Poland

On 6th May, 2015 a four-person team representing our school got a second place in XXXVIII Polish Nationwide Road Safety Tournament in the category of primary schools. There were two stages in these competitions. In the first one, participants form nine Primary Schools and four Junior High Schools wrote a test at the gym in Szkoła Podstatowa z Oddziałami Integracyjnymi Nr 10 im. Polonii w Słupsku (Primary School With Support Classes Number 10 in Słupsk). The second stage took place in WORD (Voivodeship Training Cetre For Drivers) in Słupsk.

During Computer Studies in the fourth grade children do an exercise in Ms Paint Software which consists in drawing road signs that pedestrians have to obey. Furthermore, pupils enclose signs meanings with a suitable background colour next to their drawings on the computers. This kind of exercise certainly helps consolidate childrens knowledge of road signs.

On 9 June 2015 The Eleventh District Road Safety Knowledge Tournament For Grades 1-3 “Impeccably And Safely” took place in our school. The main idea of the tournament was to acquaint the youngest road users with road safety rules and giving first aid. The tournament not only broadens their knowledge about safety but also gives a chance to get pupils into the habit of appropriate behavior on the road. Moreover, the tournament popularizes riding bikes as a great means of transport and an excellent recreational activity as well. The tournament is very famous among pupils and their parents.

For the second time our school organized an evening party, 'The Fluorescent Soiree', for grandmothers and grandfathers called “Granny, Grandpa, Be Visible On The Road”. A lot of invited guests gathered in a beautifully decorated gym to see the first-graders’ performance – the representatives of local authorities and institutions, police officers from the District Police Headquarters in Dąbrowa Tarnowska, students of the University of the Third Age and retired teachers. Pupils’ grandmothers and grandfathers were special guests of honour.

The European Day of Emergency Number 112 is in the school calendar every year. There was a school event on 11th February 2015. The people invited to our school said that the real problem are the people who call 112 just for fun and they really don’t need help. The meeting was organized together with a police station from Radom and was hosted by a police officer – Kamila Adamska. During the first part of the event, the students found about how to be safe on the road. They also watched a film about emergency number 112 a how to behave on the place of accident.

For the last few years there is an educational program in our school carried on. This was thanks to Jurek Owsiak’s Wielka Orkiestra Świątecznej Pomocy (an organization to help the others in need). The program is entitled “We rescue and we teach how to rescue”. We realise that everybody can be a witness of a traffic accident and therefore should know how to behave in such situation. Thanks to this knowledge many human lives can be saved. In our school students are taught first aid abilities all year round. Since 2014 these activities we due to “Safe Road” project.

In June 2015 our school took part in a competition called “We rescue and we teach how to rescue”. The group of students chosen we fast to be in a semi-finals and then the finals of the competition. It was not so easy though, because we had to win with many other schools form the whole country. The school newspaper gave us the place in the semi-finals and the film in which both students and parents acted let us be one of eight the best schools in Poland. On 10th June 2015 the students from our school took part in the finals.

For several years our school is active in the national program “Traffic accidents – let’s talk”, which is organized by the Association “Road and Safety”. The fifth edition of this program was very successful for us, because we took the second place in the category “school”. This was the result of many activities made in our school such as Safety on the Roads Meeting, poetry competition, school presentations and many others. The students from our school take part in the program every year in December. Due to it there are many meetings in school and lessons about safety on the roads.

The Ninth Festivities called “Kid, Be Safe On The Road” In October the Driver Training Centre in Tarnów invited first-graders to take part in the Festivities called “Kid, Be Safe On The Road”. This event has been organized for five years now. As always there were lots of competitions and surprises prepared for children, for example a fitness test or a road signs knowledge test. Children could take part in a kart race or a race holding a stop sign and wearing a police hat.

Our school is successfully winning over partners to propagate road safety. We established cooperation with the General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways – the Department in Kraków. They sent us a parcel with booklets for our pupils and one of them was “The Colored Highway Code”. It was published to increase the level of children’s safety on the road, during play or on trips. The book acquaints pupils with the world of traffic regulations in a very simple way. It contains all the road signs concerning pedestrians and cyclists.