Thinking and Acting Green Comenius Meeting at Brookfield School Dec. 2009Report of the meeting and conclusions.

1. Thinking and acting green blog.

A new blog was created to post all the information, activities and works related with the ptoject. The address is http://tagcomenius.wordpress.com/

2. Pupils’ conclusions after their presentations of how we travel to school

• Holland is the most sporty and eco – friendly country of all as more than 90% cycle to school in rainy or dry weather. They even go by bike if the school is more than 10 kilometres away from their homes. In the Netherlands there are safe and wide cycle paths everywhere. As the country is flat it is easier to cycle and it is less dangerous to cycle there and lots of people do it. Hardly any student walks to school. Most of the Dutch pupils’ parents went to school by bike when they were young. A few Dutch pupils take their tractors to go to school as there are also older students taking vocational studies.

• Most pupils in Oviedo/Spain walk to school (more than 77%). The school bags are heavy and may cause back problems. As the school is situated on a hill the way to school is steep and therefore it is very hard to cycle uphill. There is only one bus route that goes near the school so not many pupils take the bus.

• It was surprising that German pupils tend to be lazy and most of them use the bus as they were expected to be more sporty and eco – friendly. There are many bus routes to their school. However, they could use their bike more as it would take less than 25 minutes for most of them to cycle to school. Their parents used to walk more often and one third of them came by bus and one third used their bikes. There are safe cycle paths in this part of Germany but not as many as in the Netherlands.

• Very few pupils from Brookfield School in England cycle as the roads are narrow and the traffic is heavy. There are no cycling paths. Cycling is dangerous here. Most of them walk and quite are taken to school by their parents. There are not many buses that the students can take.

3. Pupils’ evaluation of the project

The pupils thought that the topic “How do we get to school” was interesting and it gave them a lot to talk and think about. Everyone enjoyed meeting and working with students from different countries. Everybody wanted the meeting to last longer. They liked staying with their host families and seeing how British families live. They are looking forward to welcoming the Comenius participants in their own countries.