Starting a Green Foot Movement

We were pondering how we could make a larger impact on active travel at St Augustines in 2022. Looking at the "planner" we could see an activity that could benefit the school as a long term project and also be quite simple to implement. We decided to compliment our ongoing class award program - the 'golden broom' for the tidiest verandah and classroom and 'silver ruler' class who lines up quickly and quietly - with an Active Travel themed class award to be announced at assembly.

Once we had decided to start a new active travel class award, we need to decide on a few things:

• a name
• a trohpy
• how to measure
• a reward

To decide on a name the champion did a bit of research to see what other schools had used, such as the golden shoe and twinkle toes. Each of the options was great, but the team agreed that St Augustine's needed something unique. The team were sure that the active travel award should reflect the environmental benefits of active travel so it was decided that whatever the trophy object was, it would be GREEN. After that, it was pretty natural to choose a foot as the object, and so the idea of a green foot was born.

An idea is one thing, but turning that into a physical trophy is another. Some ideas passed around included plaster of paris and paper mache, but when we discovered that one of our Yr 4 students had been given a 3D printer for his birthday, and was willing to spare some of his green filament (plastic ink) we decided that was the way to go. Unfortunately, it wasn't so easy. After sourcing a file on the internet of a 3D foot and commencing the first print, the foot ended up a pile of useless twisted filament. He quickly realised that the foot needed a pedestal to stand on for integrity. With some file edits, it was off and printing. The print job took a whole day to complete!!

Once we had the cool foot in our hot little hands, we needed to decide on a way to measure which class would be the winning class each fortnight at assembly. Some ideas were presented, but when someone suggested something as simple as a fortnightly hands up survey there was no need for further discussion. We also decided to keep with simplicity and reward the class who won Green Foot with the same reward as the other class awards - 10 minutes extra playtime at recess and lunch. It was also decided to drop the Silver Ruler from the awards program to make way for the Green Foot. A sign that Active Travel is highly valued at St Augustines.

At the first assembly of 2022, with great excitement, the Your Move student team awarded the first ever Green Foot award to Yr 2 who had the most students who walked, rode or scooted to school. The Yr 2 class were very happy to be rewarded with their 10 minutes of extra playtime and the rest of the school are suitably jealous. We hope that this kind of increased awareness and competitive spirit will encourage more students to change their travel habits into the future.

At our next meeting, I will encourage the your move student team to upload each fortnightly hands up survey so that we can measure the progress of this new initiative. Hopefully we could even make an activity of graphing the progress too!