SUNNYBRAE NORMAL SCHOOL
Respect Our Community (ROC) Day
ROC Day at Sunnybrae Normal School is a day when we have fun activities all day to promote road safety, become more environmentally friendly and explore the walkways around our school. EVERYONE walks to school. We meet at one of five different locations and all walk together with the teachers, picking up rubbish as we go to clean up our walkways and footpaths. Max the pukeko joins us to encourage us and to give out stickers.
The rest of the day is broken into 3 blocks. Working in 12 family groups (with our little brothers and sisters) we either go to a fun art activity, a garden activity or the ‘Team Challenge’ which Ali from ARTA helps us run.
In the Team Challenge we get quiz questions to answer. (These are about how to walk to school safely, how to cycle safely, what to do with rubbish and how to approach a strange dog.) Each question answered correctly is followed by a physical challenge which requires team work. So we learn to work together as a team to try to get through as many challenges as we can to win the competition.
In the middle block of the day all the seniors and middles break into 6 groups to go on one of six 1 – 2 hour walks around the local community. Using a map we explore the local walkways, visit the local bus stations and practise this fun and environmentally friendly way to travel to school. Taking plastic bags with us, we use it as an opportunity to continue our community clean-up.
This year the North Shore City Council provided us with travel packs. They included pedometers to count our steps, stop watches to time our walks and cameras to take photos. We recorded how far we could get in 5, 10 and 15 minutes. The NSCC will produce a map to show us how far away ‘by foot’ we live from school.
We finish the day with a short assembly and a presentation of prizes.
Our thanks to Jamie Adkins (from NSCC) and Ali Johns (from ARTA) for their help on the day.
