Travelwise

Travel Wise 2024

Mission Heights Primary is a Gold Travel Wise School and our aim is to reduce our carbon footprint by encouraging students to walk, bike or scooter to school. 

Here are some of our students as they returned from spending time on our Bike Track. 

Our busy bike rack:)

Ms Hoey and Ms Brown attended the Megastars Event and had a wonderful evening networking with Travel Wise teachers from other schools. Thank you Auckland Transport for having us:)

Here we are in the first week of Term 2 with our principal reminding our community to slow down around our school to keep us safe. Please drop your speed to 40km during drop off and pick up times.

On Wednesday 27 March our wonderful Auckland Transport support team were onsite to talk to parents and our community. This was a wonderful opportunity to understand what our school is doing to reduce our carbon footprint and keep our students safe on our roads. We are always looking for volunteers to operate a Walking School Bus. Do contact admin@mhp.school.nz if you think you could help.

Meet our 2024 team:) They will be responsible for running initiatives to make sure we are more active:)

Here we are with our placards to remind our community that school has resumed and that they need to drop their speed around our school.

Our 2023 Travel Wise team had a wonderful day and enjoyed as many rides as they could at Rainbow’s End. Here are some photos of their day. Thank you Auckland Transport!

Our focus is sustainable and safe transport for our students and families. We will be looking for ways to further reduce our carbon footprint by encouraging students to do the right thing.

A gentle reminder… wearing seat belts is critical to safety and texting while driving is a big no-no.

Here is our Travel Wise team with the Slow Down For Kids placards and Mrs Bush in our first week back for Term 2.

H

Here’s all four of us with our messages to remind our community to drop their speed to 40km at drop off and pick up times. 🙂

Our Travel Wise team attended a workshop where they got to interact with other teams across Auckland.

They came back buzzing with ideas to get students to walk, scooter and bike to school.

Auckland Transport provided us with a fabulous morning tea:) The team enjoyed putting together a giant jigsaw that identified hazards on our roads and got to check out the speed guns! We have plans!

Zara the Zebra joined us to remind the community that the safest place to cross is the pedestrian crossing. The team got heaps of thumbs ups and honks for the initiative. Thank you Zara:)

Here we are at The Cloud for the Annual Awards Celebration. We were awarded Gold! It was a super day out with a scavenger hunt that was aimed at informing us of all the wonderful activities Auckland City has to offer.

Here are some of our memories:)

This is a supervised activity we started this term. Students are encouraged to bring their scooters and skateboards to ride during lunch time. It is to foster confidence on wheels and has proved to be very popular.

This year we are a part of the soft launch of Ready Steady Go, an initiative designed to encourage our tamariki to walk, bike or scooter to school.

Here we are working on the giant jigsaw puzzle from Ready Steady Go. It involved teamwork to put it together and then place the flags where we identified potential hazards and safe practices on our roads.

On the flip side of the puzzle we used flags to locate environmental and emission facts. We learned so much while having fun:)

Here we are at our Bike Ambassadors workshop. We learned the importance of helmet checks and bike maintenance. We even learned how to change a tyre and repair a puncture. Some cool games to foster safe bike riding as well.

Some of our Travel Wise team with our Principal to remind our community to share the roads with us safely. 

We enjoyed the Bike Ambassadors programme and here we are learning all about helmet safety checks,  bike maintenance, emergency braking, turning and changing direction in confined spaces.

The second initiative was the scooter training that Auckland Transport provided for our Year 3 and 4 students. Our students learned how to stop, brake safely in an emergency, how to share spaces, change direction, avoid obstacles and be aware of sneaky exits and driveways.

Being briefed about helmet safety and expectations.

Earlier in the year we ran the February Bike Challenge and 18 students rode their bikes or scooters to school for the required number of days to win a prize. Here is the team monitoring the number of rides.

Students are welcome to scooter or bike to school and use their own locks to secure their wheels. Students must wear helmets – these are to be worn with the pointed end at the back, two fingers above the brow, one finger between chin and chin strap and straps around the ears in a V. They need to be alert for sneaky driveways and wheel their scooters across roads and crossings.

Safety at the School Gate  is a partnership programme run with Auckland Transport. The aim is to improve safety around the school gate for students who are put at risk by drivers who park illegally. Please be aware that parking officers will be on patrol and you must park safely. They will not be issuing warnings and will be ticketing  drivers who are illegally parked. Thank you parents for your commitment to keeping our students safe.  

Please use the school crossings when crossing Jeffs Road and Valderama Drive. Parents please remember to drop your speed to below 40 km during drop off and pick up times. Please note the road patrol on Jeffs Road is on patrol from 8:00am till 8:45am. Then again from 2:50pm till 3:10pm.

The map below provides a bird’s eye view of parking spaces around  our school at drop off and pick up times. The spaces are marked by the black dots.

The map above gives you an idea of how long it takes to walk to school from various points in our community. The red zone takes 5 minutes, the green takes 10 minutes and the blue zone takes 15 minutes. Our students actually walked these distances and timed themselves to provide you with this map.