2015

English Martyrs Catholic Voluntary Academy

Totally Clued Up

North

90 Pupils Involved
  • Regional Winner 2015
  • Regional Champion 2015

Why Did the Budgie Cross the Road?

The project was inspired by a real budgie who one day landed on a child’s head in the school playground!  The bird was coaxed into a box and collected by the RSPCA, but the children were already wondering where the bird had come from and why it had ended up at the school. The children were amazed to find that budgerigars actually originated from Australia. They discovered that mining operations in Australia have damaged budgies’ native habitats.  This led on to looking a polluted soil, finding out about landfill and then the pupils trying to recycle as much as possible of their own rubbish to prevent it going to landfill.  And in turn, this lead to the creation of a giant budgie sculpture to decorate the school grounds, made from recycled milk cartons!

Jo Pettifer, teacher at English Martyrs’ Catholic Voluntary Academy, said: “It’s amazing how a simple, but quite extraordinary event led to so much work from the children.  They really wanted to find out more.  We just allowed their questions to lead their learning.”

YPTE Director, Peter Littlewood, said: “It is lovely to see how one very unusual incident really captured the children’s imagination and led to so much great learning.  The way they developed their ideas and applied their new knowledge to their own lives and how they could reduce their own impact on the environment was really inspiring. ”