Carbon Road Show

All Year 9 students took part in the BP Carbon Road Show event last week which was presented by BP. The Carbon Challenge is a high-impact Science, Maths and Enterprise road show for students. Students worked together to examine a school’s carbon footprint and learn about carbon reduction through a variety of activities using film, websites, interactive calculators, 3D-style mats and other visual material.

All students carried out a two-hour session which involved an introduction from BP. This was followed by an interactive voting session where students put their current view points on ‘carbon’ related challenges in their lives.

Students were then divided into three groups. The groups were:
• The Environmental group who looked at where carbon emissions come from in a school. Students worked in small groups and carried out presentations.
• The Economic group were given a budget and asked how the school could reduce carbon emissions.
• The Social group looked at how various people in a school could make a difference. The groups looked at were students, teachers, senior management and support staff. Students acted out small dramas to highlight how these people can influence a school’s carbon footprint.

Students then carried out a plenary session in which presentations from each of the groups were given to others. The interactive voting session was carried out again to see how student’s votes had changed over the session. In the future students will then carry out follow up sessions in school to see how Hayes and individuals working in the school can reduce the carbon footprint. Some suggestions made by the students were to include more recycling options e.g. for plastic rather than just for paper and cans, using energy saving light bulbs, not leaving appliances on standby and making sure double glazing is used. More information can be found on www.enterprisingscience.com where Hayes will have there own school page. All the results from the surveys and photographs of the event can be found on this website. An article highlighting the event will be in the local Newsshopper paper in the next couple of weeks.