Big Pedal
Big Pedal 2022
Last week was ‘Big Pedal’ week. Every morning we (JRSO’s) went to each classroom starting from Yr R to Yr 6 and asked them how many of have walked to school today, who drove, who biked and who scooted. We created a tally for each class and tallied up how they came to school. We ended it with a bling your bike contest on Friday. We just want to congratulate whoever participated in the contest and well done to the winners of the ‘Bling your Bike’ contest! We had some amazing entries!
Miss Locke
BIG PEDAL 2021
Wow! What an incredible few weeks it has been for sustainable travel at
Colden Common! It has been wonderful to see our bike sheds filling up.
Our JRSO’s have been continuing to count bikes and scooters regularly
and the count has jumped from just 6 to nearly 100 since January! Hopefully
the lovely weather will continue to encourage lots more cycling, scooting
and walking.
I am delighted to say that, of nearly 3000 participating schools, we peaked at 13th place with more than 90% of children travelling to school by either bike, scooter, wheelchair or on foot. That is a phenomenal achievement. Thank you to all families and supporters involved there!
Superhero Day and ‘Bling My Bike’ 2021
Today the school filled with superheroes of all kinds – traditional comic book characters to real life heroes like doctors, nurses, Olympians and more! A huge thank you for all of your donations for Sustrans – we will let you know in the newsletter the total amount raised when it has been calculated.
The bikes and scooters all looked brilliant. The day worked like clockwork with bubbles presenting bikes and scooters in slots like a well oiled machine – thank you to all staff for enabling this to happen so smoothly! It was a really tough choice for the JRSO’s to decide on winners, but I am delighted to announce winners as follows:
Ada – Thunderbirds
Herbie – Perytons (right)
All have received a certificate, house points for their house and they chose a prize from our box of bike-related goodies! Keep up all the amazing work everybody, and we are already looking forward the Big Pedal 2022! If you’d like to watch our big reveal assembly and see some of the other entries and costumes, have a look at the link below! Special thanks to Ella and Beth, our JRSO’s, for doing such a brilliant job, too!
BIG PEDAL 2020
Unfortunately, due to the current school closures, Sustrans have cancelled the Big Pedal competition due to begin after Easter:
"We want to make sure everyone is kept safe. And we want to minimise the risk of spreading Coronavirus wherever possible.
With the recent announcement that schools across the UK are closing and after monitoring government and NHS guidance daily, we have cancelled this year's challenge."
However, being the brilliant community that we are, we still embraced the bikes and took on the challenge of the Big Pedal from our homes! Children, staff and families took on the challenge of dressing as their favourite superhero, 'blinging their bike' and cycling as much as possible on their daily exercise. Check out the gallery below of this year's Big Pedal, and the gallery of the Big Pedal events from previous years!
Well done everyone! We are proud of you all!
Colden Common pupils are ‘cycle super-heroes!’
“Cycle safe, Cycle super!” – if you visit us here at Colden Common Primary school, you may hear this from Faith and Orla, our Junior Road Safety Officer’s (JRSO’s) as we continue to promote safe, sustainable travel at school.
We recently took part in the ‘Big Pedal’, a national competition whereby schools compete to gain the highest percentage of pupils, parents and staff that cycle or scoot to school. This reduces the number of cars used and therefore increases road safety. Of course, cycling and scooting work wonders in helping our children to become fitter and healthier and, let’s face it, cycling in the countryside with the wind in your hair is far more exciting than being a passenger in a car!
In September 2018, only 6.8% of our children were cycling or scooting to school. We are lucky enough to be situated in a relatively quiet rural location, so we knew we could improve on that figure. With that, the Big Pedal Initiative was launched. Every day for 2 weeks, children, parents and staff were encouraged to cycle or scoot to school with results being recorded each day and prizes up for grabs.
As expected, the initiative was embraced enthusiastically by the Colden Common community. However, we wanted to add ‘extra spice’ to our already exciting program of events, so we chose to launch the initiative with a Super Hero day. Everyone was invited to make a donation to Sustrans, a charity that aims to “enable thousands of children to walk, cycle or scoot every day – making the school run safer and healthier” and dress up as their favourite super hero for the day. It was magnificent to see the array of colourful heroes arriving at school, from Batman and Robin to cycling idols to doctors and nurses. Everyone was given the chance to show off their outfits on our extra super Daily Mile run!
We are very proud to have raised £161.30 for the charity whilst having great fun at the same time.
We also held a ‘Bling My Bike’ competition. This meant that children were invited to decorate their bike or scooter in fun, creative ways. The competition was judged by our JRSO’s and points were awarded to each entry based on imagination, effort and safety. We were overwhelmed by all the amazing entries and it was really difficult for us to choose winners.
We had space themed scooters, light up bikes, vehicles turned into animals, and even a bike made to look like Olympic rings!
The effort and enthusiasm received from parents was clear, as was the joy on the faces of our winners – all of whom won a goody bag of cycling accessories. Hollie, our Key Stage 2 winner said “I thought it was a really good, fun experience because everybody got to try it out and join in”. Our Key Stage 1 winner thought “the competition was really cool because I got to decorate my scooter which I haven’t used in quite a long time!”
It is safe to say that the ‘bicycle buzz’ around school was, and still is very prevalent. On the first day of the Big Pedal, we came 9th out of almost 1600 schools – a phenomenal achievement. Although final results are yet to be announced, daily statistics showed that we remained in the top 20 throughout. Moreover, by the end of the Big Pedal, on average approximately 57% of pupils were cycling or scooting to school every day; a colossal improvement on September’s 6.8%. It is definitely safe to say that the event has been a huge success. Our cycle storage continues to be full to bursting every day which just goes to show that the way we are travelling to school has changed for the better and we are all becoming cycle super heroes.
Although the Big Pedal is over for this year, we are still working hard to promote sustainable travel in school. Most recently, the JRSO’s have worked with our Year 2 children to create a cycle safety banner, complete with slogan. The banner was been was into the Winchester Criterium and Cyclefest competition and is now on display by our bike sheds.
Click here to find out more about what our JRSO's do around school.
Remember, ‘cycle safe, cycle super!’