POLICY STATEMENT ON

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

DEFINITION

Environmental education is an essential part of every child's curriculum. It helps to encourage awareness of the environment, leading to informed concern and active participation in resolving environmental problems.

AIMS

To teach children

v about the environment by providing opportunities to acquire knowledge, values, commitment and skills needed to protect the environment.

v by encouraging pupils to examine and interpret the environment from a variety of perspectives - physical, geographical, biological, historical, aesthetic, ethical and spiritual.

v by arousing their awareness and natural curiosity, developing a personal environmental ethic and encouraging active participation in resolving environmental problems.

GUIDELINES

Environmental education can be taught in many ways. Children will be encouraged to examine and interpret the environment from a variety of perspectives. All subjects can contribute to environmental learning.

Approaches to teaching and learning:

Much of the work done by children will be through investigations and enquiries. They can plan and direct their own studies by creating real life questions, testing hypotheses, using primary and secondary evidence and reviewing findings together in groups.

The school encourages fieldwork using real life, outdoor experiences wherever possible. We aim to increase the complexity of the environments, timescale and vary the location, thus enabling children to benefit from structured progression.

The school promotes positive attitudes and values about the environment that are essential if pupils are to value, understand and safeguard the environment for the future. This approach is the responsibility of everyone at the school. It is reflected in the ethos, management style and attitude towards the school and the site.

The school community believes in developing an ecologically sustainable environment i.e. buying and using only environmentally friendly products wherever possible, managing site waste and being economical with non-renewable resources.

Environmental issues are often controversial with conflicting viewpoints. Children must learn to listen to different viewpoints, think independently, respect and welcome other opinions.

ICT can be used to record, plot and store data. Long-term retrieval systems could be initiated (e.g. weather, insect surveys, transport) to which children could add their results. This would make their task more significant and purposeful and build up a bank of useful data for the school to use.

A whole school approach to Environmental Education is being adopted. This gives consideration to the progression of knowledge, skills, values, attitudes with active participation and use of resources.

Assessment is an integral part of the planning and is a way of establishing children's performance and progress. Assessments will be recorded in many different ways e.g. written, oral and pictorial evidence, tape recordings, poster making, painting or by planning and taking an assembly.

Basic suggestions for Environmental work

Whole School

Everyone is encouraged to appreciate and care for the school grounds by picking up litter, respecting plant and animal life and developing the site

Children are encouraged to take part in local environmental projects.

Infants - Year 1 and 2

Explore the school grounds including the school pond.

Minibeasts - care and respect for creatures and school grounds.

Care for the environment, litter collection.

Villlage walks

Year 3

History local study - quality of local environment, changes / historical perspective.

- the school and recycling

Pollution – effect on buildings

Year 4

Residential trip including environmental study, funds permitting.

Habitats

Year 5

Environmental sustainability

Comparison with another locality - potential exploitation of the environment.

Residential trip, funds permitting.

Year 6

Residential trip, funds permitting

Rain forests

Development of a green space – class garden and school pond.

AMENDMENT SHEET FOR ALL POLICY STATEMENTS

POLICY ON ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

POLICY NUMBER 29 Version 4

DATE POLICY RATIFIED; SUMMER 1997

DATE POLICY LAST REWRITTEN; AUTUMN 2002

Review Date	Page	Line	Amendment
Summer 1997			Written
Summer 1999			Amended
Autumn 2001			Amended
Autumn 2002			Rewritten