Tesco - Bags of Help!
Some of our classrooms are based in the old Victorian part of the school and have high ceilings, creating poor acoustic and reverberation levels, which along with background noise creates a poor learning environment.
We would like to improve the acoustics and reverberation levels within these classrooms by fitting acoustic panels to the ceiling. Recently, Hampshire County Council fitted such panels to one of our classrooms, which has made a huge difference, but, sadly, they will not install such panels in other classrooms.
The standard reverberation within classrooms is 0.8 seconds, this is how long sounds stay in a room after they first happen. Sounds stay in the room when they bounce off of desks or walls, making it harder to hear when sounds stay in the room. If many sounds do this at once, it can get very loud. In a classroom, it is therefore important to have a short reverberation time.
When classroom acoustics are bad it can cause problems with how children understand speech; read and spell; behave in the classroom; pay attention; concentrate and succeed in school. For these reasons, it is important to make the classrooms quieter for all children.
All children do better in a quieter classroom. It is even more important to have a quiet room if children have: a hearing loss in one or both ears; an ear infection or fluid in the ear; a learning disability; auditory processing disorder; speech and language delay and/or attention problems. For these children a 0.4 second reverberation time is recommended. Fitting acoustic panels would allow us to achieve this within classrooms.
Our Year R and Year One classrooms already have ceilings that help absorb sound, and installing such ceilings is costly, something our school budget will not support. To carry out such work in our remaining Year Two classes we have been busy making grant applications. I am delighted to inform you that our application to Tesco Bags of Help scheme (using the money raised from the sale of plastic bags) has been accepted.
We now need your help!
Our ‘Quieter Learning Environments’ project has been selected as one of three projects that will be placed within local Tesco stores for voting. Voting will take place from Tuesday 1st May 2018 to Saturday 30th June 2018. The project with the highest number of votes across our region will receive £4,000, the second placed project £2,000 and the third placed project £1,000. It goes without saying we hope to receive the highest number of votes.
Voting for our project will be available within the following Tesco stores, so please do share our project with friends, family and the wider local community to increase the number of supporters for our project.
Tesco – Eastleigh (Swan Centre)
Tesco Express – Fair Oak
Tesco Express – Chandlers Ford
Tesco Express - Bishopstoke
Tesco Express – Twyford Road, Eastleigh
Tesco Express – Valley Park, Southampton
To vote, you need to make a purchase within store of any value. You will receive one token per transaction and it's not necessary to purchase a carrier bag in order to receive a token. Please ask for a token if you are not given one and place it within the container labelled Fair Oak Infant School.
Alongside this application we have also made grant applications to other sources, as the Tesco grant alone, if we receive the maximum amount, will not fund the total cost of the project, but, in the words of Tesco themselves ‘every little helps’!
Thank you for your support.