Green Day was a ripping success at Moor Allerton Hall Primary School Leeds on 12th June 2009. The theme of our Green Day this year was recycled fashion and we had a big riotous fashion show on Friday 12th June with samba dancing on the catwalk!
Moor Allerton Hall Primary School's Green Week fashion show © Moor Allerton Hall Primary School
As a school community we decided that one of the ways our lifestyles impact hugely on the environment is through the choices we make with our clothes. All of us…the staff, the children and their families!
Preparing for Green Week
In preparation after our initial meeting, we staff watched the powerful videos produced by the BBC eco-fashion learning campaign, Thread about the ethics of fashion.
We built up a useful folder of good visual resources from the internet and boxes of real materials to teach the children about the origins of fabric, how the growing and manufacturing processes of all fabrics and materials affect the environment through pollution, carbon emissions and pillaging of un-renewable resources.
And then how we the consumers increase our carbon footprint enormously by the way we wash and dry our clothes and then the big whammy… how a lot of us still just chuck them away and they all end up in the dreaded landfill sites creating methane! Pie charts were used in maths lessons to show the environmental impact of a pair of Marks and Spencer’s cotton shorts.
Green Week begins
On Monday 8th June we kicked off our Green Week with a powerful assembly presented by the eco-action team. We watched videos and dynamic presentations on the smart board about climate change and what happens to waste!
A great resource was The LMB lets recycle textiles book, brilliantly illustrated screen pages to teach us about all the clothes recycling choices available to us and what eventually happens to clothes that are recycled.
Screenshot: LMB website © LMB
Student, Chung-Sing commented, ‘I think green week was a great Idea because, not only we had fun, we also did something that helps the planet. So in future I will try to make something out of old clothes and I won’t throw them in the bin because they just go to landfill sites and pollute the planet.’
We investigated the origins of materials in science and learnt whether they were renewable or not! We used the Marks and Spencer’s eco uniforms powerpoint resource to learn about the new Marks and Spencer’s eco uniforms and we took home our homework voucher.
We had speakers from Oxfam and the St Vincent’s charity shop come and speak to us about ethical clothes production, fair trade and clothes recycling. Groups of children visited the local charity shop.
We booked the Bag 2 School company to drop off their bags so we could all bring in our old clothes and accessories for recycling and raise money for the school.
But the best bit of the whole week was our design and technology project!
Everyone in the whole school brought an item of clothing in to transform into something new…the whole school turned into a recycling factory. It was incredible!
The key stage 2 children made new bags out of jeans and used fabric paints to design patterns and logos. Some made mobile phone and play station holders out of old socks and some redesigned t-shirts by dyeing or painting them and sewing on decorations like buttons or sequins.
Weaving with recycled fabric © Moor Allerton Hall Primary School
We had a visiting artist in to help the year 3 children make scarves and jewellery out of old t-Shirts by knotting, plaiting and weaving torn strips of material. The younger children re-designed their pumps by painting them with colourful bobble paints. They made collages out bits of old clothes…even the nursery children got involved. They were brilliant!
But the staff recycled in a really excellent way! We all brought in clothes we’d grown tired of and had a massive clothes swap on Green Day. The staff room turned into a jumble sale except no money was exchanged…just clothes! Now we’re all wearing each other’s things!
We started off Green Day with a locally produced breakfast supported by Sainsbury’s at Moortown. We all tried to travel to school green on Green Day (we monitored this all week on laminated class pictograms).
Locally sourced lunch © Moor Allerton Hall Primary School
Green Day was a no energy day…everybody wore green and turned off the computer and worked outdoors, some at our allotment site, next door to the school. The school lunch was sourced locally or within the UK. Other children brought a waste-free packed lunch. We made green pledges to reduce our carbon footprint.
Then the finale of the day (and week) was our fashion show!
It was a very lively affair indeed where each class danced down the catwalk displaying their new recycled bags or fashion items to samba music while the rest of us clapped like mad to the rhythm!
Aiden in year 6 (our gifted and talented broadcaster) announced each class on the PA, describing each recycling theme in turn, with great panache and humour.
All in all Green Day was a ripping success!
From Jacob, one of our students, ‘Everyone loved green week and no one ever complained. The green breakfast was delicious. Lots of arty children did arty designs. I want to do this again because it involved talking and working as a team. Our school has become ecologically aware of climate change. I think I learnt a lot too. I never had so much fun at school. My bag is fashionable and I took it out to town on Saturday. People liked it.’
Liz Rushton was one of the two teachers to receive the 2009 Green Day award of £200. Congratulations to Liz and all your students and staff at Moor Allerton Hall Primary.
All Green Day award winners from 2009
Pippa Davies, assistant head from Guiseley School, Leeds
Emma-Leigh McAbe, student from St Cleopas Primary School, Liverpool
Tamara Hallam, student from Guiseley School, Leeds
