School Travel Plans and the Curriculum
Curriculum links are important to the success of your school's School Travel Plan (STP) as they embed the STP into the school culture. The theme of sustainable transport can be incorporated into the National Curriculum for both primary and secondary schools.
Links with the curriculum can help to achieve key objectives such as promoting health and fitness, increasing road safety awareness and encouraging environmental awareness of issues such as global warming and carbon footprints.
Examples of curriculum links
| Subject | Curriculum units | STP links |
| Geography | Local traffic - an environmental issue; investigating our local area |
Traffic congestion caused by the school run. What you see on your way to school. Improving pupil's knowledge and awareness of the local area.
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| Literacy | Persuasion; argument | Debating sustainable transport issues, e.g. the pros and cons of different modes of transport. |
| ICT | Collecting and presenting information - questionnaires and pie charts |
Conducting questionnaires. Analysing travel mode survey data. Creating graphs to represent data. |
| PE | Cycle training | Enabling children to build up their confidence when cycling and encourage them to cycle to school. |
| Citizenship | Debating a global issue; People and the environnment; choices | Investigate issues of global warming, cars and Co2 emissions. |
| Numeracy | Processing and representing data; interpreting and discussing results | Analysing travel mode survey data. |
| Science | Fit and healthy; energy resources |
Importance of daily exercise, e.g. walking or cycling to school. Transport and non renewable energy resources. |
Useful Curriculum Links
These websites contain useful information about sustainable transport, including lesson plans:
Curriculum Resources
Sustainable travel can be linked to various subject areas of the curriculum and there are a number of resources that can support this.
The following curriculum resources can be requested by emailing: sta@hackney.gov.uk
Key stage 2 'Focus on Cycling' is a very extensive teaching resource that schools can use to promote cycling. It contains lesson plans, assembly plans and competitions. It can be used to teach the Literacy, Numeracy, History, Geography and Design and Technology curriculums.
Key stage 3 'Focus on Cycling' teaching resources were launched enable students to develop a greater insight and interest into cycling as well as supporting teachers to meet the requirements of the newly structured KS3 National Curriculum. The 8 subject resource folders, which have been sent to schools are; English, Mathematics, Design and Technology, Geography, Science, History, Citizenship and PE.
The 'Setting up a WoW Walking Zone' pack aims to involve children in developing a WoW Walking Zone around their school. A Walking Zone sets a clearly defined area around the school inside which everybody has to walk in order to qualify for their WoW badge. The pack is primarily aimed at Key Stage 2 and has been designed to link in with QCA schemes of work for Geography (Unit 6 - Investigating our Local Area and Unit 8 - Improving the Environment).
'Every Journey Matters' explores sustainable transport and how children all around the world travel to school. Lesson plans, aimed at key stage 2, to accompany the book can be downloaded from the Every Journey Matters website.
The 'Journey Times' teaching resource, aimed at key stages 3 and 4 Media Studies or PSHE, enables young people to explore ideas and experiences relating to travel and transport by creating a short documentary film. The resource includes lessons on running the project with students who have Special Educational Needs.
'Democs' is a consultation tool based on a card game which encourages pupils to share opinions and experiences on school travel.
Upgrade teacher resources for the transition from year 6 will be distributed to primary schools in the summer term of 2011. For more information and to access lesson plans visit the Upgrade website. Year 6 pupils and parents will also receive 'UpGrade - Journey into Year 7' resources. This will include a parent's guide full of information and advice about their child's move to secondary school.
Page updated: 7 Sep 2010
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