Schools in St Albans, Harpenden and the villages have been celebrating our annual SustFest Schools Week, part of the wider Sustainability Festival (SustFest).
This blog comes from volunteers from our Sustainable St Albans Sustainable Schools Group. This group of local volunteers supports schools across St Albans district all year round. They encourage schools to get involved in the annual SustFest Schools Week.
We are delighted that 18 St Albans District schools took part in SustFest Schools Week 10th-14th June this year. In all, several thousand primary and secondary school children participated by enjoying a huge variety of sustainability activities, from a minibeast world to a toy swap.
Many of the schools wrote reports of their SustFest Schools Week activities. We are delighted to share abridged versions of some of them here.
A Musical Start to SustFest
Schools’ contributions started with the Alban City School Choir and Orchestra’s fantastic performance at the Sustainability Festival EXPO on the afternoon of Sunday 9th June. They drew a big crowd outside the Alban Arena as they performed as part of the Green Arts programme.
From Prae Wood Primary School, St Albans
On Monday, an assembly was held by a guest speaker, Virginia, [Sustainable Schools Group Volunteer and Green Gorilla Consultant], who explained what Sustainability is and launched our exciting week! We know there are 5 ways to be sustainable: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Refuse and Rot!
Using various mediums, children created pieces of art during the week to communicate how they felt about climate change
KS2 children took part in some fantastic Eden project workshops, entitled ‘Sustainability Superstars’ or ‘Rainforest Connections’.
All classes enjoyed some outdoor learning; learning to respect the nature around them
Year 1 to Year 5 pupils also all took part in a community and school grounds litter pick.
They all planted a sunflower seed and we will award a prize for the tallest sunflower in September.
Finally, a working party of parents came together on Thursday afternoon to rehome a hedgehog shelter, and work on some new initiatives, following a visit from some Wilder School Champions (from the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust).”
From the Eco Council of Maple School, St Albans
During SustFest24 members of the eco council led an assembly to introduce the week.
The Eco Council also visited The Green House on London Road. We explored the activities on offer here and found out that we could bring items such as Pringles containers and pill packets for recycling.
We enjoyed making plant pots from newspaper and planting seeds.
We also learnt how to sew on a button so that we can repair damaged clothes rather than throw them away.
From Margaret Wix School, St Albans
The Eco Warriors and Parliament Environment Ministers at Margaret Wix Primary have been super busy over the last couple of weeks, discussing how best to engage our school community with our gardening focus this half term and over the summer holidays.
Some of the children thought it was a good idea to ask parents and children to complete a ‘Gardening Diary’ that outlines some of the activities that they did in the garden, whether it was mindfulness meditation, nature observations or gardening itself. The children thought it was really important for parents to be able to log how they felt before and after, so that the grown-ups could notice some of the benefits to their mental health.
Other children suggested that we have a ‘children only’ garden at school, as part of our allotment, where children would take full responsibility for the planting, growing and maintenance of the garden. It’s been wonderful to hear about their passions and watch them plan them into life.
This week we have also been digging up a weed bed, adding new soil and planting seeds to create a beautiful new flower garden. It was hard work in the heat of the sun, but we are really excited to see how our new flower beds grow.
From Crabtree Infants School and Crabtree Junior School
We had a wonderful eco week and the whole school enjoyed a range of activities. These included litter picks, book swaps, planting, making posters, and making machines to clear plastic from the oceans and land art.
We learnt about recycling and we reminded everyone that at Crabtree, we can recycle fruit, plastic, paper, cans, batteries, glue sticks, and we refill whiteboard pens. Most importantly, we thought about the little changes we could make to help our planet. Oh, and we enjoyed wearing something green on Friday to celebrate!
Other school activities
- Alban City School held an energy-free lesson using their new Energy Dashboard to compare the energy they’d saved that week.
- St Alban and St Stephen Primary and Infant school had a “Low Energy Day Outside with Nature”, including a picnic lunch.
- The Grove Infant and Nursery School organised an event for Year 2 children designing and building sustainable housing. This was supported by parents who run an architects practice.
- St Albans Girls School held a grand opening of the STAGS Sustainability Garden
- Beaumont School held a Year 7’s Sustainability Day on Waste a little after SustFest Schools Week, on July 1st.
Other schools that participated in SustFest Schools Week 2024
- Aboyne Lodge
- Cunningham Hill Infants School
- Fleetville Infant and Nursery School
- High Beeches Primary School
- Killigrew School
- Mandeville Primary School
- St John Fisher School
- The Abbey CofE VA Primary School
Two Local Sustainability Conferences for Schools
And finally, it would be remiss of us not to acknowledge two big annual events that took place locally for schools.
- The KS3 Climate Change Summit at the University of Hertfordshire for students of schools in Herts. Beds. and Essex took place on 11th June.
- The Scholars’ Education Trust, which includes Sir John Lawes School, Samuel Ryder Academy, and Harpenden Academy, held their Annual Sustainability Conference at Rothamsted Research on Friday 7th June.
Feeling inspired?
This blog was brought to you by the Sustainable St Albans volunteer Schools Group. We support district schools to be more sustainable in their teaching and in their school management.
Eco-leads, teachers and other school staff, PTA reps and governors are invited to…..
- take a look at the locally-focussed resources for schools here on our website
- subscribe to our locally-focussed newsletters
- book for our next networking Zoom on Tuesday 15th October at 4pm
- contact us via our contact form with questions or to organise a school assembly visit