Spring Term

Mental Health and Wellbeing Project

Children’s Mental Health Week

Children’s Mental Health Week was week beginning 6^th February. The theme was ‘Let’s Connect’ and was about encouraging people to connect with others in healthy, rewarding and meaningful ways.  Pupil Parliament came up with ideas with their classes about activities they could do to help build friendships in their classes and also across different classes and year groups. They realised that we already do lots of activities together such as building dens in the woodlands, working together in cooking to design new dishes, creating music together with Mr Scullin and playing team games in PE.

Each class voted for an extra activity they wanted to do during the week. Here is what some of the children got up to.

Reception children had fun playing together with the parachute.

Children in Year 1 worked together to make 1666 style houses as part of their Great Fire of London topic.

Year 2 children made some collaborative art work.

Year 4 worked together to design and create models of UK Landmarks.

Year 6 children worked together to create a fundraising opportunity for the local community. Through connecting with their friends and family, they raised over £400 for Cancer Research.

Spring Term

Road Safety Project

Year 5 and 6 Pupil Parliament have met with Councillor Ruth Ritter and Councillor Della Torra to discuss Road Safety in Earlswood.

We learnt that Road Safety Posters are best when they are simple and have clear messages. Here are the important Road Safety messages we have chosen to focus on:

Road Safety Messages for Adults

• The speed limit around school is 20mph.
• Do not block the pavements when you park.(Leave 1 metre space and put the car wing mirrors in)
• Turn the car engine off when you are waiting in the car.

Road Safety Messages for Children

• Cross the road in a safe place.
• Look, listen and look again when you are crossing the road.
• Wear a helmet and ring your bell if you are on a bike.

Pupil Parliament Ministers are encouraging their class to create some new Road Safety posters to remind everyone of our important messages. They have also created some road safety videos too.

Spring Term

Environment Project

Gardening

Year 3 and 4 Pupil Parliament have continued to meet with our volunteer gardener, Mandy, to get the allotment beds ready for planting in the Spring. They have turned over some more soil in the beds and planted some garlic ready to be used in the cooking room in the Summer.

Year 1 and 2 have also been busy planting. They learnt how to make environmentally friendly plant pots out of old newspapers and have planted some tomatoes. We are looking forward to planting them in the allotment when they outgrow their pots. We hope to have lots of tomatoes to sell at the summer fair this year!

Autumn Term

Earlswood School Community Fundraising Project 

Year 5 and 6 Pupil Parliament have been working with the Friends of Earlswood to learn more about fundraising. The children made games and ran the stalls at the Christmas Fair to help raise money for the school. Year 1 and 2 helped to make posters to advertise the games too.

The children raised £138.50!

Autumn Term

Environment Project

Year 3 and 4 Pupil Parliament have met with our volunteer gardener, Mandy, and have started to collect ideas about how we can use our outdoor space to grow plants, fruits and vegetables. The children have started to improve the environment by litter picking at lunchtimes and have begun to get the allotment beds ready for planting in the spring. We are really looking forward to working with Mandy next year.

Autumn Term Visit From Our Local Police Officers

As part of Anti-Bullying Week and Road Safety Week, we had a visit from our local Police Officers. They spoke to us about the importance of road safety and also how to REACH OUT if you need help with bullying.

Autumn Term

Mental Health and Wellbeing Project

During Anti-Bullying week, Stella and William spoke in assembly to share the message that unkind words leave scars you cannot see. They showed the children this by being unkind to a paper person and then when they opened it up, the children could see the marks that had been left behind. Junior Pupil Parliament children have collected ideas about how we can develop friendships at lunchtime by creating an area where children can do quieter activities they enjoy like reading, lego and card games. We will be using these ideas in the Spring Term. The Infant Pupil Parliament have been making sure all children feel included at playtimes and have helped children who have been sitting on the Friendship Bench and needing someone to play with.

October Meeting

Our Pupil Parliament Expectations are:

• We will follow the SMILE values and be good role models for other children.
• We will all listen to each other’s ideas.
• We will all participate in meetings.
• We will try to make school the best place it can be.

We talked about how although we are all working together, we are all going to be assigned a specific area to work on:

• Health and Wellbeing
• Arts
• Environment
• Community

Our first 2 projects will be Anti Bullying Week and Road Safety Week on 14th November.

Pupil Parliament 2022-2023

What is Pupil Parliament? 

Pupil Parliament gives all children an opportunity to be actively involved in the way that the school is run. Children can communicate their opinions as well as influence the decisions that are made on their behalf. 

Who is part of Pupil Parliament?

At the start of each new school year we hold elections for our Pupil Parliament. The children are elected to the Pupil Parliament by their peers and the teachers. Each class, year 1-5, votes for one child from their class to be their Class Minister. Year 6 vote for two children per class. In the Summer term, the Reception classes vote for one child from each class to join the Pupil Parliament to make a total of 12 Ministers at the Infant School and 16 Ministers at the Junior School.

What are the Minister’s responsibilities?

Our Pupil Parliament has a 'School Cabinet' with a Primary Minister, Deputy Primary Minister and Ministers for different departments. All the Ministers work alongside our school subject leaders to develop our Curriculum. They take part in pupil voice questionnaires and learning walks around the school.

As well as being Curriculum Ministers, all children specialise in one other area of the cabinet:

Health and Wellbeing

Environment (Eco-fiendly school, health and safety)

Arts (Music, Art and Design)

Community (Inclusion and Diversity)

What are the aims of Pupil Parliament? 

• Represent all children at the school.
• Take time to listen to all pupils and communicate their views.
• Feedback to pupils about what happened about their views.
• Action decisions that have been made or explain why they can’t happen.

Our Pupil Parliament Ministers for 2022-2023

School council 2021/22

Today, we have had our first meeting with our new school councillors! This week, we are going to be checking that our classrooms are well equipped with what they need to ensure they are a place where we feel safe and happy. We have discussed our new project on road safety and are very excited to begin work on it this term. It was lovely to meet and get to know everyone; we are eager to make a difference.

Autumn Term 2020

It is going to be a busy half term for members of the school council and their role is especially important as we can't meet in big, whole school groups at the moment. 
This half term our School Councils will be focussing on anti-bullying. We will think about how we promote a positive environment where everyone feels safe. We will think about what to do for anti-bullying week later in the term and also help to set up some new peer support groups. 

Previous Projects completed by our School Council

Spring Term School Council

Junior School Council have been having some great discussions this half term. They have been focussing on promoting recycling in the classrooms, and how to make play times better. They have introduced a welcome card that is given to any children joining Earlswood. They loved cooking for the Governors when they came to visit. 

Infants School Council-Autumn Term 2018-19

This term has been a busy one for the Infants School Council Representatives. They have enjoyed many different tasks, such as sharing the School Safety Survey, collecting information and more recently, thinking about which different resources the children would like to see in the lodge.

The highlight of this term has been choosing a theme for the art competition. They decided they wanted to encourage people to reuse or recycle their plastic, to help stop the plastic ending up in the sea. To raise awareness of this problem they chose the theme ‘Plastic in our Oceans’ . We had lots of wonderful pictures and collages from the children who entered and the School Council Reps enjoyed choosing the winners. The winner’s pieces are now proudly displayed around the school and in the lodge.

Most recently they have been concentrating on Anti-Bullying week, taking part in an exciting assembly as well as designing Anti-bullying posters to go around the school.

They have proved to be a great team, working together to get the tasks done.

School Council Autumn 2018

This term we are organising an art competition to get some new art work in our Infant 'Earlswood Lodge'.

We are also organising Anti-Bullying week and a Children in Need event.

Renewed Hope Trust 2018

The summer School council have been helping our local community by baking on cakes and treats to donate to the Renewed Hope Trust. At both the Infants and the Junior school the school council children have been baking treats Mr Nott, Mrs Knight and Miss Capstick visited one afternoon to hand over our handy work. The charity were so grateful for the kind act of the children that they would like this to be a regular occurrence!