At Monkhouse Primary School, we encourage all children to be active members of the wider global society. We provide our children with opportunities to learn about the world they live in and see the impact of humans actions on the world in both a positive and negative way. Through our curriculum design and projects, we hope to encourage the children to strive for change to make our school more sustainable and environmentally friendly, which in turn will help to make the world a better place.

Our Eco Warriors 2024-2025:

Eco Lead - Miss Ritson

Year 1 - Reggie & Isaac

Year 2 - Freddie & Poppy

Year 3 - Alex & Hayden 

Year 4 - Sophie & Harper

Year 5 - Molly & Mitchell

Year 6 - Rebecca & Oliver 
 

At Monkhouse, we now follow the Climate friendly schools programme which is pupil-led, encouraging hands-on learning that brings the whole school and the wider community together on exciting environmental projects. The aim is to raise awareness and improve the school environment.

In Summer 2024, we achieved the Green Flag award and have been successful in maintaining Eco School status for a number of years.

2024-25 Eco Projects

This year, we are working with our Climate friendly schools mentor to follow our own 10 action plan to become a climate friendly school. Our 10 actions are:

ACTION 1: We will investigate grants to expand our community garden space.

ACTION 2:  Solar panels for school to reduce electricity costs.

ACTION 3: IT Monitors will be assigned to each classroom to ensure electronics and lights are turned off when they need to be i.e over breaks and at the end of the day.

ACTION 4: We will plant more trees in our school grounds.

ACTION 5: Reduce the amount of adults smoking and vaping at the school gates and reduce litter

ACTION 6: Reduce the amount of water used in school.

ACTION 7: We will investigate grants to use water buts 

ACTION 8: increase awareness around water use

ACTION 9: Increase number of children walking to school

ACTION 10: We will undertake a recycling campaign in school. This will involve recycling items such as paper, plastic, clothes, batteries etc.

Walk to school tracker 

We had a very special visitor in our school – Strider, the walk-to-school mascot, joined us bright and early to welcome children as they arrived at school! There was a real buzz of excitement on the school drive as pupils met Strider, posed for fun photos, and talked about their journeys to school.This visit marked the launch of a big push to encourage active travel and help children become more aware of how they get to school each day. We’re asking all pupils to mark their mode of travel each morning – whether they walk, scoot, cycle, or take the bus – as part of our effort to promote healthier, more sustainable travel habits. The children have been excellently tracking their mode of travel. We are going to have one big push before the summer holidays. 

Uniform Swap

Thank you to everyone who participated in the uniform swap. We hope you found this useful and will continue to provide this on a termly basis. 

As we had so many donations, we were able to donate some uniforms to charity. 2 bags of generic school uniform were donated to the Love Amelia charity. This is a children’s charity offering support to families experiencing poverty and hardship across the North East.

Our next uniform swap will be Thursday 17th July. Everyone is welcome to drop your old uniform items (clean and in good condition) into the designated bins at the doors the children enter on your way into school, starting Tuesday 1st July. This is a great opportunity to pass on gently used uniforms to help other families.

How it works:

The Climate friendly schools programme empowers children to drive change and improve their environmental awareness. Each year, children in Years 1 - 6 are given the opportunity to become members of the Eco Warriors. Every year, the children create a poster or keynote sharing why they think they would make good eco warriors. Their class vote on whose poster/keynote persuades them. They conduct an environmental review of the school looking at Eco areas such as; Biodiversity, Energy, Healthy Living and many more. They then form an action plan of areas that can be improved and ways to create change. The Eco Team meet to work on the action plan as well as; holding assemblies to inform the school on environmental issues or actions they are taking, creating posters to display around school or making changes to how the school operates to be more eco friendly.