RAC Bike Ed – Week Four - It’s a WRAP!

The Year 4, 5 and Year 6 students have spent the past four Mondays participating in the Bike Ed sessions at school. The students showed great progress and enhanced their knowledge from when they first began. The final session held on Monday the 16th of August permitted the students to get out on their bikes extending from the basketball to riding across the oval in a safe and fun environment, learning to ride in groups and single lines, to scanning their surroundings whilst riding looking for dangers and hazards, communicating with other riders by using signals, calling out instructions to ensure everyone stays safe, and is aware which direction the lead rider is heading. When needed to do an emergency stop using both brakes. Students needed to be aware of route changes that required them to switch or shift their gears for easier control and movement, especially as many challenged themselves by following the leaders up the steep grassy hill at the side of the oval.

We were fortunate enough to have this complimentary 4-week program offered to us by Your Move program which provided us with knowledgeable instructors and a supply of spare bikes for these weekly sessions for students that needed it to participate. Huge shout out to Nora and Noel from ‘People on Bicycles’ for running these great sessions each week with our students. The collective video comments and feedback after the final session was very positive: “it was good”, “I liked participating each week”, “I learnt how to use both brakes in an emergency stop” “I am able to adjust my own seat”, “I learnt to lift my hand off the handlebars to signal”, “I have more confidence on my bike now”, I know the ABCD of a bike check (air, brakes, chain, drop test)” and “it was so much fun”. Such enthusiasm from the students hearing their comments! Well done to all our students who took part in this program! Stay safe and keep riding!

In the future, we would like to consider holding one of our own in-house Bike Ed sessions once a year at our school possibly starting sometime next year. One possibility is having it during Physical Education lessons, or with another option to consider either before or after school classes, with our goal and outcome to encourage parents and community of bike rider enthusiasts to get involved in leading these sessions, to encourage more of our students from the younger years, Year 2 onwards to get out on their bikes to support students to become safer and confident active travellers on the road!

Post event Bike Ed Follow up activities are currently being explored in the pipeline for those students who participated, a little reminder of what they took away from these sessions.