The Bee Hotel and Meadow Project is being coordinated by Dr Jo Anna Reed Johnson, from the Institute of Education at the University of Reading with initial funding from the Friends of the University of Reading.
It is an area for contemplation, well-being, teaching and learning for all of our community. In the Autumn we launched a competition for our school partners to engage their students so that they could learn more about the different variety of bees and their needs.
We were delighted with the response with over 70 participants sending in some fantastic ideas about how we could design our Bee Hotel for the Bee Meadow site on our London Road Campus.
These are the competition winners:
- Early Years – Peter Hicks at Mortimer St. John Primary School
- Key Stage 1 – Charlotte Fisher at Dolphin School
- Key Stage 1 – Abigail Beard at Dolphin School
- Key Stage 1 – Jonah Vaughan at Dolphin School
- Key Stage 1 – Erin at Windmill School
- Key Stage 2 – Ziam Seiderman at Phil and Jim’s School
All winners will have an element of their design incorporated into the final Bee Hotel Design, which is being designed and build by our bee expert Robin Dean. They will receive an invite, along with their teacher and/or parent/guardian to attend the IoE Bee Meadow Opening Ceremony, which is to take place on World Bee Day, 20 May 2022 (10-12 noon), at our London Road Campus. Please save the date.
In addition, a Bee Expert will conduct a follow up visit to the winning schools in the Summer Term to explore the possibilities for Bees and Meadows in their context.
We’d like to thank all those pupils who entered and all the teaching staff, parents and Judges who supported this initiative.
Judges:
- Professor Carol Fuller, Head of Institute of Education
- Alexander Wallace, Deputy Head Leighton Park School
- Robin Dean, Bee Expert and Bee Hotel Architect
- Marco Bernardini, Project Collaborator
- Nadia Klause, Year 3 BA Education Studies Student
Here are some photos of the winning entries and our judging panel at work:
