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eco–schools leader Samantha Westerman – Copley Junior School


Developing environmental awareness across the curriculum and leading the work of the Eco Council are central to the school’s drive to support children’s understanding and commitment to caring for the environment.


Samantha Westerman, Eco–Schools Leader, describes their approach:


At Copley Junior we aim to empower pupils to be the change our sustainable world needs by engaging them in fun, action–orientated and socially responsible learning about the environment.


We have developed a dynamic and engaging curriculum and plan opportunities across school to develop children’s understanding of environmental matters. For example, in Year 3 as part of their project ‘Flow’, children learn about different habitats across the world and how changes such as deforestation are affecting numbers of endangered species.


At Copley we have an enthusiastic Eco Council who lead many initiatives to raise awareness and improve our local environment. Members are elected from a pupil vote in each class every year and wear their Eco Council badges with pride.


Our involvement in the national Eco–Schools Programme has supported our environmental work and provided opportunities to celebrate our success. We selected the key themes of energy, travel and litter and created an action plan to detail our planned improvements.


Our elected Eco Council pupil leaders drive initiatives to develop environmental awareness and inspire our young people to be the voice for change.


In Year 6’s ‘Frozen Kingdom’ project children undertake their own research to find out about the impact of climate change on the flora and fauna of the Arctic and Antarctica. We are always keen to maximise cross curricular links so, for example, in their geography work Year 3 conduct fieldwork to investigate how clean the River Don is. Children set up a simple enquiry to find out which water sample is the cleanest, they observe carefully, use data loggers and opalometers to take accurate measurements, record data in a table and use their results to draw a conclusion.


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We have worked to improve our school grounds by designing and planting a new school garden; working with the Woodland Trust and planting new saplings in our school grounds; taking part in regular litter picking and planting over 600 spring bulbs to bring colour to our school grounds.


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