English Martyrs Catholic Voluntary Academy UK Champion 2012, Totally Clued Up - North

Pupils from English Martyrs’ Catholic Primary School in Long Eaton were asked ‘what makes the earth angry?’ and the answers took them on a journey of discovery! They started by looking at their own school grounds, then their local park and cafe, and eventually their quest ended in Japan.

When they found problems they solved them. They created wildlife habitats, planted trees, picked up a lot of litter and encouraged people to cycle or scoot to school. They used their maths and science skills to record and show traffic noise data and learnt about pollution and how different molecules behave. To help with the problems they discovered in Japan after the Tsunami and Fukishima disaster they raised money for endangered animals, wrote many articles in the school’s newspaper and interviewed a Japanese lady about the changes she had seen since the tsunami. To remind them of their journey they built a fearsome looking river dragon named Mizuchi from recycled drinks cans to protect the rivers and streams from pollution! Although they couldn’t solve the big problems they saw that they could still make a difference by raising money for Japan’s endangered animals and by raising awareness and telling others about the fate of Japan and the effects of such natural disasters.

Their project showed excellent knowledge on subjects from wildlife and biodiversity to traffic noise and earthquakes and touched many areas of the curriculum, from the arty river serpent to letter writing in English, maths and graphs for numeracy, plenty of scientific investigations and learning about earthquakes and tsunamis in Geography. To top it all off their work was wonderfully presented by the children who invented pop-ups and hidden messages and information making for a very interactive folder.