YEP! team scoop award

The YEP! team are proud to announce that they won the “Best YEP! event” award at the YEP! celebration on Tuesday 12 July.

The YEP! project has been running in Gloucestershire for the past 3 years and Deer Park were invited to join in September 2010. In that time, we have surveyed the school and written an energy saving report to outline changes that could be made to save energy in the school. We have recently started the Energy Spies programme which aims to 'spy' on classrooms that are wasting energy!

At the YEP! event, we took part in a pedal power workshop where we used the power of our legs to play music and create works of art.

Katie Foye (Year 9 pupil at Deer Park School) said “I can’t believe how hard I had to work to play the music at the right volume. It made me think how much electricity we use”

The pupils learned how dynamos could be used to power everyday objects. We took part in the energy quiz with 5 tricky rounds and we won. Wes Caine (Year 9 pupil Deer Park School) “I can’t believe we’ve won and we couldn’t have done it without working together”.

The biggest success of the day was the YEP! Awards ceremony during the afternoon.

We were very pleased to find that we had been in the top three in the following categories:

• Best YEP! Team – an especially good achievement as we only started the project in September 2010.
• Best YEP! Pupil – Lucy Stephenson was nominated for her outstanding effort.
• Best YEP! Teacher – Mrs Cain was nominated
• Best Non-Teaching Support – Frank Perkins and Ernie Summers were nominated for their help during our survey day.

The highlight of the day was winning the “Best YEP! Event” category for our Energy Awareness Week that was run from 23–27 May with Year 7 pupils. Mrs Cain (YEP! lead teacher) said “I’m so proud of the efforts and participation of the YEP! team. Especially, as they have done this outside of lesson times. A positive consequence of the YEP! project has been seeing the pupils develop their confidence and communication skills with adults and their peers”. This is an amazing achievement in such a short space of time and the YEP! team are looking forward to next year.