Hold a Green Day in your school
17 May 2012
A Green Day or Green Week is the perfect opportunity to celebrate your school's environmental achievements and get everybody thinking about how to make the school a greener place through some fun, hands-on activities.
It's an occasion to involve the whole school, parents and the local community, and you can make it as big or small as you like. The aim is to have fun and showcase what you have achieved so far and to inspire even more people to get involved in taking care of the environment.
The Pod have developed a set of tools and resources to help you run your Green Day, including a Green Day assembly, Green Day campaign guide (with ideas, hints and tips), posters and much more. Visit the Pod’s Green Day tools page to download these resources.
The Pod also have a special wall for you and your students to post about what your school is doing on their Green Day or Green Week. Visit the Pod’s Green Day Wall to blog about what you are doing or to get some ideas and inspiration from what other schools are up to.
You must be registered with the Pod to gain access to their resources. It's absolutely free to join and all their activities have been accredited by Eco-Schools England and can help you gain Eco-Schools awards. So if you're not already a Pod member, register at www.jointhepod.org today!
Green Day and Eco-Schools awards
There are lots of things you can do as part of a Green Day that would fulfil different elements of the Eco-Schools framework and help you work towards achieving Eco-Schools awards.
Eco-Committee
Get your school’s Eco-Committee to lead your Green Day preparations – brainstorming ideas for the day, deciding how to promote the event to the school and wider community (posters, assemblies, emails, newsletters), as well as actively organising elements of the event, where appropriate. Why not see who else outside of the Eco-Committee wants to get involved in planning the day too?
Environmental Review
For Silver and Green Flag award level, results from your Environmental Review need to have been communicated with the whole school. What better time to do this then on your Green Day?
Action Plan
Although a Green Day is about celebrating the eco achievements you’ve made so far, you could use the event as a platform to get the whole school thinking about future projects and activities you might want to incorporate into your Action Plan.
Involve the whole school and wider community
Green Day is all about bringing the whole school and wider community together to shout about the sustainability action taken by the school and celebrate its successes. Your Green Day also provides an ideal time to inspire and share your ideas and activities with other schools, so why not invite some along? Inviting members of the wider community in also enables you to build contacts with people or organisations that could possibly help you with future projects.
Link sustainability to the curriculum
Why not use some of the Pod’s activity lesson plans and hold a special eco-themed lesson in the build up to your Green Day? Remember to save a copy of the lesson as evidence of your sustainability-linked curriculum work to use towards Eco-Schools awards.
Monitoring and evaluating information
Why not get everyone involved in the Pod's Bug Hunt activity as part of your Green Day activities or test your parents’ knowledge with an eco quiz (there are plenty in the Pod’s Quick Activities section)? Make sure to evaluate the findings of these activities and draw some conclusions.
Your Eco-Code
If your school needs to develop or refresh its Eco-Code, a Green Day is a great opportunity to do so and engage the whole school. It’s also the perfect time to share your Eco-Code with parents and the wider community.