COP26 Chorley Primary Schools Summit

On Tuesday 9th November 2021, the St Laurence's Eco team hosted a virtual COP26 school summit, with 5 other schools from Chorley attending: St James, Gillibrand, Sacred Heart, Coppull St Johns and Duke Street. Our chairpersons were Eloise and Millie B-S (Y6) and Flynn (Y5) and they did a fantastic job of keeping everyone in order. Every member of our Eco team had the chance to speak. The schools expressed their concerns about climate change and what it means for the future of our planet, what they are doing to tackle climate change and each school made 3 pledges, or promises, to reduce their carbon footprint. Our school has pledged to work on travel, switching off and food waste. Sally Green, the Climate Change Officer for Chorley Council, talked to us about the Council's plans for making Chorley greener. Finally, the schools issued a joint statement, which we have sent to our MP Sir Lindsay Hoyle and the COP26 leaders, in which our children have begged with world leaders to agree meaningful actions to halt climate change and to improve their lives in the future. We are so very proud of our courageous young advocates!

Schools' Joint Statement: 

"Primary schools across Chorley are united in our fears about climate change and the impact of global warming on our planet. We remind the politicians meeting in Glasgow that our future is in your hands: we want things to change now. This is an emergency. There is no time to wait.

We have made pledges today to take action in our schools: we understand that we all have a duty and responsibility to help solve the p​roblems.

But we are watching Glasgow and holding our breath – we beg you to make the right decisions to save our Earth!"

What a brilliant morning we had in school today 15.10.21. We were visited by Rt. Hon Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP, the Leader of Chorley Council - Cllr Alistair Bradley and the Deputy Leader - Cllr Peter Wilson together with other guests from the council. We were also joined by Sam Johnson Assistant Director of Education for Blackburn Diocese and Phil Gornall from Cassidy and Ashton, Project Manager for the project. Our visitors met with members of the Eco Team and the School Council who asked about the council’s plans for climate change and told them about their hopes for the future.  We were extremely proud of the children and our visitors were impressed by their messages of what they want for the future. Sir Lindsay thanked them for empowering him with information about our pioneering work that he will take to COP26 in Glasgow. We cannot thank Sam enough for his vision for our school and want to use this as a platform to educate the children and our community further on what we need to do collectively to make a difference globally. 

The photos above are what our courageous advocates Olivia, Millie and Oliver had to say to our VIPs - Sir Lindsay Hoyle is going to COP26 next month and will take these powerful messages of hope for inspiration about what our young people think and want!

Ruby from Year 5 and her dog Mylo (accompanied by mum and dad) are taking part in the Cancer Research UK October dog walking challenge starting which started on 1 st October 2021. Ruby has started her challenge and will be walking 62 miles in October to raise much needed funds for this amazing charity.  Thank you for your support. Ruby has walked approximately 20 miles so far! EXCELLENT RUBY - KEEP GOING!

Frankie Says Race for Life May 2021

Our fundraising target was £1000 but we have raised an amazing £2944! We had an amazing time on Monday morning completing the Race for Life. It was wonderful to come together as a ‘socially distanced’ whole school community and the children and staff enjoyed every moment. We would like to say a huge thank you to Frankie (Y3) Finlay, Sandra and Dave for opening the Race for Life. Frankie is such an inspiration to us all! All of the children were amazing in their determination to complete the race and some had endless energy and didn’t want to stop running! We would like to say a huge thank you to Tesco for supplying pastries for everyone, Bewitched Parties and Sandra and Dave (Frankie’s mum and dad), for supplying the balloons, Becky, Bethany’s mum (Year 1) for making the balloon arch and Elle, Jeanette and Hannah from the PTFA for setting it up. The children had great fun running through it! We would also like to thank Mrs Nicholson for organising everything, including a photographer from the Chorley Guardian, so look out for us over the next couple of weeks! We can’t thank everyone enough for their generosity in giving their time, energy and money to raise much needed funds for a charity very close to our hearts. I think we all appreciate how difficult fund raising has been during the last 14 months and we are very grateful to have such a supportive school community to enable us to help others. We are so proud of all of the children and staff for taking part and can’t thank you enough for generosity. Thank you Frankie for being our inspiration to ‘Race for Life’! Cancer Research UK’s Lancashire spokesperson, Jane Bullock said: “Huge well done to everyone who took part in the fun run and raised such an amazing amount of money for Cancer Research UK. We have all been inspired by Frankie’s courage and zest for life and it’s fantastic that the school community pulled together in her honour.”

As we were unable to hold our annual coffee morning to raise funds for MacMillan, we held a cupcake competition instead!

The winner of the 'Decorate a cake' competition is Martha from Year 2 for her wonderful mermaid cakes. The emails sent by parents are lovely and tell us all about the generosity of our children who have shared their baking creations with friends, family and neighbours - it is so heart-warming. We've had lots of rainbows and unicorns, including multi-coloured sponges as well as icing and sprinkles. Amazing cake "burgers" too, made entirely out of sweet stuff, and even a caterpillar made out of cupcakes. Very inventive. Congratulations to one family who did not let the lack of a working oven deter them - microwave sponges made from scratch! That shows resilience and perseverance!! All the photos of children at work in their kitchens are absolutely amazing and we are so proud of you all!! We raised an amazing £83.00!!