Mr. Wood, Mrs. Greenhaulgh, Mr. Thompson and Miss Buckley Welcome to our presentation on Improving West Down Lane Play Area

Improving West Down Lane Play Area By Year 5/6

Jamie’s first visit. Firstly, Jamie Buckley came to our school to tell us about how West Down Lane Play Area is underused and that we have been given a budget of £23,000 to improve the play area.

Going to see the park... The first part of our journey was to go to the park and measure the equipment, the grounds and the area and perimeter. When we were there, we looked at the space we had to put new equipment.

State of the park We wrote a report about the current state of the park, this helped us understand more about the project.

Data Collection We went around the school to collect important information from the children about the equipment they might want in the park. After that, we completed some home learning with our parents to see what they think about West Down Play Area and the future to come!

Excel ICT skills We used our ICT skills to use Microsoft Excel to create a graph showing the data that we collected. This helped us to find out what equipment was the most popular out of the given choices.

Here are the results from the parent questionnaires...

Here are the results from the children’s responses...

Writing to the Councillors We wrote to the councillors to ask them if we could put a football goal post and some picnic benches in for the adults and families. We were thinking of placing some bike racks outside one of the gates. Also, we asked them to improve and repaint the fencing around the park to make it safe and attractive.

Collaborating ideas... In groups we made a draft plan to decide what equipment we should put in and the best position for it. After planning in our groups we presented our plan and explained to our audience why our ideas were great and why we thought we should put the equipment where we did.

The big debate! After looking at the data we collected, we had to come to an agreement. We decided to have a debate. There were lots of different pieces of equipment that everybody wanted, but we couldn’t have it all!! So instead, we chose the most popular equipment and had to persuade our fellow junior councillors why we thought our ideas were the right choice.

Persuasive writing We wrote a persuasive piece of writing about why we thought the equipment should go where we decided. We had to persuade Jamie to put the equipment where we would like it to be.

Jamie’s second visit (without David!!) Jamie came into school again and we showed her our plan. She helped us decide if our plan was realistic. Also, she told us the approximate cost of the equipment we chose. She explained to us who we needed to contact about putting the bird and insect boxes in the field beside the park.

Our final plan After all of our learning and collaborative work, we have created the final plan of West Down Lane Play Area. We would like...

Self-powered Spinning We liked Jamie’s suggestion of a self-powered spinning piece of equipment, instead of an ordinary roundabout. It is a bit different from a normal roundabout and will hopefully attract lots more children.

Springs We would like a spring piece of equipment for the younger children to have fun on (as well as us!) From the results of the parents questionnaire, we saw that they thought we should have equipment for all ages. This is why we chose to have springing equipment.

An all-in-one An all-in-one piece of equipment, including a small climbing wall and monkey bars. We calculated the approximate cost and found out we have about £2000 left. So, if possible we thought about putting in some kind of balancing bars, a pole to slide down, games for the younger children underneath or possibly a climbing web. Have you got any ideas or suggestions about this?

Thank you for listening and for all your hard work and contributions. Do you have any questions that you would like to ask us?