Selecting and Introducing Our New Team

During last's year's Your Move Awards, we were encouraged to set ourselves a goal for Your Move in 2023. My goal was to refresh the way we selected and structured the Your Move Student Team at St Augustines. With three main areas for improvement - increasing engagement, encouraging new creative ideas and minimising disruption to normal classwork.

After talking the idea through with several members of the leadership team, it was concluded that the best way to strive toward all the three improvements is to have

• students to apply to be selected via an 'expression of interest'
• the team to comprise of members from Years 3, 4, 5 and 6
• Your Move Student Team meetings held at lunchtime or recess

I used the information package on the activity page for 'How to Start a Your Move Student Team' to help me create an application form - which is pictured below and attached as a resource. I selected questions which were easy to answer, but also gave an insight into the creativity and enthusiasm of the respondent. I also added a 'Declaration' section to ensure the applicants understood the expectations and responsibilities of being in the Your Move Team - turning up early for event days and giving up some lunch playtime to meet.

Mrs Khose took the applications to each class and explained the process to the students. Interested students were encouraged to take a form home and complete it over the next few days. Knowing what usually happens to these kind of forms, I followed up by providing a copy of the application to parents via the class social media page. For the pages that I am not a member of, I arranged through my network of Active Travel friendly parents to have a message posted on the other class's pages too.

Over 20% of eligible students submitted an application to be part of the team! Mrs Khose had her work cut out to select the most enthusiastic and creative responses. Applicants had such lovely things to say about why they like walking, riding and scooting to school and soooo many amazing ideas were submitted. I will be holding on to these fantastic application forms for future reference when we are looking at new and fresh ideas to implement.

In the end only two each from Yrs 3, 4 and 5 could be selected, with 3 from Yr 6. Mrs Khose announced the team while the whole school was seated in the undercover area during Sustainable Eating (recess).

INTRODUCING THE TEAM FOR 2023:

• Year 3 - Suzie and Ella
• Year 4 - 'Bike Boy' and 'Bike Girl'
• Year 5 - Chloe and Elliott
• Year 6 - 'Walk Girl', Alia and Max

At lunchtime we held our first meeting. Unfortunately the Yr 6 team members couldn't be at our first meeting as they were at camp. I started by encouraging the team to discuss what they think the overall goal of the Your Move Student Team is - they gave some great responses and there were a few laughs when one student said it's about spreading a good kind of virus. In the end we all agreed that our team motto would be "spread active travel fever".

I reiterated the expectations and responsibilities of being in the Your Move Student Team and explained the schedule of when the team would meet. We agreed that four meetings a term would work well:

• Pre-event
• Post-event
• New ideas
• Term wrap up

Once the scene was set we decided on team roles. Suzie volunteered to take notes and Elliott volunteered to be the spokesperson. Everyone volunteered to be poster designers, but I noticed that none of the students had noted that they were 'good at time keeping' on their applications, so as a group we decided that Bike Boy would be our timekeeper as he was the only one wearing a watch.

Suzie got straight to work and noted down everyone's shirt size, so that we could order new shirts from the Rewards store.

Next on the agenda was National Ride to School Day Planning. I grabbed the trusty 'Activity Planner' to display for the students and encouraged them to select some activities that they could offer to celebrate bikes.

Although the plan is TOP SECRET, I can share that the team are aiming for 3 bike related activities for NR2SD 2023. The team split into smaller groups to plan out how to run and promote each of the activities within the school. Soon enough Bike Boy gave the signal that it was time to pack up and we agreed to meet for a quick 'touch base meeting' on Monday morning before school to make sure everyone is ready for the week of preparation ahead - Elliott our spokesperson will pass the message to the Year 6s.