Stride or Glide

Throughout the past term, the year 9 My City Planning and My Fitness classes have been given an incredible opportunity to collaborate with the Manningham Council to encourage students to Stride or Glide to school. The Stride or Glide campaign is used to promote students in walking, biking or other fun ways to get to school without using vehicles. 

The 50 students involved in the classes were combined, and then the students were sorted into 5 groups: Marketing, Data Analytics, Planning, Risk Assessment, and Journalism. 

These groups were randomly selected to encourage collaboration throughout the cohort and to support teamwork in a work environment. 

Throughout this project, the Marketing team succeeded to help promote the program using methods such as social media, the school TVs, and flyers to successfully engage students.

With the help of Trinity, from Manningham Council, the Marketing team were able to use Strava, an app that tracks physical exercise, to determine whether they completed the Stride or Glide challenge. Furthermore, they implemented prizes to give to those who participated which helped increase the interest to get involved.

The Data Analytics team successfully created a survey that established that: 

• almost 75% of the surveyed students and staff take a car to school
• only 20% of the students and staff walk or bus to school
• Half of the students live 5 to 10 minutes away from school, 
• While about 40% live 10 to 20 minutes away. 

Throughout the project, the Planning team successfully developed an active travel plan, making key recommendations to promote walking or riding to school. They gathered essential data, including the school's population and a detailed map of the surrounding area to ensure the plan was tailored to the community's needs. 

The team also collected information on local bus routes, further supporting the plan's focus on encouraging the Stride or Glide project among students and staff.

The Risk Assessment team conducted multiple assessments of the surrounding school area. They completed a walk around the school boundaries to see where hazards were that might impact the likeliness of walking or biking to school. Additionally, they went around the school yard to search for areas that would be safe for bike racks. This included analysing how safe our current entrances are for bikes, and even just for walking in.

Lastly, the Journalism team documented the entire project by conducting thorough interviews with both students who were directly involved and those who were not. These interviews provided diverse perspectives on the project's impact within the school. The team also created a website that showcased the achievements of each group, detailing their contributions and progress. Additionally, the website featured messages from teachers which helped promote the project to the students.

Article ritten by Charlotte E. of Year 9