Our school is in Moscow where there's much traffic and different means of transport, so our aim was to raise the primary school student’s awareness and help them to be responsible and conscious pedestrians now and responsible drivers in the future.
The ideas
To tell you the truth, at first it was a bit hard for us to think of interesting ideas for the project as well as choose a topic, as there was a wide range of subjects suggested. We discussed each topic and came up with a couple of ideas for each of them, but then we decided to combine several topics and organize a project together with our primary school students.
First we had to come up with a detailed plan for our project. We divided into groups and started brainstorming. By the end of the first meeting we had discussed issues related to rules on the road and how people use and abuse them. Different rule violations were discussed; we thought that nowadays problems connected to traffic and vehicles are getting more complicated and require more complex solutions, which is why, for example, there are more organizations and funds working on these problems then in the past. We also shared some stories and YouTube videos on accidents that can happen in the modern world; the reason for most of them was human neglect of the rules and carelessness.
Our second meeting was devoted to rules concerning children and their safety on the road, rules for behaving yourself during travel. We shared our own experiences of travelling with our younger siblings who have to be seated in a special seat when travelling by car. A surprising thing is that in our country every child needs to be seated in a car seat until he’s 12 years old but sometimes children grow very fast and this doesn’t always seem to be convenient or safe, so maybe there should be some new types of seats invented. Excited and inspired by our collaborative work, we presented a plan for the presentation to show.
Our final aim was to raise the awareness of our primary school students and to help older students learn something themselves, as well and check their knowledge of the rules of the road.
The initiatives
Our project isn't as global as it could be as it's only our first time participating in the competition, but we tried to do our best. The plan of our work has been briefly described in 'Our Ideas'; implementing it we eventually managed to carry out several small projects within one global idea that we had: the children for whom we were presenting our project should be aware of their own abilities and should follow the safety regulations as soon they are able to walk to school on their own. Some years after that, they might become young drivers, so it's our chance and duty to teach them responsibility and conscientious behavior.
The project first involved the collaborative work of 10th grade students (9 of us were involved) and then we worked together with a group of 22 primary school students. The project had several stages in it:
1) Preparing and showing a presentation to the kids.
The presentation was preceded by a detailed discussion on which ideas should be included, research on the internet, and intense brainstorming. The final presentation had about 15 slides in it related to such topics as: rules on the road, road signs, rules for cyclists, how to get help if you’re on the road, rules for pedestrians, and commands of the traffic controller.
2) Preparing and playing a quiz game with kids.
For the quiz that followed the presentation, we reflected on the most interesting and most challenging questions which needed to be included there. Surprisingly, our younger students knew much more than we expected which means they’re also taught some basic and important things not only at school but by their parents, too. Children loved to show how to follow the traffic controller’s commands and to explain how cyclists need to behave when they’re on the road.
3) Giving our memorable prizes and taking group pictures.
We managed to get nice light-reflecting charms as presents for all participants, and we thanked them for being so active. Then we had a group picture taken after the prizes were distributed.
4) Playing an active game outside.
To sum up and check how children had memorized the traffic controller’s road commands, we suggested playing an active game. According to the rules, all of the children were pedestrians moving behind the traffic controller’s back and needed to follow a new command when he turned to them.
5) Finalizing our results by presenting an idea for a drawing on the topic, 'Ideal Situation on the Road'.
Children had the task of drawing the way they view an ideal road situation. We organized the activity outside where kids got a chance to draw on the ground with colored chalk, and of course, they had a lot of fun. At the end of this activity they had created about a 50m2 picture of the big, main road. It was covered with traffic lights, crossroads and pedestrian crossings of different sizes and colors, happy people walking along the pavement hurrying to school and work, and brightly colored vehicles overtaking one another, carrying potato chips and chocolate to school.
We are also attaching pictures and a video for you to see all the activities described above. Thank you for such a great idea and unique opportunity. All our students enjoyed the project greatly!
