next few weeks e.g. planting seeds and bulbs, tidying the garden and fixing the Bug Hotel as we approach spring. We have also been keeping an eye on our travel trackers to see if we can improve the number of children walking, cycling, scooting or doing park and stride each week. The Green Team will be monitoring the results at the end of the travel tracker programme.

Summer 1 - This half term some of our pupils have planted some beautiful plants around school. Mrs Abrahams and Miss Fidler have started Forest School after school club with some children. The children all took part in the whole school event to celebrate Earth Day 2025: to raise awareness of saving energy all classes completed an afternoon of learning in 'Dark Mode' with all the lights turned off in their classrooms. Miss Jones is leading a gardening after school club with some Y2 children; so far the children have helped to weed and tidy the flower beds in the garden, and they even planted some potatoes! Green Team have also planted some new plants around the school grounds, continuing to help water and maintain these plants to keep them healthy. Children throughout school have also been learning different science topics about plants, and how to help keep plants healthy.

Summer 2 - 

Green Team 2023/24

Over the 2023/2024 academic year, we continued to develop our projects such as the School Garden and the Outdoor Woodland Area.

We elected a Green Team! The Green team met with Miss Buck and Miss Parker, and helped her to take care of the school garden. They planted lots of seeds and bulbs and grew some delicious vegetables to eat. 

They have also been involved in a range of projects such as:

• Active Week
• Green Week/Community Week
• World Culture Day
• International Week  
• Developing our Outdoor Learning Area alongside business firms from the local community
• Monitors to help keep our school 'green' e.g. plant monitors
• Forest Schools field area  
• Gardening after school club 
• Big Battery Hunt
• The Great Big School Clean Up 
• Walk to School Week 
• Volunteers from local businesses to help develop our School Garden and Forest School Area