Travel Detectives

A ‘travel awareness’ resource for schools.

What is Travel Detectives?

As part of your School Travel Plan it is vitally important to get the ideas and opinions of your children about the journey to school. Travel Detectives offers a fun and flexible format for getting them to think a little more about how they get to school.

Aimed at Key Stage 2 pupils, this is a project with a difference – getting the children to look for ways to help improve their journey to school and to reduce its impact on the local community and environment.

How long does it take?

It consists of 2 one-hour sessions for each class, delivered by a School Travel Plan Officer of Leicestershire County Council. Teachers are requested to stay with the class in order to help with group working.

Where does it fit in with the curriculum?

Three images, seen through magnifying glasses, of walking, cycling and bus use.

Travel Detectives can fit into the literacy and numeracy hours, meeting a wide range of curriculum objectives, including geography, maths, PSHE and citizenship.

Session 1

Pupils need to be in numeracy groups

All the information in this session is provided on worksheets and involves maths and reading data from pictograms.
The session begins with the children looking at a fictional school and its surrounding environment on a map. The children identify clues on the map to find out what kind of location the school is set in eg, is it rural or urban?
The school has received a number of letters from neighbours expressing concern about cars around the school. The children read these letters and discuss the concerns of the local community regarding parking outside the school and congestion near the school.
As a result of this discussion the children begin to look at four main ‘problems’ identified by the community and try to find out if they are true by using the worksheets. The problem areas are: too much traffic outside the school, speeding, volume of traffic and neighbours' concerns.

Session 2

Pupils need to be in literacy groups

Starts by re-visiting the problems identified in Session 1.

The children carry out a role-play exercise, where they are spit into groups to become Road Safety Officers, Engineers, Teachers and Neighbours.

In these groups the children begin to look for solutions to the identified problems eg, set up a walking bus, develop a park and stride scheme.

Still in their role-play groups the children discuss the outcome of their investigations in a ‘Public Meeting’. At the meeting the children agree on an action plan to be implemented at the school to help solve the problems identified.

What are the outcomes from Travel Detective?

After becoming a Travel Detective pupils will:

Understand the main issued concerning the journey to school.
Identify what problems there are and what impact they have on the local community and the environment.
Identify possible solutions to those problems.
Get more involved with their own School Travel Plan.

Help with file formats used on this website

For further information or to book Travel Detectives please contact:

Road Safety and Travel Awareness Team

Department of Highways, Transportation and Waste Management
Leicestershire County Council
County Hall
Glenfield
Leicestershire
LE3 8RJ

Phone: 0116 305 7178
e-mail: travelawareness@leics.gov.uk