Scooter Challenge Week June 2019

To coincide with Cleaner Air Day, Early Years and KS1 took part in the Inter-School Scooter Challenge to see how many children could scoot to school during the week beginning 17th June. We managed to do a fantastic 201 scoots. Congratulations to 2S who had the most scoots to school! Well done everyone involved.

Scooting is good fun and great exercise and it helps to improve the air quality around our school. Before the challenge we all had a reminder of scooter safety skills. Don't forget we have our scooter pod if you choose to continue to scoot to school, please remember your lock and helmet!

Here are some of the posters we made on Cleaner Air day.

Walk to School Week

It is Walk to School Week! We are encouraging families to walk to school during the week beginning 20th May. These are just some of the benefits...

- Less congestion outside the school
- Cleaner air in our local area
- Happier children

Walking to school is also a great opportunity to reinforce and talk about important road safety skills. 

We appreciate some families need to come in the car, even just parking a little further away and walking together will have the benefits above.

 This week we will be talking about why it is good to walk to school with our families and doing a hands-up survey to see how we most often get to school.

 Don’t forget we have our new scooter pod by the Warren Centre. If you scoot to school, don’t forget to wear your helmet and lock up your scooter during the day. Thank you for your support.

Green Council talks Road Safety and Reducing Plastics

There are two issues concerning Green Council at the moment, and we worked on them in our meeting today.

First, we are still concerned about road safety and secondly (inspired by class 5D) we want to encourage the school to reduce plastic usage in school.

Here we are making posters and designing little sketches for next Thursday's assembly so that we can let our friends know the very important messages about safety and recycling.

Junior Road Safety Officer Training

We are excited that we now have two KS2 pupils trained as Junior Road Safety Officers (JRSOs). They had a fantastic afternoon learning about road safety and even designed their own t-shirts (see below!). Some top tips they want to share are: * Be bright, be seen! * Always pay attention near roads. * Stop, look and listen and look both ways when crossing roads. * Air pollution is a problem in Southampton. Did you know? A child gets more bad fumes when they are sat inside a car than when they are walking to school with their adults.

The JRSOs are keen to share more of their knowledge and have some goodies to give out so keep an eye out for them at school!

Year 2 Scooter Training

Year 2 had a lot of fun doing their scooter training before half term! They learnt so much including how to use their brakes correctly, how to steer around objects and to keep an eye out for potential hazards on the pavement. They discussed and acted out being polite to pedestrians and saying ‘Excuse me please‘ and ‘Thank you!’. With the trainers, the children and Mrs Bedwell talked about watching for vehicles coming in and out of driveways across pavements and when to stop to stop and walk with the scooter. Well done Year 2, you did excellent listening and we hope you found it helpful!

6D Scooter Skills Session

6D won a competition when they recorder the different ways they travel to school over four weeks.

They were rewarded with a session from Bike It Jenny who brought in scooters (and helmets) for the children to try.



First, Jenny tested that the children could stop safely. 

There was a course to scoot round including "roundabouts" (hoops on the ground) and a "zebra crossing" (black and white flag).

The children also had a go at playing musical statues on scooters!
These are great ideas that you could try with a scooter in the summer holidays. If you don't have cones, you could put stones down carefully to scoot around.

Special Project for Green Council

Green Council had a special visitor today, Jenny from Sustrans.  She has chosen 3 of her favourite schools to help her with a project finding out how children travel to school.  The Green Council and teachers will be recording the data every day for four weeks for her.

Here she is explaining the project to Green Council.

We are looking forward to seeing the results, which she will come and explain to us.

Road Safety in Reception

On Tuesday, we had a visit from 'Bike- it Jen' from Sustrans, who talked to us about the benefits of walking, cycling or scooting to school and how to keep safe.

Some of the many benefits of walking to school include:

• good exercise
• fresh air
• lots to see and talk about

Here are some 'Green Cross Code' top tips on how to stay safe when walking near the road:

• Think - find a safe space to cross (zebra crossing, pelican crossing, lollipop person etc)  - never between parked cars
• Stop - keep a safe distance from the road
• Use your eyes and ears - never cross when listening to music or using a mobile phone
• Wait until it is clear or the cars have stopped - both ways
• Look and listen
• Walk, never run
• Wear bright/reflective clothing when it's dark

If you are unable to walk to school, Jenny also talked about how to stay safe in the car. Her tips included:

• Always wear your seatbelt
• Don't play with the car doors
• Remind the driver never to use their phone while driving

For more information, please visit www.sustrans.org.uk 

Bike It Jenny visits Green Council

At the end of last term, Green Council had a treat. Jenny Babey from BikeIt came to see us and brought festive travel activities.
She talked about Active Travel - how to be active on the way to school.
She held a competition to name the bear.

Jenny wanted to know what activities the children would like at school. We said anything that helps us to travel safely and live a healthy lifestyle. Lots of children asked brilliant questions about cycling and road safety.

Zoe won a bell and all children had goodies to take home to remind them to travel safely.

Thank you Jenny and we look forward to working with you in the New Year.

Road Safety

To mark Road Safety Week, Nursery have been talking about staying safe near roads by holding an adult's hand, finding somewhere safe to cross and remembering to Stop, Look and Listen. 

Here is our handprint poster we made to remind us 'We all hold hands!'

Park & Stride

Help our children get to school safer, healthier and happier. Try to park your car 5 or 10 minutes further away from the school and walk, cycle or scoot instead!

Keep an eye out for our 'Park & Stride' postcards, banners and posters...

Click on the link for more information

https://myjourneysouthampton.com/

PSCO visit to Green Council

Yesterday we welcomed our new PCSO, Adey Griffiths, into the school for the first time!

He met members of the Green Council and a school governor, who wanted to talk to him about how we are trying to improve our school and how we can all work together to make things better for everyone in our community.

We talked about how important it is that children cross the road carefully at the beginning and end of school and especially when there are parked cars, or cars pulling out.

We talked about litter and how we are going to Clean For The Queen on Friday (watch this space for our next blog about that).

There was a lot to talk about!

We hope PCSO Adey will come and meet all of the children at an assembly soon!
Have you seen him around the area?

Green Council with PCSO Adey

Accident Prevention

Year 5 had the second workshop linking to Accident Prevention this afternoon. Doctors, nurses, paramedics and people from Southampton City Council came to visit the children to provide the workshop. The children really enjoyed themselves, and learnt lots of new ways to keep themselves safe on and near roads. Thank you to our visitors!

Accident Prevention!

Yesterday, Year 5 had some visitors from the NHS. They came in to talk to Year 5 about road safety. They took part in several activities, including how they can be harmed if they are hit by a car, what they can wear to make them more visible (high visible jackets), and also how drivers can help too (watch out for pedestrians and other cars/vehicles). Great fun was had by all of Year 5 and we now know how to keep ourselves safe! Thank you to our visitors.