A school’s guide to running Walk Once a Week (WoW)

Contact detailsWalk to School Campaign Living Streets 4th Floor Universal House 88-94 Wentworth Street London E1 7SA

E: walktoschool@livingstreets.org.uk T: 020 7377 4900

Living Streets (The Pedestrians Association) is a Registered Charity No. 1108448 (England and Wales) and SC039808 (Scotland), Company Limited by Guarantee (England & Wales), Company Registration No. 5368409. Registered office 4th Floor, Universal House, 88-94 Wentworth Street. E1 7SA

This guide is printed with vegetable inks on recycled paper from responsibly managed forests.

Living Streets’ Walk to School Campaign Living Streets’ Walk to School campaign helps over 1.6 million children get walking every year. There are plenty of ways to get involved, including Walk to School Week in May and International Walk to School Month in October. Every year, we help over 6,000 schools to promote walking and anyone can join in.

For more information visit www.walktoschool.org.uk

Living Streets is the national charity that stands up for pedestrians. With our supporters we work to create safe, attractive and enjoyable streets, where people want to walk.

Visit www.livingstreets.org.uk

Walking to school helped us to learn about respect for others, respect for the property of the neighbours, safety rules and

manners for walking on a street.

Parent“ ”

Welcome to WoW 2

Running WoW in your school 4-10

What else can WoW help with? 10

Strider club 11

Living Streets’ Walk to School campaign 12

This guide will take you through easy steps to make WoW a success in your school.

What is WoW?WoW is a year-round incentive scheme encouraging primary school children and their families to walk to school. Children walking at least once a week are rewarded monthly with a collectable WoW badge. A new set of themed badges are designed by children each year in a national competition.

Why participate in WoW?There are many reasons to take part:

• WoW works! Independent evaluation has shown:

– Almost one in five children started to walk to school because of WoW

– Participating schools had an average 10% higher walking rate than the national average of 50%

– Teachers who use the resources have advised that WoW is easy to run, children understand the scheme and want to be a part of it

• It can help your school work towards Eco-schools and achieve Physical Activity priorities identified in the Healthy Schools Toolkit

• Be part of something big. Around 10% of schools across the UK are taking part

• Since September 2010, schools new to WoW have shown on average a 44% increase in children walking to school at least once a week.

Living Streets’ Walk to School Campaign WoW is part of the Walk to School campaign run by national charity Living Streets. The campaign helps over 1.6 million children get walking every year. In addition to WoW, the campaign coordinates Walk to School Week in May and International Walk to School Month in October and encourages parents/carers and children to make walking to school part of their daily routine.

For more information visit www.walktoschool.org.uk

ContentsWelcome to Walk Once a Week (WoW)

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Step 3. Tell everyone about WoW It’s now time to get pupils, staff and parents on board. All Walk to School activities work best when everyone knows what’s going on and what to do.

Some suggestions to make sure everyone is involved:

• Hold an assembly about WoW once resources have arrived and explain the scheme and benefits to pupils (assembly presentations are available on the Walk to School website). It’s best to hold this at the beginning or end of the month, so that children can take part straight away

• Download email templates from the Walk to School website to send to parents/ carers or to use in school newsletters

• Brief teachers in staff meetings to make sure they know how to run WoW. Decide where resources will be kept and how teachers can collect them. This step-by-step guide could be handed out to aid discussion and answer any questions about the scheme

• Put up WoW wallcharts in classrooms to monitor progress or hand out individual termly passports, and remind pupils to keep walking

• Run a launch event (see ‘Top Tips’ on the Walk to School website) and contact local media to let them know your school is doing WoW

• Use WoW outdoor banners to let the world know that your school is taking part.

Resources available to order from www.walktoschool.org.uk/our-shop

There are eight steps to running WoW. Follow these steps carefully and you’ll be well on your way to making the WoW scheme a success in your school.

Step 1. Visit our website Visit www.walktoschool.org.uk to sign up to our enews. You’ll receive all the latest updates about what’s happening with Living Streets’ Walk to School Campaign.

Browse our website to view our WoW resources as well as other useful materials, such as curriculum-linked lesson plans, to help you promote walking to school.

Step 2. Order resources WoW rewards children who walk to or from school at least once a week, so you need to start by ordering resources.

You will need:

• monthly wallcharts or termly passports, for each participating class, to record when walking to school takes place

• monthly badges to reward those who walk to school at least once a week.

To help you decide how many badges you need, conduct a hands up survey asking how pupils travel to school. You can download a survey from www.walktoschool.org.uk

WoW increases walking, so allow for higher walking rates than existing numbers when ordering. Order enough badges to cover at least 65 per cent of the school roll, as this is the average uptake across all WoW schools.

Running WoW in your school

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www.walktoschool.org.uk www.walktoschool.org.ukScoreboard

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In 1966,WWW.WALKTOSCHOOL.ORG.UK

Living Streets (The Pedestrians Association) is a

Registered Charity No. 1108448 (England and Wales)

and SC039808 (Scotland), Company Limited by

Guarantee (England & Wales), Company Registration

No. 5368409. Registered office 4th Floor, Universal

House, 88-94 Wentworth Street. E1 7SA

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Save time this month by cutting off the name column

and scoreboard, and attaching the class tracker over

last month’s wallchart to monitor your walking progress.

THIS MONTH

I WALKED…

of all is one off the hind leg

of a gray mare.

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The luckiest

horseshoe

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WWW.WALKTOSCHOOL.ORG.UK

Living Streets (The Pedestrians Association) is a

Registered Charity No. 1108448 (England and Wales)

and SC039808 (Scotland), Company Limited by

Guarantee (England & Wales), Company Registration

No. 5368409. Registered office 4th Floor, Universal

House, 88-94 Wentworth Street. E1 7SA

WoW monthly badges WoW monthly wallcharts WoW termly passports

The badges are really making a big difference to the number of children walking!

WoW champion, Lancashire“ ”

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Step 5. Ready, steady, go! Once started, remember to record the number of children who have walked each day on the WoW wallchart. Most schools find it easiest to do this during registration. Pupils can also record their own walking in termly passports, as well as getting involved by becoming WoW monitors. WoW monitors can help teachers record numbers walking to school and by distributing badges.

WoW monitor badges can be ordered from our website at www.walktoschool.org.uk/our-shop

At the end of each month, issue each child who has walked at least once a week with a WoW badge. You could set up a ‘WoW table’ and hand out badges at the school entrance at the end of each month, or in class badges run from September to July each year.

Step 6. Make WoW a part of school lifeOnce WoW is up and running there are lots of ways to embed the scheme in your school and reward those doing well.

1. Use extra incentives.

You can use additional WoW resources to:

• Reward children who take part and make a special effort. This can be with WoW certificates, pencils or t-shirts

• Get children to walk more or reward those that walk more than once a week. There are four different certificates available – one to reward children for taking a step in the right direction and then bronze, silver and gold for those who regularly take part. You could also use these certificates to reward students that walk more than once a week, so pupils who walk every day are recognised

• Let people know that you’re taking part by putting a WoW wall plaque up in your entrance area or banner near the school entrance

• Further increase walking by running competitions or whole school challenges. Use WoW classroom trophies to reward the class with the highest number of walkers in a month.

Things to consider about WoW

1. WoW is flexible. You can choose one day to walk each week or reward children for walking any day. However you decide to run it, make sure you explain how it is going to work to children, staff members and parents/carers.

2. WoW is about encouraging all children to walk, but this may not be possible for everyone. If children have to come to school by car or public transport, encourage them to add a walk to the final part of their journey. This is known as Park & Stride. It is up to the school to set a distance that children should be walking. We recommend at least a 10 minute walk.

For information on how to set up a Park & Stride scheme visit: www.walktoschool.org.uk

3. WoW aims to be accessible to all. For those children who use school transport or are not able to walk the final leg of their school journey, you could set up a walking club or activity where children can walk around the playground a number of times to be able to collect their badges. WoW should encourage walking, and discourage parents and carers from dropping children off by car outside of the school gates.

4. Other forms of active transport such as cycling or scooting can also be awarded WoW badges. If you include other forms of transport, ensure that you have enough badges.

Step 4. Run a launch event Top tips for launching WoW:

• Come up with an exciting theme for your event with fun activities. This could include fancy dress or a special challenge

• Stay focused on your main aim. For example, do you want to raise awareness about WoW or get pupils who are normally driven to school to try walking?

• Set a date and make sure everyone knows about it, including parents

• Let local press know about the event, take photos and tell us! Press releases are available on the Walk to School website.

The assembly presentation and the lesson plans are also really useful.

WoW champion, Stockport“ ”

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Step 7. Take part in the WoW badge design competition The competition runs in spring term each year and is one of the UK’s largest art and design competitions. It is a great chance to foster creativity in your school.

Children design their own WoW badge around a theme announced by Living Streets, using templates from the Walk to School website. The competition is open to all schools and schools are invited to submit their top three entries. These are judged and the top 11 designs form the basis of the official badge designs for the following academic year. Winning pupils are invited to an awards ceremony to mark their achievement.

To take part visit: www.walktoschool.org.uk

Step 8. Keep it going It’s important to keep up interest in walking once you’re running WoW. The following ideas can help keep things going:

• have designated teachers to champion the scheme, or even better, children acting as WoW class monitors (there are WoW monitor badges available to order from the Walk to School website)

• publicise the scheme in your prospectus or parent information packs

• induct new pupils to WoW each year

• hold an event to promote walking at the start of each term. Ideas might include walking to school in an orange item of clothing

• regular walking doesn’t have to end after children leave primary school. Visit the website to see what we do for secondary schools.

Getting started is the hardest part, but once pupils start walking regularly, receive their badges and see how much fun it is, there’s no looking back!

2. Promote WoW within your school:

• Encourage children to take part in the WoW badge design competition, which takes place each spring. See step 7 for more information

• Have a ‘WoW wall’ or notice board telling parents and visitors about the scheme

• Embed it in the curriculum. Lesson plans and ideas can be found on the Walk to School website

• Run regular assemblies and promotions

• Draw a chart showing the change in the number of pupils walking to school each month to put on your WoW notice board, in classrooms or on the school’s intranet or website

• Ask pupils to create a play demonstrating the reasons for walking to school and invite parents and other pupils to watch it

• Invite a local celebrity or dignitary to walk to the school on a special WoW day and sign autographs in the playground

• Ask pupils to write an article for the local paper explaining why they’re walking to school and highlight the benefits

• Join the Living Streets 20 mph campaign to make streets safer around your school: www.livingstreets.org.uk

• Create a WoW walking zone (or Park and Stride scheme) around your school, inside which everybody has to walk to qualify for a WoW badge and which is a no car drop off zone for children. A guide to creating a WoW walking zone can be found on our website: www.walktoschool.org.uk

Our Walk to School scheme has proved really successful and has

even triggered a community clean up of one of the local footpaths!

WoW champion, West Lancashire“”

2011/12 WoW badge competition winners

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Are you working towards Healthy or Eco-School status?Running WoW in your school helps cover:

• the Transport and Healthy Living areas of Eco-School requirements

• Physical Activity priorities identified through the Healthy Schools Toolkit

• all outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda.

For more specific information on the above visit our website.

Do you have a School Travel Plan?WoW is a great way of keeping track of how children are getting to school. This information can be fed into your School Travel Plan to show how well you are doing.

New to WoW is Strider Club. Strider Club is a new area of our website which provides an opportunity for children to engage with Living Streets’ Walk to School campaign online and offers additional content for participating schools.

Each month there will be exciting new activities based around each month’s theme. Children will have the opportunity to:

• learn more about the benefits of walking to school

• download puzzles and games

• discover extra fun facts

• enter competitions to win prizes for their class.

To get the best from Strider Club, we recommend that teachers fully explore this section of the site before incorporating ideas into classroom activities.

Strider Club will be continually reviewed and improved across the academic year, so tell us what you think!

Visit: www.walktoschool.org.uk/striderclub

What else can WoW help with? Strider club

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Parents are more actively walking with their child at least once a week.

Wavehill Evaluation“ ”Currently, less than half of children walk to school, even though

the average distance to their primary school is 1.5 miles: a distance which can be walked in just over half an hour.

National Travel Survey, 2010

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