Constable Care came to visit last week and talk to our lower primary students about getting to school safely. From all reports it was enjoyed both by students and staff (I was on Long Service Leave so missed it :( ). Feedback from the teachers was that it was presented well, informative, relevant and fun. The senior students didn't miss out though - they had a Constable Care talk about online safety!

Coming up next term we have the RAC incursion - which I have been told is very good but I haven't seen it yet, and the TransPerth incursion for Year 6 students getting ready to head off to high school. Always something happening at WPS.

Winterfold Primary is in the unique position of being right next door to a private school, Christ the King. Therefore, the excessive traffic on our streets affects both school. We have slightly different starting and finishing times to combat this however, we still both have too many students arriving to school via car when they could be taking an alternate method. With this in mind, WPS contacted our neighbours and have just met with some of their admin team. CTK were not aware of the Your Move Program so I got to share with them how to sign up and the requirements for staying registered. I also shared with them the actions we have taken at WPS to engage students in active and fume friendly methods of transport to school. They were very interested but now need to discuss with their admin team - especially as this program doesn't work if there isn't someone driving it! Fingers crossed they join up and we can take a dual approach to reducing traffic around our schools!

WPS used some of our reward points to purchase the book “Ten Tiny Things” by Meg McKinlay. We loved the story so much that we create a competition about it. The Ten Tiny Things Competition!! Students were asked to walk, ride or scoot to school and look for ten tiny, interesting things along the way. They then completed an entry form listing these (drawings for the juniors) and put their entries in the Your Move mail box. It was great to see the excitement about this competition and inspire students to walk, ride or scoot to school in this cold weather! We were able to give out a bunch of fabulous prizes – also purchased with our reward points!

With the rain of yesterday we were worried that WSTSD would not be much of a success!! However, the sun shone through the clouds and despite the cold we had a lot of walkers, riders and scooters. My group of helpers handed out stickers and a big congratulations was given to all students who walk/rode/scooted to school at assembly. We were especially impressed with those who usually drive due to distance but chose to park a little away and walk the rest. We just hope that this motivates students to choose this method of transport to school everyday!

Winterfold have completed our Infrastructure Audit! Phew!! It was bigger than I anticipated. My class and I wandered around, recording every detail and found a few things that needed immediate attention.

Two of the 40km/h signs are obstructed by trees - one is completely covered and not visible! Also, the grass is growing across the footpaths reducing their widths. Work orders have been placed and we are told these will be corrected within 10 working days!

We also think the footpaths are not wide enough for two way traffic or to cater for both pedestrians and bikers. This one needs a written submission so we shall be working on that in the coming weeks.

Traffic at the front of the school remains a problem resulting in cars parking on verges and across footpaths. This is an ongoing problem that we are trying to solve by getting more students to walk/ride/scoot to school. Some changes are also going to be made by the council and they will have rangers patrolling the area.

Winterfold recently requested all parents to complete a travel survey via Survey Monkey. We promoted this survey through our newsletter as well as at assemblies. We had responses from parents who had children across all year levels and mostly from parents with only one child currently at this school. This week, I have analysed the results and founds that 53% of respondents live within a 2 km radius, however 63% are travelling to school via car. 30% live more than 4 km away and 38% are interested in being part of a walking school bus.

I asked parents for reasons they don’t walk/ride/scoot to school and what would motivate them. I had quite a mixed bag of responses. Some we can’t do anything about such as work commitments and younger siblings being a hindrance. However there were some responses that we are looking more closely at and developing some plans.

A few of these related to footpaths and crossings and we have already contacted the council and are in the process of applying for a crossing guard. The walking school bus is going to take some planning but it is also on the agenda.

We’ve had a few things happening with our Your Move Committee lately.

Firstly, our scooter rack has been installed. We now have space for 12 scooters to be stored and locked safely. We announced this at a recent assembly, as well as including in the newsletter, to a very excited student body.

Our student committee also met. We have a dreadful traffic problem out the front of our school during drop off and pick up times and in an effort to combat this we decided to survey our parents to ask them what would influence them to choose a fume friendly way to travel to school. As a committee we came up with some questions. I then met with a parent who is also passionate about alleviating the traffic problem and we had a very productive conversation with lots of ideas presented. With all this information, we designed a survey using Survey Monkey and sent this out to all parent with the newsletter.

Now we sit back and wait for the responses to come in. Once we collate all of these we will be making some plans of actions for the rest of the year!

Last Friday, Winterfold Primary School held a Sustainability Day. It was an extremely busy day due to it being Sustainability Week, Harmony Week, Waterwise Week and Bike Week, but Your Move managed to secure some time for our Dress Up Your Bike Competition. A large crowd of students with their decorated bikes and scooters were already cruising around the course before the committee got down there – thankfully I had set up the cones for the course early! Some notable ones were the musical bike, unicorns and a giant spider! We had a huge number of parents there to watch as well. The Principal came down too and later commented that it was a lovely atmosphere, great to see so many parents, well run and had at least 30% more participants than the last competition held before my time. I have never seen our bike racks so full! It was great to see. Prizes were awarded at the assembly. These were slap straps, drink bottles and backpacks all purchased from the Your Move Reward Shop with our points,

Room 8 kicked off the year of assemblies with a Your Move presentation. It featured ‘The Great Debate’ with the topic of ‘we should all come to school by car’, which was convincingly won by the opposing team who highlighted the benefits would be reduction in traffic congestion at the front of the school, health benefits of exercising on the way to school and the benefits to the environment. There were also skits about being dropped off a few streets away and walking the rest and getting a group together to ride or walk to school. In between we had ads for Wilma’s Walkers – the best walking shoes, and Helga’s Helmets – safe and cool, as well as an informative ad about crossing the road. We are hoping that this will promote fume free transport to school for the rest of the year.

Last week a number of students nominated to be part of the Your Move Committee for our school. Today, we held our first meeting. It was great to see such enthusiasm and motivation from these students. Today's meeting was to plan an activity for our whole school Sustainability Day next month. We also took a photo of our Your Move sign with our recently achieved Bronze sticker on it and we are all fired up to earn our silver soon too!

On Friday they 18 February, Room 8 students did a Your Move whole school survey on how students came to school that day. Your Move is a program to promote using the car less and walking or riding more. Winterfold PS must carry out these surveys twice a year to maintain our registration and be able to earn rewards. Recently, we achieved Bronze status which opened up more rewards for us to access - we are now aiming to achieve the silver! We found that coming to school by car was down 5% since November, 2018. However, this means that we still have 186 of the 300 students surveyed come by car. If you want to know more about fume free ways to come to school, then come to Room 8's assembly this Friday. by Elise, Shoni and Aiden, Room 8

On Wednesday, 6 December, Room 6 & 8 were visited by Mr McMahon from Transperth. He explained that there will be a new Transperth app so you can plan and track your journey which was pretty important for our students who are heading off to high school and possibly using public transport next year. Mr McMahon also informed students on ways to stay safe while using transport which included safety around stations but also what to do if you needed help. Students also learned about Smart Riders, how to put money on them and how to use them.

On 9 November our Your Move committee presented the findings of the Travel Survey to the school. They reported that travel by car had decreased, however we still have 55% of students coming to school this way. We want to decrease that number more, so we have created a Your Move Suggestion Box. We asked student to come up with ideas on how we could encourage them to choose more active methods of getting to school. We are now eagerly awaiting the suggestions. Stay tuned!

On 7 November, students from Room 8 conducted a Your Move Transport Survey of students from PrePrimary to Year 6. The survey found that more student are walking (30% more) and cycling (66% more) to school than the previous year. However, there are still 55% of students travelling to school in cars. Not only does the number of cars cause congestion outside the school but also contributes to pollution. We would like to see more students walking or riding to school and will be looking at ways we can encourage this in the future. To help with this a Your Move suggestion box has been put next to the Highway Hero box for students to submit their suggestions on ways to promote active transport. Parents are also welcome to make suggestions.
Room 8 Students

This term we will be holding a banner competition to promote our committee. We will be using 140 of our 446 points. In this competition, students are asked to design some artwork that will be judged by our school committee. The artwork is to focus on Your Move and ways of getting to school without a car. We will choose a winner from each group. Younger school K-PP, middle school 1-3 and upper school 4-6 will be the years that we will be selecting from. The entries will be due by the 7th September, 2017. We will use the banner at our school events and promote the hard work that we do for Your Move!

Written by Jesse and Ella from the student Your Move Committee

At the end of Term 2 we hosted a Dress Up and Obstacle Course activity. We were celebrating the bicycles 200th birthday. Students were to dress up a mode of transport that did not run on electricity or have a motor, such as bikes, scooters, skateboards and shoes.

We spent time designing an obstacle course on our netball court. In the obstacle course we had to weave, limbo under a pole, follow lines, go around objects, and just be awesome!

An important part of the day was dressing up your mode of transport and wearing a helmet.

This was a not for profit day. The reason we hosted it was to celebrate bikes and to have fun.

The day ran very smoothly, although there are some things that we will improve on next time. We had over 80 students participate and family and friends join us. This day was very successful!

This year the Winterfold Your Move Committee is trying to decrease the amount of people who take cars to school. Our awesome committee members consist of: Ffion, Mischa, Jasmine, Abigail, Jesse, Maurice, Noah, Liam, Ella, Elise and Jazmia.

The first event we will be holding is the celebration of the bicycles 200th anniversary. We will run a lunch time activity where students dress up a vehicle that doesn't run on electricity or fuel. There will be an obstacle course also. We will be holding this on the netball court at lunch time on the 29th June. Community members such as family and friends will be invited.