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 The Transportation Demand Management (TDM) group focuses on raising awareness amongst youth about the various effects that vehicles have on our environment, our health, and our community.
Offering a variety of activities, these interactive programs are designed to meet the specific learning outcomes for various grade levels, but can be tailored to meet the specific needs of your class. Each presentation runs for approximately one hour and can be completed at your school or at an outdoor location.
To book a presentation for your class please contact Mike Kittmer, Activer Transportation Coordinator, at mkittmer@kelowna.ca or 250 469.8531.
Each presentation includes an introductory compononent titled Discover Your Transportation Alternatives. Then depending on the grade level and/or class requirements a variety of activities can be incorporated into the presentation including:
Car Talk
Am I Polluting? Transportation Search
TDM Bingo
The Real News
Transportation Pictures
Grab That Mode Survivor
The content and complexity of this program is easily modified to suit the various grade levels and all sessions begin with the following group discussions.
What is TDM?
A brief discussion will allow students to learn the definition of TDM, its goals and why it is so important.
Vehicles and the Environment:
Students will then learn, through a group discussion, about how vehicles have shaped our society and the overall effects they have on our environment, our health and our community. Focusing on the positive and negative aspects of vehicles, students will discover their alternative transportation options and understand our need to reduce our vehicle reliance. They will also explore the various changes that are occurring in cities to promote the use of active modes of transportation and understand the choices that they can make to help the environment.
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Students learn about the effects that vehicles have on our environment throughout their lifecycle (manufacturing, operation, maintenance and destruction). Students will explore the various ways that vehicles pollute our air, water and land and brainstorm some possible solutions to the problems they discover.
In groups, students match pictures with facts describing how vehicles pollute our environment and then discuss various solutions to these problems. Each group will present one of their pictures to the class and reveal the solutions that they came up with.
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Am I Polluting? Transportation Search (Grades K-6)
Students examine various transportation alternatives and identify which forms of transportation are bad for the environment in that they create pollution and which forms benefit the environment.
In groups, students will examine pictures of different scenes revealing a variety of transportation alternatives. Students will then take turns placing a check mark on the forms of transportation that are good for the environment and an X on those that create pollution.
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Students discover their various transportation options through a fun adaptation of the game BINGO. A wide variety of transportation options are explored and students discuss how they could incorporate these into their daily routines even if they don’t have a car or drive.
Using pictures of a wide variety of transportation modes, students match the pictures on their BINGO card with a description read out by the caller. The first student to get four squares in a row horizontally, vertically or diagonally calls out BINGO and receives a prize.
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Students gain a deeper understanding of some of the environmental, health, economic and world issues surrounding vehicles. By using real life news headlines students understand the seriousness of some of the effects that vehicles have and will also discover the importance of taking action today.
Students take turns being reporters and reading out various real life news headlines about vehicles. As a class we then discuss the impact and meaning of each headline, identify the ones that are the most revealing, and explore possible solutions.
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Students learn about how cities are changing in order to encourage people to use active and healthy forms of transportation that are good for themselves, the community and the environment. A large part of this change involves providing physical features such as bike lanes, sidewalks, trails, transit service, carpool lanes etc… and changing the way that neighborhoods are planned. The class will then discuss the importance of these features in reducing pollution, how reliant we are on cars as a society and how urban sprawl is contributing to pollution. The terms and depth of this discussion is easily modified based on the grade level of the participating class.
In groups and using pictures taken of neighbourhoods/roads from around Kelowna, students identify what items help people in that neighbourhood reduce their reliance on vehicles and what could be added to encourage more people to use more environmentally friendly and healthy forms of transportation. Each group then presents their picture to the class.
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Students will discover different modes of transportation that are good for the environment.
In teams, students decipher a poem and then one team member runs and grabs the answer to the poem from a pile of modes and then brings it back to attach it to the board. This continues until the first team completes their board and is made the surviving team. Students then rank each form of transportation based on how easy it is to do.
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