School Grounds TRAnSfoRmAtiOn  
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WHY SURVEY PEOPLE?

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Surveying people is an effective way to get people interested in transforming your school grounds. Asking them for ideas includes them in the process and starts to generate a sense of ownership of the project.

Because the schoolyard is a space that is designed for children, it is essential to involve all the children in the school right from the outset. This can be done by holding brainstorming sessions with every class in the school to discover the children's feelings about the grounds and gather their ideas for making improvements.

You never know who in the community might be able to help you with your project. Consulting with the whole school community, neighbours, and as many sectors of the broader community as possible raises awareness on what you are trying to accomplish and involves people who can contribute to your project.

Survey everyone in the school and as many different individuals and groups as possible from the local community including the school grounds planning team, students, teachers, parents, caretaking and support staff, neighbours, local businesses and community groups.

Surveying people is a practical approach that:

  • directly involves people and shows students that their ideas are important and that the adults are not making all the decisions
  • facilitates communication between different groups who might otherwise not share information and assists people in identifying and sharing common goals
  • encourages people to work together to realize their collective vision and helps to generate further community interest and foster a sense of empowerment and ownership of the project
  • involves the whole school and presents teachers with an ideal, hands-on cross-curricular project for students to design surveys, gather, record and compare different age groups' ideas, draw and paint or make models of their visions of the grounds, and develop their writing, creative thinking, listening, communicating, brainstorming and mapping and measuring skills
  • helps assemble data required for proper planning and for an objective assessment of the need and potential for changing the grounds

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