Where to start? ... A year of movement (Part 1)

Hi everyone,
We have had a busy year; however, I have not been the most organised in posting on to this site to keep you all updated with what we have been doing. I thought it would be best just to type it all in one long post so you don’t need to scroll through too many. Thank you for the Relief Teacher reward option. This helped me get the time to piece this all together.
Our events:
- Hands up survey
- Swimming
- Constable Care
- Walk Safely to School Day and Big Veggie Crunch
- First Aid Incursion
- Urban Challenge
- Bike Month
- Lights for Learning Lapathon
- Where to next?

Term 1:
- Hands up survey: I do think I actually posted about this one. I am about to get the Year 6 leaders to repeat the survey to see if there is a difference. I wonder if Covid has meant that more families not drop their students by car?

- Swimming! Swimming lessons and swimming carnivals. What a way to make the most of the warmer weather in Term 1. Due to the location of our College to the Aqua Jetty, we are in a fortunate position whereby we can encourage the students to be active and walk to the Aqua Jetty for our lessons.

Term 2:
What a crazy start to term but things quickly got back up and running. We did notice that we had an increase in the number of students who were being driven to school going backwards in what we were hoping was a forward moving goal of getting to school in a more active manner. However, this is understandable with the circumstances.

All of our events were cancelled for this term.

Term 3:
Constable Care: On Monday, 29 June, we had the privilege of having the Constable Care Team attend our College. Year 4 and 5 explored “Frenamies” where they watched a role play of a situation about a new person attending school and someone who wasn’t being nice showing her around and a role play of someone being upset and reacting in anger. After both of these scenario’s students volunteered options on how we could improve these situations. They were then invited to join in the role play and improve the characters choices.

The Kindy - Year 3 students explored the “Fun Scary” performance. Through puppetry and song, students were introduced to scary things that are fun (like roller coasters) and those scary secrets that we need to tell a trusted adult about. They looked at how these are different and looked at what students could do if they were scared in different situations including walking to school or waiting for someone to pick them up.

Walk safely to school: We were able to access a grant from the City of Rockingham and because we are a part of the Your Move initiative, we were able to extend our grant to $220. To access the grant, I had to send in an invoice to the City of Rockingham.

We promoted the event on Seesaw and in the school newsletter. We chose to keep it simple and do something that required less preparation and food handling. Previously we have offered fruit and smoothies. This year, the grant money allowed us to provide fruit and a fruit box or bottled water to each student to start their day off in a healthy way which also helped provide extra energy for those who do not often eat breakfast. Thank you for our awesome team of Teachers, Parents and Year 6 leaders to help hand out items and clean up at the end. You are all superstars and these events couldn’t happen without you

Big Veggie Crunch: On the same day as the Walk Safely to School day, we also participated in the Big Veggie Crunch which was run by Cancer Council who also organise the ‘crunch and sip’ initiative. Apparently only 1 in 6 children eat the recommended vegetable amount a day. Once I had signed our College up to the initiative, they subsidised up to $75 worth of vegetables purchased. This allowed us to provide platters of vegetables to take around to the different classrooms allowing students to try food that they wouldn’t normally eat. Surprisingly enough, raw mushrooms became a favourite for many. Thanks once again to our awesome parent helpers. The bonus classroom giveaways such as bouncy balls, pencils and keyrings, and erasers may have also helped with the enthusiasm.

First Aid Incursion: We finally got to have our First Aid incursion. We had representatives from St. John come to the school to work with students from PP-Year 6. The presenters were lovely and had a fantastic way of working with the students and aiming the learning at the correct year levels. Students from K- Year 6 were taught a range of skills on how to be a first responder if there is an accident of some sort ranging from the simpler fall off a bike to what to do if they find an unconscious person (DRS ABCD). Each student was provided a certificate at the end. Since this event, staff have observed some students pretending to be unconscious and the students responding as “first responders”.

Urban Challenge: As we are a part of a larger College, I have the opportunity to work across the whole community. On the last day of Term 3, students participate in what we call the Urban Challenge. This is organised by the Year 9 Coordinator as a part of the ROTIA programme that we run (Recognition of Transitioning into Adulthood).

Students met us at the Warnbro train station at 7:30 for check in and to have the rules explained to the for the day. The rules are that they need to get to as many given sites as possible around Perth, Subiaco and Fremantle and answer the relevant question. They can only get from one place to another by using public transport or their own feet and they had to be back on campus by 4:30pm. The teachers are there for safety reasons only and cannot give clues on the best way to get from place to place or if they are in the correct spot or answer the clue. This is a day well loved by the students and helps them overcome the anxiety of getting on public transport and familiarises them with reading public transport timetables and finding bus stops etc.

Term 4:
Bike Month: I applied to Bike West for the $200 bike month grant that was on offer for schools as a Department of Transport initiative. To do this I had to write a proposal about the event and answer how it will encourage bike riding, be inclusive for all participants and promote/encourage/support a local bike business. Based on the proposal, I was offered the grant for the event.

We held the event on the 30th of October. Students were encouraged to ride their bikes, scooters or wheel chairs etc to school. As a part of the event, students were encouraged to decorate their bikes ready for a parade at lunch time. Students had a course set up whereby they were allowed to ride their bikes around the oval and basketball court. The kids thought this was fantastic as it wasn’t something they were allowed to do normally.

To support local business, we organised to use the grant money to buy our prizes from Port Kennedy Cycles. We purchased two drink bottles, and two gift vouchers. The drink bottles were given for the students who completed the most laps from PP-2 and 4-5. The gift vouchers were given to the person with the most money raised for the day and for the ‘best dressed’ bike.

Once our event was completed, I needed to write an acquittal whereby we summarised the event, added a couple of photos, and send in the receipts of the items we purchased from the bike shop. We expect that we will be reimbursed sometime in December.

Lights for Learning Lapathon: A big thanks to the Year 6 team for organising this one. As a part of the Year 6 Physical Sciences unit, students were learning about electricity. To finalise their unit, they purchased lights from SolarBuddy (https://solarbuddy.org/). SolarBuddy is an Australian charity uniting a global community with a big dream to gift six million solar lights to children living in energy poverty by 2030, to help them to study after dusk and improve their education outcomes. The purpose of the event was to raise sufficient money to purchase 50 solar light kits to be constructed by our Year 6 students to be sent to help illuminate the lives of school children in energy poor countries such as Cambodia, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. These lights enable students to study at night, continuing their education. The students were organising sponsors for each lap or asking for a donation to participate in a lapathon to raise money to pay for the solar light kits. Again, this event was promoted through Seesaw, newsletters and during school assemblies/Chapels. The lapathon was a large success. The kits were sent out and the students spent an afternoon putting them all together and charging the batteries. They also wrote letters to send with the lights to the children who will receive them.

The lapathon was held on the first really hot day this term. A big shout out to the grounds keeper who kept turning the sprinklers on and off while the students were completing their sessions. The water was a particular highlight of the sessions. All students did an amazing job completing their laps. The top lap runner for PP-2 was 22 laps in 45 minutes. The top lap runner for 3-5 was 30 laps. The top lap runner completed 160 over the whole day by a Year 6 student who was outside all day helping all the other year groups.

Where to next?
End of year Hands up survey: Students will be going around this week to ask the classes how they got to school and we will see if there have been any changes.