Eco team meet every Monday lunchtime in Room 20 (just behind the library). Come and have lunch with the team and get involved!

Eco Team Blog #1

Allenbourn x Sustrans – What have we done for our project?

It has been a busy time for the Allenbourn Eco Team over the last few weeks. We are lucky enough to have welcomed Anna from Sustrans to do some experiments with her – all in relation to air pollution across our school.

March 24th – In her first session, Anna told us all about what experiments we were going to do with her. This occurred before the Easter half term and the whole team were very excited to get started on the project.

April 28th – On the second time Anna came to see us, we put up the diffusion tubes that we’d planned on putting on the session beforehand. The diffusion tubes were measuring the amount of nitrogen oxide in 3 places around school: the library, the staff car park and the fence by the long jump pit. After 3 weeks, Anna came back to collect them and they are finding how much pollution – from vehicles – we found in each area (at the time of writing, we haven’t got our results back…).

May 5th – On the third time Anna came, we were looking at particulate matter.  In our experiment, we went around different areas of the school (indoors, car park, field) and stuck Sellotape onto man-made objects, tree trunks and leaves in each one.  After we did that, we stuck them to our sheet and we looked at them underneath the microscopes.  We found that the man-made structures had the most particulate matter (the car park had the most in any of them).

May 12th – The next time Anna came back, we looked at lichen.  We learnt about the colour of the lichen and about how each type was linked to the environment.  Subsequently, we collected them and came back to the lab to see under the microscope – taking a closer look at the details on the lichen. ‘I found it very informative and interesting,’ said an Eco Team member.  And it really was – the lichen looked really mesmerising under the microscope.

May 19th – The final time Anna came into AMS, we were sheltered under where the table tennis tables used to be as the thunder rumbled and the rain was pouring. Everyone was very excited as we created our own smoothie flavours and used the smoothie bike to create them. Everyone got to try their own and designated people got to try the others. In the end, they checked the scores given by their competitors and one team prevailed (Elliott T, Noah B, Felix C-H, Lila H, Oliver M).  We had a lovely time despite the weather. It was really nice!

Thank you so much to Anna for coming to visit us over the past few weeks and we hope to see you again in the future, in the new school year or in Summer Term 2; but we all enjoyed the times you came to visit us at AMS.

Key Words:

Nitrogen Oxide – Nitrogen Oxides are a family of poisonous, highly reactive gases. These gases form when fuel is burned at high temperatures.

Particulate matter – made up of particles (tiny pieces) of solids or liquids that are in the air.

Lichen – lichen is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria.

Smoothie bike – this creates smoothies with bikes and pedal power.

Litter Pick in Wildlife Area

A quick litter pick (15 minutes) produced a lot of rubbish. 

Non-Uniform Day