Walk to School Wednesday

What did they do?

Walk to school Wednesday was introduced in an assembly by the Eco Committee early in the Spring term. Pupils devised their own motto ‘there is no such thing as the wrong weather, just the wrong clothing’ and promoted this as part of their walking assembly. All pupils were informed that 3 dojo points would be given to each child who walked to school on a Wednesday for the remainder of the school year.

In order to encourage pupils to enjoy walking whatever the weather the Eco Committee held a welly walk in the Spring term to be completed as part of classwork. Questions for each year group were placed around the school and pupils in each class were encouraged to find the answers for playtime rewards.

The Eco Committee wanted to engage the whole school and therefore planned a week of activities and challenges for walkers to engage with their surroundings on the way to and from school each day. Parents were informed through newsletters about the walk to school week and were provided with a list of the tasks that would be completed each day in order to help their children. The whole school were informed about the initiative as part of a school assembly which outlined the benefits of leaving the car at home.

Each day, pupils who walked to school were handed a piece of paper to write the answer to their challenge on. These pieces of paper were used to monitor the number of walks to school with the plan to create a large collage of successful walks.

The challenges for pupils were set as follows:

Monday – Roots to school – count and remember the number of steps you took to get to school.

Tuesday – Happy shoes day – wear shoes to school today that make you happy.

Wednesday – love your trees – hug the trees on your way to school. Count how many trees you have hugged.

Thursday – Tree spotter – count and remember the number of trees you see on your way to school.

Friday – Flying free – draw a picture of a bird or insect that you see on your way to school.

The tree collage represents each walk to school accomplished during walk to school week.

During the course of the week more than 1000 walking journeys were taken. The Eco Committee plan to re run the activity each year and hope that the trees will continue to grow as more sustainable journeys to school are taken each year.