Activity
Cycling

Advantages and disadvantages of cycling

Learning areas:

English
Health & Physical Education

Year levels:

Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Year 6

Discuss some of the reasons people ride and don’t ride bicycles. Generate a class list of positive and negative things about cycling.

Allocate the positive things to half of the class and ask them to design and develop materials promoting the benefits of cycling.

Allocate the negative things to the remaining half of the class and for every item listed, ask them to come up with a strategy to address the factors that discourage people from cycling.

Discussion questions

Are there more benefits to cycling than not cycling? (Benefits could include increased fitness levels, saving money, and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and reduced traffic congestion compared with travel by car.)

Information for teachers

Some reasons people ride:

commuting
leisure/recreation
fitness/training
competition
convenience
environmental reasons
active travel to shops and services
to access off road paths and shared paths
to make the link to public transport
it can be quicker
cost savings over other travel modes.

Some reasons people don’t ride:

storage of bicycles
helmet requirements
perceptions of safety
weather
lack of cycling facilities
distance
no access to a bicycle
can’t ride a bicycle
storage of bicycles change to ‘lack of bike parking’
perceptions of safety [remove]
lack of cycling lanes and paths
volume of road traffic
hills
low public transport capacity to put bikes on regional trains and on buses.

Victorian curriculum

Health and PE
Level 3 & 4	Describe and apply strategies that can be used in situations that make them feel uncomfortable or unsafe (VCHPEP090) Identify and practise strategies to promote health, safety and wellbeing (VCHPEP091)
Level 5 & 6	Plan and practise strategies to promote health, safety and wellbeing (VCHPEP108)

English
Level 3	Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts demonstrating increasing control over text structures and language features and selecting print and multimodal elements appropriate to the audience and purpose (VCELY266)
Level 4	Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts containing key information and supporting details for a widening range of audiences, demonstrating increasing control over text structures and language features (VCELY299)
Level 5	Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive print and multimodal texts, choosing text structures, language features, images and sound appropriate to purpose and audience (VCELY329)
Level 6	Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, choosing and experimenting with text structures, language features, images and digital resources appropriate to purpose and audience (VCELY358)