THE BUILD 2019
GreenPower
2018-2019
Friday 12th July
Sorry we didn't let you know how we got on last week. We have been rather busy with our production. Never the less, we still managed to get up bright and early and practice our racing ast week.
This week, we were al rather exhausted after 3 nights of production but once again we were in school by 7:15 ready to practice our pit stops. After all, it only takes 10,000 hours to become a pro!!!
We tried and tried and tried and never gave up. At the start we took around 23 seconds to change the tyre but by the end of the session these were the times we managed.
Lily FR-8 sec
Amy FR-9 sec
Silas BL-11 sec
Josh BR- 13 sec
James FL-14 sec
It was a great morning but we really did have to show a tremendous amount of determination!
Friday 28th June 2019
Reported by Silas
Today at GreenPower, we practised racing in the slalom, driving the best that we could, imaging that it was the real thing at Goodwood.
Silas almost crashed the car by nearly hitting the wall . However , his quick reactions meant that he dodged it!
It is amazing how much we have all improved!
Friday 14th June 2019
Reported by Leo
Today in green power we learnt how to take different bits of the wheels and put them back on, to learn how to switch them with other ones. We did this because in the races we’ll practice how to do change the tyres, then we will be changing them in between the races.
Saturday 1st June 2019
Reported by Phoebe
On Saturday, the GreenPower team went to Seaford College to race their car. At the start of the day, our car was checked by the judge to make sure that it was safe to drive. Sadly, we had to make one adjustment to the car.
It was then time to give in our portfolio. We decided to make 3 portfolios so all of our achievements were shown.
Race time!
Slalom:
Each time there was a pusher and a driver. There were 6 rounds so w had 6 different drivers. The aim was to go through cones and park the car in a bay without running over or knocking into any cones.
Drag:
The drag race was next where it was the fastest car to go in a straight line and stop before hitting the cones at the end.
Sprint:
Before the awards, there was one more race, where our car(raced by Josh) was in a competition against 3 other cars. Josh drove amazingly well, narrowly missing out on the semi final.
Awards:
We were eager to find out how we did as we had put in so much effort building the car and designing and building the bodywork over the past few months.
We were shocked yet very happy to win the Portfolio Award.
What an amazing day!
Saturday 11th May
The Great GreenPower Bag Pack at Waitrose
This Saturday, we spent our Saturday morning at Waitrose, raising awareness about plastic in our oceans. We took the reusable bags, that we had designed to sell and also handed out leaflets that we made to help the public understand our pledge. We even learnt how to pack a bag of groceries so the bread would not get squashed!!!!
So many of the public praised us for our hard work and they said that they were now going to reflect upon the plastic they use.
We sold lots of our bags and managed to make £345.23 which will go towards us being able to contiunue our GreenPower project as well as sending a donation to our chosen charity, 4Ocean.
Friday 3rd and 10th May 2019
Reported by Leo
Last week, we designed what we are going to put on the the car bodywork to ensure that it would tell the story of what we have been trying to achieve this year in regards to raising awareness about the importance of not using single use plastic. Also, to ensure that the body work was going to be the right size, we traced around the frame of the car, to use these dimensions to cut the wood.
This week, we painted the plywood bodywork, having traced out our designs onto it. We then used some acrylic paint. We also used our art skills to paint the bottle top of our design.
Friday 26th April 2019
Today in Greenpower, we drove the car through a slalom before zig zagging back up the other side. We had two turns each (two times pushing and two times driving) helping us to perfect our slalom skills. We learnt that we had to focus on the outside cone to help us get through the gates of the slalom without hitting the cones. This was a lot trickier than we thought!
Also, we heard some exciting news that we were going to be filmed by Stonegate (one of our sponsors) to help promote their charitable side of their business.
Friday 5th March 2019
Today we raced the car again, this time with two batteries so it went much, much faster!!!
Down below is a video of Phoebe racing the car. It was very exciting and many of us thought it was too fast so we had to take our thumb of the go button to slow ourselves down. We practised the slalom today, which was very hard. We did two laps each. It was great fun!
The hardest bit by far was getting the car back in the building. Miss George took the front and everyone else went ahead to move objects out of the way!
Friday 29th March 2019
This week was a fantastic week at GreenPower. We started by measuring more panels for the car and then we had a safety briefing as today was the day we were going to start driving the car.
WE learnt about the safety switch and, as a pusher, they were responsible for this. When the driver is all secure in the car, the pusher says
'Driver are you ready'
The pusher then turned the switch and says 'the power is on'. After that the driver switches the on switch by the steering wheel and then the car is ready to go.
After we have raced, the pusher switches off the main power and then the driver is safe to get out of the car or get wheeled back to the start.
This week, we only had one battery in so that we could get used to the steering before we went too fact.
It was great to start racing!
Wednesday 27th March 2019
On Wednesday, a Stonegate employee came into our school to hear more about all the work we have been doing to help the environment as they sponsored us. We, the Green Power team, did a did a presentation about all the activities we have done this year as well as showing him our car. These are some of the things we have done as Green Power team so far .
School assembly to talk to all the school about our project
Selling the bags to raise awareness of the affect of single use plastics
Being nominated for the Mole Valley Youth Awards
And many more ...
Wow What A Night!
22nd March 2019
Mole Valley Youth Awards
The GreenPower team had a fantastic time at the Mole Valley Youth Awards on Friday; they were a true asset to St paul's. Well done!
Our big day of selling bags and raising some money for 4Ocean
On Friday 15th March, we set up a stall after school to sell our environmentally friendly, reusable bags to promote the need to stop using plastic. We had been very busy making posters to explain why we were selling them and also the story of how, by buying a bag, each person could help save a turtle. We were so please with how our sale went as, within 20 minutes, all 50 bags had been sold! We could not believe it.
15th March 2019
Reported by Phoebe
Hello
Today, we started to mark out some of the templates by pi x the diameter to work our the circumference of a circle.
We also discussed about selling our bags as some people were making some posters for it.
We decided to sell them for £4 for 1 bag and £ 10 for 3 .
We have all been nominated for the Dorking halls award ceremony on the 22nd later this month . We have been put forward for the group award which is really exciting.
We have also recently received a package from sky and premiere league of 30 water bottles. Only 100 schools are lucky enough for this prize 10 schools will make a film about how they are green and 1 will get a visitor come to their school.
We also have 50 stickers that we are giving to people that we think are green
Congratulations to the GreenPower team
for being nominated for
THE YOUNG TEAM OF 2019
at the
MOLE VALLEY YOUTH AWARDS
8th March 2019
Reported by Silas and Ben
In the morning, we started to make a template out of ply wood and we measured the car to make sure it fits around the front on the car.
As well as doing that, Ben ,Amy ,Silas and Phoebe started to write a letter about the bags we are selling on Friday 15th March 2019.
Also we got great news that are pitch to Stonegate - they are interested in on coming in the school to see all the Green Power team. They have confirmed that they are giving us 350 pounds that we are going to use on buying tools and paint.
Today we also emailed Premier League stars as, earlier in the year, we pledge to save the oceans of plastic. We wanted to give them an update on how we have been getting on!
6th March 2019
GreenPower recycle 'MOUNTAINS' of clothes in aid of The Salvation Army
For the last few weeks, Green Power have been busy writing letters to ask children and parents to search in their draws for unwanted clothes in aid of the Salvation Army. Over the past couple of days, the team have been collecting up the bags and literally created a mountain of clothes, ready to hand over to the Salvation Army today.
Well done Green power for your amazing contribution to recycling!
1st March 2019
Reported by James, Phoebe and Leo
Today we checked all the screws to ensure that they were not loose. Alongside this, we thought about the body shape of our car. We talked about what our message was and came up with a bottle shape to show that we are trying to reduce plastic waste in the world to help the environment. We then set to work, measuring the cars diameter .
Earlier this week we discovered that we were successful in our email pitch to Stonegate Homes and we were awarded £350, which we will spend on boiler suits , tools and more reusable bags. Thank you Stonegate !
Please contribute towards our crisp packet collection to stop polluting the environment . We will keep you updated on all our news !
15th February 2019
Reported by Josh
This week we discussed our design and electrical wiring for the car.
Today, we talked about electronics, including the battery, motor, relays and the safety key. There are two relays which act as heavy duty switches so we can have a low duty switch at the front of the car. The safety key is used at the start of a race to allow the car to turn on.
We also discussed the use of fuses and why they are so important in keeping us safe. If there is an electrical problem, the fuse breaks, therefore breaking the circuit so it stops the car/ electricity flowing around the complete circuit.
We then designed the car’s body.
We came up with:
One side land
One side sea
Then we split the two in half to polluted to non-polluted. We decided that we would use our GP logo as the boundary between the 2 sides as this illustrates how we can change our world by acting upon the green message.
We also wanted to get our key messages out about how plastic bags are harming turtles in the sea as they are mistaking them for their food - jellyfish. Also was wanted to use crisp packets as this is another focus we have as we are recycling them so they can be made into garden furniture!
8th February 2019
Reported by Phoebe and Amy
Hi
This week we have been busy building the car, adding the brakes and discussing our sponsorship. If you do not already know , GreenPower have been sponsored by the lovely Love Your Logo shop, near the station .They have decided to give us : 10 green-power t-shirts [for the green team] and give us a good discount of the printing of around 50 re-useable bags, which we will be selling to promote being green, and around 100 stickers, that we will be giving out to people who we think are green.
We would also like to share with you what we did in our Friday session. This week we talked more about how the car is steered and we fitted the brakes onto the car. We also discussed about the accelerator. We found out that the car we are building has a one wheel drive, which means that a differential is not needed. This is when the wheels have to move at different speeds as, when turning, on wheel will travel further than the other.
Other exciting news is that we quite recently sent of a box of 806 crisp packets ( not exact ) to Terracycle for recycling!
That is all for today green fans
Bye!!!
30th January 2019
Reported by James, Silas, Lily-Rose and Amy
On Wednesday the 30th January, we went to Love Your Logo to give a pitch to persuade them to sponsor us. We walked down with Miss George and Mr Tanton, feeling extremely nervous but excited.
When we arrived, Martin (the manager) came to introduce himself and showed us to his office.
We stated to present our pitch to him, explaining what Green Power is, why it is important for us to spread the 'Green' word, the significance of our logos and what we wanted them to sponsor us with.
It went fantastically well, as Martin, offered us printed t-shirts with our own designs as well as bags and sticker (both designed by us!)
We were extremely pleased with the outcome and were very proud of ourselves.
‘I am glad we had a successful pitch’ said James.
‘I feel so proud, and I hope that we are able to spread the 'Green' word with our bags and stickers' said Amy.
We want to thank Love Your Logo for allowing us to pitch to them and being so generous with their time and sponsorship.
We even got to see how their embroidery machines worked!
25th January 2019
Reported by James and Phoebe
This week in Greenpower we continued the build of the car so we could start constructing the bodywork as soon as possible. It was pretty complicated this week as we needed key components to match together precisely!
Earlier this week, the company Love Your Logo asked us to come on Wednesday to pitch to them for sponsorship.
We are going to ask if they are able to help use by providing reusable bags and t-shirts with our logo on. Also, we have got another pitch to get ready to send to Stonegate. They are asking us to send a persuasive email to explain what we are wanting to achieve and what we could do with the money that they may give us as sponsorship.
When we are at love your logo, we need to try and stop shops using plastic bags due to them polluting the environment by making turtles eat plastic bags (turtles mistake the plastic bags for jellyfish so they eat them by mistake). We found this picture to help to show you what is happening to these remarkable creatures.
Some other exciting news is we have now got over 600 crisp packets to recycle into garden furniture. We will be sending our first batch off in the next couple of weeks!
18th January 2019
Reported by Amy and Phoebe
Hi green fans, this week in green power we continued to build our legendary car. We identified the right components and used the technical drawings to understand which nuts and bots we needed.
If you don’t know what the legendary car is, keep reading!
The legendary car is the vehicle we are taking to the (also legendary) races where we will compete with other green teams.
Now back to the build 2019 - we have just finished the seat and have started the base which is going to look amazing.
Also, we talked about how we can recycle more plastic and what it is turned into. We looked at different recycle signs and we have a challenge to find out what the number 4 within the recycle sign means!
We had an idea about raising money for green power ,which we will be discussing with Mrs Alden later next week. If you have any feedback please share it we love your ideas.
Our BIG GreenPower Assembly
14th January 2019
Reported by James and Phoebe
On the 14th January, Greenpower did an assembly on being green, to the whole school. In the run up to the assembly, Greenpower had a meeting with Mrs Alden (our head teacher) to discuss what we wanted to included in our presentation. On Friday 11th, we went back to Mrs Alden to run through our presentation to make sure she was happy with it and finalise a few details.
On Monday, the day had come (14th January) to perform in front of the school. We all felt more nervous as more and moe children came into the hall.
After the assembly, Lily stated
' The assembly went really well and we are hoping to do another assembly later in the year.'
and everyone in the Greenpower team agreed.
During the assembly, we mentioned the questionaire, which Phoebe, Amy and Lily took round to all the classes to fill out. We have got lots of them back already!
Next Friday, we will look through the questionaires to see how green our school really is.
We really do hope that you all enjoyed our assembly!
Week 5: 11th January 2019
Reported by Silas, Ben and Lily
Today we discussed that we are going to enter the premier league primary stars ocean rescue pledge to share a spot light on issues affecting ocean health.
Our pledge is to collect children’s crisps packets from their lunch boxes so we can send them off to be recycled rather than contribute to general non-recycled waste. We wrote 100 words to explain why we thought this pledge adhered to the OCEAN acronym.
O- choose one thing to change
C- be clear about what it is
E- make it easy for everybody to be able to do
A- ensure it is achievable
N- know your next steps to get ready to carry out the pledge
We also talked about our sponsorship letters, written by Lily Rose and Phoebe and we will send some out to key companies next week.
Next we got down to the technical side of Greenpower, starting with a health and safety talk as well as going through the equipment, which will be used during the building process. We got to understand the technical drawings and how to find the correct screws, bolts and washers for each part of the build.
Week 4: 4th January 2019
Reported by Phoebe and Amy
Hi,
This week in Greenpower we discussed our ideas and talked about what we are going to do in the BIG Greenpower assembly.
Our questionnaire has been printed and will be coming around your classes after the BIG Greenpower assembly on the 14th of January.
If you have any questions you can save them for the BIG Greenpower assembly where our brilliant team will be answering all of your interesting questions; we can’t wait to hear them all.
We also can’t wait for all your answers on the questionnaire which we mentioned earlier.
We are working on a power point which will hopefully answer some of your questions as well.
Don’t forget we would also love to hear your ideas so if you have any come by Elm class and talk to Miss George, who is also a member of our Greenpower team.
If you would like to know more about the power point, have a look around the website and on the Greenpower board. Thanks for reading, we hope to see you at our BIG Greenpower assembly.
Week 3: 14th December 2018
Reported by James
This week Silas created our final logos!
This week we also researched which animals are the most endangered in the world.
This week we designed templates for our car , we had lots of ideas for them but we still need to decide on the final one. Our main concept is looking at both land and sea and seeing the effects of pollution on both.
Earlier in the week we had a meeting with Mrs Alden (our head teacher) to discuss about how we could help the school become more green . We are now going to do an assembly to the school to spread the word of green.
Also, we are going to do some questionnaires to see how the school thinks we can help the planet.
We are separating the assembly in to different parts : endangered animals , life of a plastic bag and a whole school questionnaire .
This week was the last before are break up before Christmas , so we have to research other the holiday .
Week 2: 7th December 2018
Reported by Leo and James, Elm Y6
In GreenPower this week, we discussed what we needed for our green team
We found out that we need several things:
- a mascot
- logo
- team name
- car name
- slogan
- sponsors
This week we got our mascot and logo designed ; we also we completed our slogan
“Don’t Be Mean , Be Green!"
We thought that this would be a good slogan as we wanted everyone to think about being green, so we wouldn't be mean to our world.
Our mascot name is Global Pat and we have two people making the costume. Global Pat, was created as we thought about how we need people to take note of how our world needs saving from Global Warming. He will be a reminder that the world is at the forefront of our minds when we are thinking about GreenPower this year.
Leo is going to make a paper mache design, whilst Amy will be making a small version of Global Pat using many materials, which can be recycled. This will be our reminder to everyone about what we should recycle to help our planet.
We have all decided to use Silas' logo for our group this year, which will be used to head our paper when we send letters to sponsors.
Next week, we will discuss who will sponsor us and how they will help as well as starting to design our car bodywork.
Week 1 November 30th 2018
Reported by Josh
Today was our first meeting for GreenPower. We had to be in schoool for 7:30am (It was dark outside!)
Our crew: Our Ambitions:
Josh- to learn more on engineering & to build more relationships.
Leo- to experience and get better at go- karting.
Silas- to learn more about engineering because I want to become one.
Amy- to work well as a team.
Phoebe- to experience engineering in detail.
James- to look how the engine works & how wheels spin.
Ben- to learn more about the mechanics of the car.
Lily- to work better as a team.
Also our experts at engineering are Miss George & Mr Tanton!
The Intro (by Mr Tanton)
In 12 years time, cars will be electric (no diesel or petrol cars will be manufactured).
This is due to their pollution and the effect on the environment.
This week - Friday 30 of November we did:
- We talked about what GreenPower was about.
- We talked about the theme and sponsors and we decided our design was
Global Warming!
- We are still discussing our sponsors but we have a few in mind.
- Our Questions for today are :
What is global warming?
How does global warming effect the planet?
How does it happen?
Why should we stop it?
James took some time to create a poster
