Earth Hour

Thursday 26th March and school is in darkness. It’s Bishop Heber’s Earth Hour and all the lights around school have been switched off.

Earth Hour is an annual international event formed by the World Wildlife Fund. It is held on the last Saturday of March and involves both households and businesses turning off their superfluous lights and electrical appliances for one hour in order to highlight the problems of climate change and draw attention to the requirement for action. World famous buildings such as the Eiffel Tower and Sydney Opera House, along with massive corporations like IKEA and HSBC, are all turning off the lights to support the cause and help reach Earth Hour’s target of reducing carbon emissions by 5%.

Citizenship lessons were also linked to environmental issues, and energy use. Miss Hughes’ form spent their citizenship lesson learning about climate change and filling out pledge sheets, promising to do things like recycling and not leaving things on stand by. They also drew pictures about what they think the government should do to tackle climate change –there were some unusual ideas! Mr Slater’s form went further than just turning off the lights and began the lesson by switching off phones, mp3 players and other electrical appliances as well. After looking at devastation photographs the pupils then drew pictures of what they imagined the earth might look like in 20 years if we carry on using as much energy as we are currently using.

During lesson one, 12 year 8 students, voted in as eco reps, took part in a conference call with the WWF and each asked a question about what the organisation were doing to help fight climate change. The students enjoyed taking part in the event and were especially pleased with the t-shirts they received.