Green Flag Number 5 - Biodiversity
The Biodiversity Flag is Flag 5 of the An Taisce Green Schools Programme, which encourages schools to increase awareness of biodiversity and take actions to protect it. Students in our Green Schools Committee will undertake an environmental review and develop an action plan to promote the variety of plant and animal life within our school and its surroundings. This initiative aims to foster a deeper understanding of biodiversity's importance and how to actively contribute to its conservation.
Biodiversity looks at steps which can be taken in schools to increase awareness of the importance of native plants, animals and habitats, and to increase species-richness in a locality.
Join Rathcor NS as we take on our next Green School's Flag - Biodiversity!
More From Biodiversity Week 15th - 24th May
This Biodiversity Week, we celebrated the incredible variety of life that surrounds us — from native plants and pollinators to birds, insects, and wildlife that help our ecosystems thrive. Biodiversity plays a vital role in keeping our environment healthy, resilient, and beautiful for future generations. It’s also a reminder that small actions can make a big difference. Planting pollinator-friendly flowers, protecting green spaces, reducing waste, and learning more about local wildlife are all meaningful ways to support nature in our communities. Join us this week as we celebrate, learn, and take action to protect the rich biodiversity that connects us all. Take a look at our video below, we are surrounded by incredible plants and animals and are truly blessed and honored to be protectors of our wonderful area.
Bee Day
Our national school was buzzing with excitement as we celebrated World Bee Day this week. Pupils across all classes took part in fun and educational activities to learn about the vital role bees play in pollination, biodiversity, and food production.
The children enjoyed creating colourful bee artwork, learning about pollinator-friendly flowers, and discovering fascinating facts about honeybees and other native pollinators. Classrooms were filled with discussions about how everyone can help protect bees by caring for the environment and supporting habitats for wildlife.
World Bee Day gave our pupils a wonderful opportunity to appreciate nature and understand the importance of even the smallest creatures in our ecosystem. Well done to all the students and staff who helped make the day such a success!
The children enjoyed creating colourful bee artwork, learning about pollinator-friendly flowers, and discovering fascinating facts about honeybees and other native pollinators. Classrooms were filled with discussions about how everyone can help protect bees by caring for the environment and supporting habitats for wildlife.
World Bee Day gave our pupils a wonderful opportunity to appreciate nature and understand the importance of even the smallest creatures in our ecosystem. Well done to all the students and staff who helped make the day such a success!
Green Schools - Biodiversity Award
We are delighted to share that our students were awarded a Merit Award in the Coillte Schools Photography Competition! The competition encouraged students to explore the beauty of nature through photography/video, and our students showcased fantastic creativity, talent, and attention to detail in their work. We are incredibly proud of their achievement and the effort they put into capturing such wonderful images. Congratulations to all involved on this well-deserved recognition — a fantastic accomplishment for our school community!
More Biodiversity
Here in Rathcor NS we have been learning more about biodiversity and the great work that bees do in pollination and maintaining the status quo.
We have also been busy planting sunflowers, growing our own grass and making our 'gardens' while learning about plants and nature and using the goodies enclosed in our Bosca Dulra.
Biodiversity Week Friday 15th - Sunday 24th May
Biodiversity is the variety of life on Earth — from plants and insects to birds, animals, and microorganisms. Healthy biodiversity keeps ecosystems balanced, supports food production, improves air quality, and helps tackle climate change. Schools can play a major role in protecting biodiversity while also creating greener, healthier spaces for students to learn and thrive. Rathcor NS works daily at protecting biodiversity in our school yard and we were recently awarded some fabulous gifts from Anna and Shane from Louth County Council to encourage our students to continue the great work that they do, we received a wonderful art kit, a bug hotel, seeds and gardening equipment, all of which we will put to great use.
We've been very busy celebrating Biodiversity Week in Rathcor NS, we've planted grass, sown sunflowers, promoted biodiversity through our art work and learning, installed our bug hotel, discovered all about the wonderful pollinators bees are, planted flower seeds and learned to appreciate the beauty and nature of the area that we live in.
Green Schools' Committee 2025-2026
Our newly selected Green Schools Committee and our school Community are very excited about working towards our next Green flag. They have already started their great work. A Green flag is awarded to a school every two years. The Biodiversity flag is the next flag for us to conquer on our green schools journey. This encourages us to really look at everything in Rathcor N.S. and local environment from bugs to birds and each animal's habitat.
We can break Biodiversity down into "Bio" meaning life and "diversity" meaning variety.
Simply put, it is the variety of all living things on Earth, from the tiniest bugs living in the soil to the butterflies in your garden, the plants they feed from, and the biggest whales in the sea.
Alongside this, as a school Community we will continue with the great work that has been done on our previous awarded Green Flags for Recycling, Energy Conservation, Eater Conservation and Travel.
We love and strive to protect planet Earth, our shared home to where we all belong
We can break Biodiversity down into "Bio" meaning life and "diversity" meaning variety.
Simply put, it is the variety of all living things on Earth, from the tiniest bugs living in the soil to the butterflies in your garden, the plants they feed from, and the biggest whales in the sea.
Alongside this, as a school Community we will continue with the great work that has been done on our previous awarded Green Flags for Recycling, Energy Conservation, Eater Conservation and Travel.
We love and strive to protect planet Earth, our shared home to where we all belong
Our Biodiversity Green Code
Fleas, bees, birds and trees - they're all part of Biodiversity!
Well done to our students and artist Kate for designing our school's Green Code for Biodiversity.
Well done to our students and artist Kate for designing our school's Green Code for Biodiversity.
Biodiversity Mapping in Our School Yard
Our School Garden
We are so lucky in Rathcor NS to be surrounded by nature everywhere. Here in our school grounds we have the most amazing fruit trees and just take a look at the autumnal haul of goodies that they provided.
Biodiversity Through Art
Our students got creative in promoting and explaining biodiversity recently, have a look at some of their creations, using art to explain what words sometimes can't:
Tree Day
Our students took part in a Tree Day Webinar on 02/10/2025.
Planting and Caretaking
Our students take great care of our school environment, here they are hard at work cleaning and planting.
Our Nature Table
Some of our students brought in some samples of the vegetation in their homes for our nature table. The students had lots of fun identifying the different plants, seeds and berries. It will be very interesting to see the variety of flora change with the seasons.
Beach Clean 2025
We were once again very proud to be part of Clean Coasts: Big Beach Clean at Rathcor beach.
This annual action encourages everyone from around the country to remove litter from the Irish coast and we are proud to be part of this very important action. A special thanks to Michael Muckian for ordering the resources for us and helping us with the removal of the collected rubbish. Our walk to our nearest beach meant that we were able to observe the amazing variety of flora and fauna that grow in our native hedgerows, from flowers to berries and everything in between.
While on our beach clean We met two lovely ferrits: Maeve( named after Queen Maeve of Connacht) and Varuna( named after the God of the Ocean). The ferritin is a cousin of the European polecat and belongs to the broad weasel family.
On our walk to Rathcor beach, we loved Connecting with people, Connecting with Rathcor, a very Special place to us and Connecting with Nature.
This annual action encourages everyone from around the country to remove litter from the Irish coast and we are proud to be part of this very important action. A special thanks to Michael Muckian for ordering the resources for us and helping us with the removal of the collected rubbish. Our walk to our nearest beach meant that we were able to observe the amazing variety of flora and fauna that grow in our native hedgerows, from flowers to berries and everything in between.
While on our beach clean We met two lovely ferrits: Maeve( named after Queen Maeve of Connacht) and Varuna( named after the God of the Ocean). The ferritin is a cousin of the European polecat and belongs to the broad weasel family.
On our walk to Rathcor beach, we loved Connecting with people, Connecting with Rathcor, a very Special place to us and Connecting with Nature.