Welcome to our school website - please come in and take a look around. Do you know our four school values? They are respect, curiosity, kindness and determination.
Green Team
Who are we?
We have an amazing, award winning Green Team composed of representatives from across the school. These children put themselves forward because they are passionate about sustainability, our environment and reducing waste. The children are active, keen and determined to make a difference. They take ownership, running meetings, leading initiatives and inspiring others to do their bit for our community and our planet.
Each year the team work together using data they have collated from audits, ideas from the school community and interests of pupils to establish a plan of action for the following year. Past projects have included annual events such as Waste Week, Switch Off Fortnight, litterpicks and even shoe exchanges! We work closely with other schools to share ideas and encourage children to see the collective impact of everyone working together.
Cathedral Schools Trust Earth Week 2022
Schools across our Trust took part in our own Earth Week in February.
At Victoria Park, each year group focused on a topic:
EYFS - Transport
Year 1 - Protecting hedgehogs
Year 2 - Oceans
Year 3 - Rivers
Year 4 - Palm oil
Year 5 - Trees
Year 6 - Fast Fashion
We based the week on Oliver Jeffers' beautiful book 'Here We Are: notes for living on Planet Earth'. Here are some pictures from the week:
Bristol Waste Nothing Schools Challenge - WINNERS!
We were so proud to win this competition from a group of 11 schools who took part across the city. Our whole school community got involved and really worked hard to reduce, reuse and recycle at home as well as in school. Amazing! We won £500 which we have spent on new recycling bins, environmental books, water testing kits and other resources to support our sustainability journey. More information about the competition can be found here.
PTFA school uniform shop and costume swap!
Our amazing PTFA are supporting sustainability in school with their brilliant second hand uniform shop. They are also collecting costumes to be swapped or bought for a small donation for World Book Day. Keep an eye on our school newsletters and the PTFA website for more information. Here is a link to the PTFA uniform shop.
Heroes nomination
Mrs Walker, our Sustainability Lead in school, was nominated by local CIC Sustainable Hive as part of the #Bristol17 campaign run by the Global Goals Centre. The nomination recognises our work across school to make sustainability part of our curriculum and everyday ethos. We are really proud to be playing our part in the global Sustainable Development Goals to make our world a greener and fairer place for everyone, starting right here in school! Some of our Year 6 Eco Warriors helped to make a short film about our work in school.
CST Earth Week 2021
Even a global pandemic didn't stop our Green Team launching themselves enthusiastically into our Cathedral Schools Trust Earth Week. We are so lucky to have such passionate young people in our community! See their launch video here.
And see what we got up to across the school - and at home too here.
Eco Newshounds!
Our amazing Year 6 pupils shared their passion for the environment on a Newsround bulletin exploring the impacts of PPE from the Coronavirus pandemic on wildlife:
CST Earth Week 2020
We held our own Earth Week across all our Cathedral Schools Trust schools to celebrate our amazing planet and look at how we can make a difference. Each of our Trust schools focused on different themes of sustainability.
At Victoria Park we had lots of visitors in school to teach us about a wide range of environmental topics from food provenance to marine pollution. Each class made positive pledges to add to our amazing school 'pledgehog' and show how we can all make a difference.
Green Team Summit
As part of our CST Earth Week 2020, nearly 100 of our amazing Eco Warriors from across all our schools met up for our very first Green Team Summit at City Hall and Bristol Cathedral Choir School.
We had special guest speakers Mya Rose Craig aka Bird Girl and Naseem Talukdar from Bristol-based charity PPAAP to launch the day plus a special message from Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees. Pupils took part in workshops from local organisations including Avon Wildlife Trust, the Soil Association, GrOWN It, Bristol Waste, Clarkebond, Bristol Parks Department and Earthwise.
At the end of our event, we had a protest around College Green in front of City Hall and met Deputy Mayor Asher Craig.
CST Earth Week 2020 Green Team Summit
Naseem Talukdar from Bristol-based charity PPAAP (Plastic Pollution Awareness And Action Projects) made a short film about young people shaping the future when he attended our summit as a guest speaker. Watch it here.
Journalism students from UWE Bristol attended the Summit and made a short film for the Journalism students' Global News Relay. You can see their clip at 1:20:38 here.
Sharing best practice
We made a short film with TES sharing our top tips on making your school more sustainable. Check it out here:
https://www.tes.com/news/watch-five-tips-help-your-school-become-more-sustainable
WINNERS of the TES Sustainable Schools award!
We are so delighted and proud to have won the TES Sustainable Schools Award. We have worked hard to embed sustainability across our school and spread the 'green' message to our wider community. This award shows that everyone in the school is an Eco Warrior, from our caretaker and office staff to all the amazing pupils, staff and our community beyond the gates!
Our journey to becoming a sustainable school is documented in this lovely TES article:
https://www.tes.com/news/how-primary-traffic-island-became-greenest-school
Fighting Food Waste
We've been working across the school to reduce food waste and carried out some research with Resource Futures and Sustainable Sidekicks as part of Bristol's Going For Gold campaign. Read all about it here.
Protect Your Patch!
One of our classes took part in a photo shoot for Iceland's Backyard Nature campaign. The campaign was inspired by fellow Eco Warriors the Eco Emeralds at All Saints School in Anfield.
Watch the campaign film here starring some of our children. And why not sign up to Protect Your Patch!
Check out our fab film!
We worked with Bristol Pound and Sustainable Learning to create this fab film about the benefits of local currencies:
https://www.sustainablelearning.com/sites/default/files/asset-files/bristolps.mp4
Victoria Park Shoe Swap
Come along to our shoe swap every Friday after school in the KS2 playground. Donate your pre-loved shoes or grab yourself a bargain and check out our 'shoe of the week'!
Switch Off Fortnight
The Green Team were busy monitoring classrooms and supporting teachers to save energy for Switch Off Fortnight. Frankie Frog was awarded to classes who remembered to switch off their lights and boards.
Big Battery Hunt
The whole school got involved to keep batteries out of landfill and learn about recycling them. We collected over 100kg in the first 2 weeks!!
Double win for the Green Team!
Double Award Winners!!
The Green Team were delighted to be named WINNER of the WWF Green Ambassador Green Team Award 2017. This means we are officially the best in the whole of the UK and very proud of our achievements!
We also came RUNNER UP in the WWF Green Ambassador Schools Award out of over 60 schools in the country. An amazing achievement showing we have successfully embedded sustainability across our curriculum, school and wider community!
Award winning teacher!
Mrs Walker won the WWF Green Ambassador Teacher Award 2016! We are very proud and Mrs Walker took six of our awesome Green Team to Shropshire to collect her award. You can read more about the award here. And a blog from Mrs Walker about the award here.
Incredible Eels!
Our Year 4 children worked with Avon Wildlife Trust, Water City Bristol and Aardman to produce a brilliant animation about eel migration and protecting their habitat: https://vimeo.com/222546929
On this section of the school website we would like to share with you some of the exciting things we are doing to make Victoria Park School and the local community a more sustainable and happy place to be! Please keep checking back to see what we have been up to!
Keep Bristol Tidy!
The Green Team braved the rain to clean up our neighbourhood for the Great British Spring Clean. The event coincided with Bristol's Mayor's Clean Streets campaign and we were supported by Sustainable Learning and Bristol Waste who provided brilliant child-sized litterpickers and hi-viz jackets. We returned after an hour with seven bags of rubbish!!
The Green Team - don't we look lovely?!
What does being green mean at Victoria Park?
It's not just the green team who are green at our school; everyone is! We work hard to make sure the green message is shared as part of our school values (you can see some of our class charters below) and we have an eco code which we encourage everyone to stick to!
Frankie Frog!
Frankie was donated by one of our Eco Warriors to encourage children to be more green. The Green Team monitor classrooms at break and lunchtimes to help people remember to switch off lights and whiteboards when they're not being used. The greenest class is awarded a certificate and gets to look after Frankie for the week!
Eco Schools Green Flag!
We were delighted to achieve our Eco Schools Green Flag! The Green Team worked hard to meet all the criteria, running their own meetings, carrying out an environmental review and creating a school action plan with their own ideas and some creative fundraising along the way. All their hard work paid off when we received our flag in the post!
Celebrating International Earth Day in blue and green
We had a fantastic day celebrating our wonderful planet! The whole school enjoyed a variety of exciting activities; we were planting, walking on the Northern Slopes, making hedgehog houses, hunting minibeasts, learning about Fairtrade, appreciating our local park, creating eco art and enjoying a visit from the 'Bio Bug', a car powered by human waste!! Everyone dressed in blue and green and we raised over £100 for Avon Wildlife Trust. Definitely 'Keeping it Green'!!
Class Charters - can you spot the green message?
Working with Aardman Animations and Bristol2015
2015 has been a very exciting year for some of the green team; they found themselves with new responsibilities working alongside both Bristol2015 and Aardman Animations. Amongst many other things, the children have helped develop a new online game called Sustainable Shaun to help raise awareness globally of the need to be sustainable. The game is great fun (follow the link below to play) and was even nominated for a TIGA award! Guess what? We won! You can read more about it here.
https://www.bristol2015.co.uk/news/sustainable-shaun-wins-award/
As part of the game launch, some of our green team became Shaun's Shepherds which meant we had to teach members of the public, other children and even the mayor how to play the game!
Shaun's Shepherds
Newsround
This year has been a VERY exciting year because we have been spreading our message beyond the school gates and we have even made it on to NATIONAL TV! Check out our appearance on Newsround here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/34987749
Bristol Textile Recycling
So...you might think recycling just means paper, perhaps a bit of cardboard and maybe the odd carrot peeling but here at Victoria Park School we recycle textiles too. It was great to see how much you all contributed, thank you! It was a great fundraiser for the school too!
Not only did we collect lots of textiles we were lucky enough to visit the factory too and it was so exciting! We made a film of our tour so that children all around the UK can share our experience. We would love you to see it. Check out this website and the Virtual Fieldtrips.
Almost Famous...
You might have spotted some of our lovely faces on billboards around Bristol? This was to show off our achievements working with Bristol2015. We even appeared on some Bristol buses too!
Assemblies
The green team like to lead assemblies, the one pictured below was all about being energy efficient.
Green for Good Award
We were delighted to receive an award recently for all our green efforts; we had to make 15 green pledges in 2015. The Lord Mayor presented it to us.
