Term 3 Reflection

I'm sure I speak for most people in that Term 3 often feels like the busiest term for each school, often due to the large number of sporting and athletics events. Last term was even busier in our classroom with the addition of swimming lessons and our class assembly. It's great to be giving an update, particularly as it's been so long in between.

The Your Move students have continued to promote active travel in an ongoing manner through our Fume Free Friday events. We created posters at the start of the year to promote these days (which take place on non-assembly Fridays). It's great to see these still around the school. While I was off for what seemed like an eternity (thank you flu season), the relief teacher guided the class through the process of creating posters for last term's Your Move event - World Car Free Day. Reflecting with our Cross-Curriculum Coach, we decided to scan and save examples of previous posters in order to provide students with examples. Often starting is posters is the hardest part! These quarterly planning and reflection sessions have been extremely beneficial and one contributing aspect to the embedding of Your Move within the school culture.

As it is was a new semester, the next group of students were able to partake in the Your Move program. We established the team and had our first team meeting. A large number of the students in this team are in my Year 5 class. These students decided that they would like to continue promoting active transport by conducting daily hands up surveys during our crunch and sip time. While slow at first, we definitely saw an increase in active transport rates in our classroom, particularly when we started an active transport challenge amongst the class. We set a target and negotiated a reward that links in with our classroom currency and whole school Positive Behaviour Support tokens. This role is shared between students through our classroom jobs system - which is linked to the aspects of the Sustainability Footprint and Ecological Handprint.

We conducted a hands up survey on World Car Free Day to great success. During our quarterly planning and reflection sessions we noted that it often took more time to enter the results into an Excel Spreadsheet and then enter this into the Your Move system after school. Last term we decided to enter the results straight in and then I would double check them after school. While a great idea in theory this doesn't account for power outages and unfortunately our results were lost. This term we will go back to the old system as it was a shame to miss out on the opportunity to reflect on the hard work that the students completed over the course of the term.

Having been in the Your Move champion role for my second year now I have developed a relationship with the creator and publisher of our weekly school bulletin. She often double checks if we have a Your Move event that requires promotion within the school and makes sure that the Fume Free Friday reminder goes into the weekly bulletin.

The next round of in-house PL for Your Move will take place this term as we have a large number of prac students in the school, particularly in the classes that run the Your Move sustainability program in the school (Year 5 and Year 5/6 classes this year). This in-house PL will be given in the lead up to the event for this term and during the upper primary Phase of Learning meeting to ensure that if there is any movement of teachers between year groups that they have the required knowledge and skills to continue implementing the program within the school. We are also in the process of writing a new school Business Plan. The Empowering Futures Commitee which focuses on Science, Technology, ICT and the Cross Curriculum Priorities are keen to see the sustainability programs (including Your Move) are listed as a strategy for developing student leadership within the school.

We also noted during our quarterly reflection one roadbloack that we have faced this year in relation to our class structure. As mentioned previously, each year level is responsible for a different sustainability initiative within the school - Year 4 (Waste Wise), Year 5 (Your Move) and Year 6 (Energy Smart and River Rangers). As we have a 4/5 split, a straight Year 5 class and two Year 5/6 splits. We have had to adjust the term teams several times to ensure that each classroom and student gets a turn at the appropriate sustainability program which has proven slightly difficult this year to the large number of splits. Some forward planning will be done to map out the 2020 year and improve on this process.

Lastly, we are just in the process of organising our bike education sessions. As we have a new PE teacher this year we have found this process has taken a bit longer to plan and navigate but will be quicker each time now that it is a more familiar process. The students are super excited to see the their hard work over the course of the year come to fruition in these education sessions.