ECO

‘The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.’

Robert Swan

for further information please contact Mrs Hall; hall@cuddington.cheshire.sch.uk

Intent – What do we aspire for our children?

At Cuddington Primary School, we believe that children should be active participants in the development of a sustainable society for all. We aim to develop children who are conscientious thinkers about the world they live in, equipping them with the knowledge about ecological matters that will have an impact on their lives. Pupils will be encouraged to think critically and reason about our impact upon the environment whilst offering solutions to ecological matters. Children will work closely with others subjects, making connections across the curriculum, embedding their knowledge in a range of disciplines. Children will leave Cuddington being knowledgeable about their environment; feeling empowered to make the right choices to positively impact where they live. 

Where are the 10 strands of ECO evident across our curriculum?

Implementation – How do we deliver this across the curriculum?

The National Curriculum and the EYFS curriculum link well with delivering sustainability education and have clear links to ten areas of Eco Schools. The whole school ECO coverage shows where there are clear links within subject areas across the school.

Golden Eco Threads

Our curriculum is refined yearly, but it maintains a consistent knowledge base to ensure conceptual progression. We have identified a set of key eco-themed concepts or ‘golden threads’, that children will repeatedly revisit throughout their time at Cuddington. Our golden threads are aligned with the ‘Ten Topics’ put forward by Eco-Schools. By doing this we aim to keep environmental issues at the forefront of our learning in the different subjects of our curriculum. Threads are revisited year on year to ensure children develop a broad, but nuanced conceptual understanding. 

Reading across the curriculum

In order to develop children’s reading skills, our teaching staff plan opportunities for children to independently read age appropriate texts. Where there are areas of the curriculum that we can make clear and concise links to our ECO curriculum, teaching staff will use these to broaden the children’s knowledge and understanding of the world. This creates a starting point for children to question topics that will have an impact upon their local environment and beyond. We use the Collins Big Cat reading scheme to enrich our reading curriculum and support children’s reading that links to areas of our ECO curriculum.  

For example, in Year 2 when studying ‘Living things and their habitats’, children read a range of books linked to oceans and seas. In Year 3, when studying ‘River and Water Cycle’, children read a range of books linked to rivers and mountains.

Geography	Geography
Science	Science

Impact - How Do We Know Our ECO Curriculum is Effective?

Pupil Voice

As our ECO topics are covered year on year, our children will become knowledgeable and skilful about the different strands of ECO linked to local and international events. Children’s learning is carefully planned and the links between subjects are explicit, focusing on key knowledge and vocabulary. Consequently, our children will be able to articulate their understanding with conviction and demonstrate the knowledge that they have acquired.

High Quality outcomes  

Children will be give opportunities to complete work in their subjects with links to the ten golden threads. Children will be able to complete these in their humanities books and then high quality pieces of work can be added to their curriculum books.

Tweets/school blog In school, there are times when evidence is not shown in children’s books but in the activities that they complete. Our school ECO blog is a chronological record of the activities that the children are completing linked to our ECO golden threads. In conjunction with our school blog, teachers add images to our twitter feed to evidence ECO related activities in the lessons and beyond.

Our ECO committee

At Cuddington, we believe in the importance of allowing our children to take the lead in their learning and to be given the repsonsibility to impact their own school. The Eco Committee is a select group of pupils with the opportunity to have their say in how we care for our school environment and contribute to the world’s overall sustainability. It also allows for pupils to develop real life skills and knowledge that will help them not only to be successful as young people but as future advocates for the environment. Below are the elected ECO committe members for  Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 for this year.