Date:                               Friday, 26^th May

Time:                              8.30 a.m

Meeting Point:             Woodbury Road

Parents/ guardians are encouraged to drop off their children at this point and the pupils will walk to school from there. (Parking is not recommended in this area). There will be stickers and balloons to add some fun along the way.

Parent volunteers will be required again to ensure safety and guide the way to the school. If you are interested in volunteering for this (time will be from 8.15 – 8.50) please contact Helen or Lynn. Email address is helen@goreyeducatetogether.ie lynn@goreyeducatetogether.ie or call into our classrooms.

There will be lots of fun and healthy benefits from participating in this theme so we would really encourage you as a parent/ guardian to get involved and promote this with your children too. We also have our new ‘Green Code’ to chant as we walk along. Here it is for you to start practising:

Be Green , be clean,
Make our environment a dream,
Scoot, cycle or take the bus, 
All together now – Bualadh Bos!

Looking forward to some fresh morning air, a healthy walk and lots of singing.

Action Day:

Our Action day will also take place on Friday, 26^th May. This will involve all classes making and/ or designing a poster of a green way they have travelled to school. This will be done with their class teacher after our walk to school. These posters will be displayed along our corridors, linking all our classrooms together.

The Green Schools Committee would like to thank and congratulate everyone for the fantastic effort made for the Big Travel Challenge 2017. As many of the pupils live far away from school and must travel by bus or by car, our focus was on to walk some of the way to school. This was done by walking to get your bus, park ‘n stride or drop off ‘n stride. Every class recorded their results on a daily basis and then the committee compiled the total numbers for each week. These results are displayed on our Green Schools notice board. Just on this alone, over the two weeks, there was an increase of 185 pupils travelling by park ‘n stride or drop off ‘n stride. This is a massive increase. Check out our notice board for all other results.

Congratulations to Lynn and Fergus’ class who won the overall prizes for a whole class effort. They have won a walking trip to Gorey Park (at the discretion of their teacher). Prizes were also awarded to individual pupils in each class for outstanding effort.

Finally, well done to all the pupils who got involved and especially to parents/guardians who facilitated their children participating in this challenge.

Keep up the great work 🙂 🙂 🙂

When: Weeks 6^th – 17^th Feb

What is happening: GETNS is going to make a big effort to walk/ cycle/ scoot/ car pool/ drop off ‘n stride to school every morning.

Why: to cut back on using our cars – even if it is only a little bit. A little less gas and fumes going into the atmosphere can make a big difference. Plus we also get a little extra fresh morning air which is excellent for our health.

What you can do:

1. Walk/ cycle/ scoot to school every/ most mornings over the two weeks
2. Car pool with someone who lives near you
3. If you must come to school in a car, participate in ‘Drop off ‘n Stride’. This means that you can still come to school in your car but ask your parents/ guardians to drop you off a little further away from the school so that you can walk the rest of the way e.g. outside the school gates, at the top of the road/ nearby roads. Always walk on the footpath. Please BE SAFE and follow the rules of the road.
4. If you are a bus user, you can count your walk to get the bus as part of your journey to school.

Rewards:

Travel monitors in each class will record how children travel to school everyday. There will be various prizes at the end of each week and a whole class team effort prize too.

Note to Parents/ Guardians:

We really appreciate your co-operation for this event. We understand that effort will be made on your behalf too by dropping off your children further from the school while also ensuring their safety. If you feel the need to walk with your child please park in an appropriate place and not cause obstruction to other road users. Inform your child of the safest route you want them to take. Thank you for your co-operation.

Thank you

The Green Schools Committee