How far can we go around Australia?

On World Car Free Day our student team chose to run an activity inspired by the Walk Around Australia classroom activity. They were interested to know how many kilometres the school community could travel without stepping foot in a car. They wanted to award prizes to students for travelling car free. We decided on the metrics we'd like to measure:

• Total % travelled without a car
• Class by class % travelled without a car
• Total kms travelled without a car - students
• Total kms travelled without a car - whole community
• Class by class kms travelled without a car
• Longest individual bike ride
• Longest individual walk
• Longest individual scoot
• Moving family award

To run the activity, the students brainstormed how they could capture the information. They decided an extended hands up survey would be the way to go. The team set up a MS Forms questionnaire asking about how students got to school, who they came with and, if they travelled car-free, how many kilometers they travelled.

Here is a template : Walk Around Australia MS Forms

The students went from classroom to classroom to survey the students. In the upper school they were able to ask the students to complete their forms themselves and in the lower school they took students out of the class a couple at a time to survey the students.

Once we had all the data collected we were able to start crunching the numbers. We got together in the science room and put the data on the big screen. Together we went through each metric and used excel to help us crunch the numbers.

With all of the metrics answered, I helped the team summarise the results to assist them with presenting the information to the school.

At lunchtime while the students ate their food, the team presented their findings. Highlights were:

• 58.4% of the school travelled car-free - MORE THAN HALF!
• Yr 4 had 74% of the class come to school without a car
• Students travelled a total of 91.3kms - the equivalent of St As to Dwellingup!
• The community (including parents) travelled a total of 149.8kms - the equivalent of St As to Binningup!
• Yr 1 contributed 39.6kms to the total
• One of our families walked 3.6kms to get to school!

Students were awarded prizes from the rewards shop for the 3 longest rides, 3 longest walks and 3 longest scoots and a special award was presented to an extremely helpful Yr 4 who rolled up their sleeves to help with the set up of the parking day space.