Christchurch leads the challenge

Walk or Wheel Wednesdays is one of the ways that Christchurch City Council’s Schools Coordinator Joy Kingsbury-Aitken is encouraging primary school children to build exercise into their daily routine.

Walk or Wheel Wednesdays challenge children to walk or cycle at least ten minutes to school one day a week throughout the spring and summer terms. The next step is to get them walking or cycling more than one day a week.

Since many children list walking and cycling as their favourite way of getting to school – being driven by car is usually near the bottom of their list – it shouldn’t be too hard to increase the number of days that children walk to school.

Class challenge

Back in 2004, Joy introduced Walk or Wheel Wednesdays, adapting a Canadian programme and piloting the Walk or Wheel Wednesdays Class Challenge in five Christchurch primary schools.

The Walk or Wheel Wednesdays Class Challenge involves families walking or cycling to school either the whole way or part of the way (at least ten minutes). Classes compete with each other to be the class in each school with the highest percentage of participation over the six or eight-week challenge period.

In 2005, 16 schools took up the challenge and in 2006 that number grew to 31 schools. ‘Surveys show that children want to walk or cycle to school and it’s often the parents who think it can’t be done. I wanted to show parents that it can work and it can be safe,’ Joy says.

Two schools that took part in the 2005 Walk or Wheel Wednesdays Class Challenge – Westburn School and Waimairi School – now do Walking Wednesdays throughout the year. They adopted the slogans ‘Westburn Walks on Wednesdays’ and ‘Waimairi Walks on Wednesdays’, which feature on their school newsletters and other material. Waimairi School also runs a Golden Gumboot competition and the class that participates the most in that month gets to display the Gumboot for the following month.

Both Westburn and Waimairi have school travel plans.

With 31 schools involved in the 2006 challenge, there were potentially 11,000 children walking to school. Of course, not every child walked but those who didn’t still got the message about health benefits and reducing traffic congestion.

‘Children get very competitive and there’s a lot of pressure on their classmates to walk,’ Joy says.

Over eight weeks, Sumner School recorded the highest level of participation: between 92% and 96% on each of the Wednesdays. Three of the classes recorded 100% participation.

Tips for a successful challenge

Joy has some tips for schools and parents wanting to run a Walk or Wheel Wednesdays Class Challenge.

• Involve the road safety coordinator at your local council.
• Make sure it’s easy to administer (eg send registration forms to all caregivers).
• Get children involved in recording their own participation (eg a wall chart).
• Liaise regularly with schools and caregivers (eg items in newsletters).
• Stress the importance of safety (eg she recommends that children younger than eight should walk with caregivers or older children).
• Involve local organisations in sponsorship.
• Offer incentives (eg certificates, book labels, stickers or stick-on tattoos) throughout the challenge.
• Have a prize (eg a class picnic, swimming pool passes) for the winning class.

Launching pad

Joy will continue working with schools, encouraging them to include the Walk or Wheel Wednesday Class Challenge in their activities. The concept is gathering momentum, she says, and this year she is developing a walk or cycle initiative for intermediate schools.

‘I want people to think that if they can do it one day a week they can do it five days a week,’ she says. ‘I’m hoping that my Walk or Wheel Wednesdays will be a launching pad for more interest in walking school buses.’

Page created: 1 May 2007