Road Safety is invaluable for our school. We are situated on a main road that leads to a truck stop and access to the motorway. We work closely with our Council Road Safety officer Marion Shearer who comes in regularly to support any work we are doing.
As a school we have a Junior Road Safety Team (JRSO’s). This consists of 2 P6’s and 1 P7. The JRSO’s attend a training event at the beginning of the year to ensure their road safety knowledge is up to speed. In this training day they met the South Lanarkshire Road Safety Mascot. During this event the JRSO’s looked at Road Signs, Lorry Safety, Bike ability and Scran which helps P6 and P7 look at their journey to school and the risks involved. Our JRSO’s have to keep a display board in the school full of competitions, safety information and any completed pieces of work from varying classes.
The Road Safety Team take on two main areas of safety for the year ahead; during winter it is ‘Be Safe, be Seen’ and in the summer we look more closely at crossing the road and bike safety. The JRSO’s plan and deliver a programme for all classes;
Class tasks for the week:
P7 - Completing Lessons from the’ Big Street Survey’ and outdoor activity - P7 will be focusing on this during the term ahead. They will use the Big Street Survey to look at the area where they live and also their journey to school and monitor areas that need could be dangerous, existing road signs, ways to make their journey safer etc.
P6 : Collaborate to plan, design and make a bag which includes safety features for active travel to school. Present to a mock classroom ‘Dragon’s Den’. The pupils had to present their creation and discuss with the class why their bag should be the winning design, there was much debate within the class. The pupils went into teams, they designed their bag and the winning team got to put it onto canvas.
P5/6: Persuasive Writing: In teams pupils will work together to create a piece of persuasive writing for active travel to school and non active travel to school. The groups can perform these to class, with a class vote occurring at the end of the debate.
P4 & P4/5: Develop group discussion and interaction skills. Why is active travel important? Should all children have to wear helmets? Create a class manifesto on active travel – along the idea of a class charter but one we can put on the JRSO board. P4/5 & P4 came up with a great safe travel manifesto. They created these hi-vis jackets with their safety tips written on them. P4 also wrote a fantastic Road Safety song, which we as a school have now adopted as our Road Safety Anthem! It goes to the tune of ‘Is this the way to Amarillo?’ Christine the lady mentioned in the song is our school safety officer.
P3&P3/2: Create your own road safety mascot. Spend time looking at road signs which could be used in the design (along the lines of Road Safety Simone)
P2: Create a whole class safety jacket (white coat will be provided). Look at safety ideas e.g. Bike reflectors, reflective strips on jackets, bright colours etc (children could design their own jacket and then use all the best ideas for main design)
P1: Beep beep lesson plans – P1 have used the Beep Beep lessons and the school Road Safety Programme ‘Street Sense’ and the Ziggy Big books, which the infant children just love. Christine our lollipop lady comes in to work with the P1’s and shows them how to cross properly with her. The teachers also take the children walks around the village to teach kerb safety etc.
The JRSO’s have also this year worked with a small group of children who travel to and from school using the Authenheath bus. The children received fun booklets to work through and safety tips to remember.
As a school we like to promote park and stride and our JRSO’s along with management team created a ‘Park and Stride leaflet for the school. Every family received one of these. The JRSO’s held an assembly for the whole school
Our pupils also entered a South Lanarkshire Council competiton, for a Road Safety Calendar which is issued to all the schools in the council. We did not have a winner this year but we did have children who received ‘Highly commended Certificates’.
We continue our lessons through the year and we plan around April time for our Summer Road safety week. Which includes a big push on walk to school, as the weather is nicer. Each JRSO team brings its own ideas and last years’ team had a focus on road safety fundraiser which included traffic light nails and fruit traffic lights, this helped to support a child we sponsor in Uganda. As a school we work with P6 and P7 on bike ability ensuring our children are safe and well prepared cyclists, who can respond to unforeseen circumstances. As a school we were awarded the ‘safe cycle’ award for the work which we complete, this is well supported by parent helpers who train as instructors and the community are very supportive to us being out and about.
This year we also were supported by Warburtons who brought one of their lorries in to teach about Lorry Safety. This was invaluable as our village has a lot of lorry traffic.
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