Eco Club
Hillside runs an after school Eco club for its lower school pupils to encourage respect for their local community and environment
Corey Burke 9SD is the Sefton Young Eco Champion 2010!
Yet again Hillside were outright winners in several of Sefton’s annual Eco awards. In fact we came back with so many trophies and certificates that Mrs Shemilt has said that we need to buy another display cabinet.
Corey Burke from 9SD was individually nominated for the ‘Inclusion and Participation’ category due to his dedicated and passionate attitude towards environmental issues. He represents the Eco club on the Hillside High School Council and contributed towards ensuring the whole school Litter campaign was run effectively. Corey can be heard on the 2020 Vision website explaining, with enthusiasm and personality, some of the environmental issues along the Formby coast. This is part of his work for the Comenius project 2020 Vision. Corey also introduced Mr Joe Benton MP at the Hillside Climate Change Conference and informed the audience of Mr Benton’s political career and personal environmental views. Corey participates fully in every activity in which he takes part and is prepared to express his own opinions and ensure action is taken.
Corey was the individual winner; the judges were very impressed with Corey’s understanding of environmental problems and his proactive attitude to solving them. All individual winners are eligible for the overall Sefton Young Eco Champion award and Corey was deservedly awarded this honour.
Sefton Young Eco Champions Event
The Hillside High School Eco club were also winners this year being awarded the ‘Global dimensions’ Eco champions award for two international projects. The Eco club held an Eco conference on Climate Change attended by Mr Joe Benton MP for Bootle. The pupils grilled Mr Benton about his opinions and ideas for making Bootle more Eco friendly and also asked him for feedback from the Copenhagen Climate Change conference. The second project is an international project linking with 7 other schools from around Europe. 2020 Vision is a Comenius project which is based on pupils identifying a local environment that people need to be educated about to ensure its survival. Each school has produce work highlighting the issues for their local environment and create a mission for the other schools involved to complete. Hillside High school was the first school to produce the work and set a mission for the other schools.
Class 8CCS led by Mrs Carey-Shields were awarded the ‘Buildings and Grounds’ Eco Champions award. A litter campaign to encourage all pupils to focus on the issue of litter was run through PSHCE. The project was led and organised by Hillside’s School Council and engaged all pupils in the school. 8CCS showed a real enthusiasm for the project and worked with the caretaking staff to learn more about the issues raised by having litter around school. The pupils responded by producing excellent comic strips highlighting the problem that can result from litter and what they as pupils can do to reduce it by taking responsibility for their own local environment.
Hillside Eco Enterprise Bags
The Eco Club are really taking our eco ideas further and further at Hillside! On Wednesday 20th May, fifteen Year 9 pupils went to the South Sefton City Learning Centre to create eco-friendly shopping bags and develop a business plan to promote the sale of those bags. Pupils “scanned in” their hand-drawn designs and used Adobe Fireworks and Photoshop to finish them off.
Each pupil then had the opportunity to print off his or her pattern and use a press to put it onto the cloth bags. A range of bags, advertising posters and even a radio jingle were created to help launch their product onto the market.
Throughout this really exciting day pupils were developing their enterprise skills and gaining knowledge of what it takes to start a business. Further workshops will be used to finalise their plans and produce the bags for sale, so watch this space!
The Eco Magazine
This month the Eco Club has been working hard on creating issue 2 of our Eco magazine, it includes all the activities we've been doing and even has some exciting eco puzzles! So click here and read all about it!
In October the club battled the cold weather to tidy the school grounds with litter pickers and bin bags, as part of the 'Big Tidy Up' campaign. Everyone was excited to stay behind and help. They explored the school grounds searching for any rubbish they could collect. "I enojyed the 'Big Tidy Up' because it was fun and we got to help the environment" said Daniel Keith of 7WD. The pupils did a great job and can't wait for their next assignment. "It was fun, educational and it helped me to understand the importance of the environment and the local community" said Steven Mercer.
Miss Patterson who runs the eco-club said, "the 'Big Tidy Up' campaign is encouraging local residents, buisnesses, schools and church groups all across the country to make England tidy. In conjunction with Disney's Pixar, they provided us with tabard bibs, bin bags and posters to make the event more successful. This is just an example of one of the many events run by the eco-club".