Woodland Times – Kid Safety Edition

For several class sessions, Woodland Academy’s 5th Grade Computer Lab project was to search the Internet for ideas and write individual articles about “National Safe Kids Week.”

Writing is no stranger to the 5th Grade class. They parlayed their prior experience of writing a school newsletter into preparing a full page spread in their own mock newspaper, “The Woodland Times.”

The original idea was to do an article about National Safe Boating Week. In the Northern Neck of Virginia this is traditionally extended to a full month by the respective county Boards of Supervisors. The students learned of National Safe Kids Week and its related water safety theme --“Splash into Safety”-- and decided to move their deadline up a week or so.

With their primary focus on water safety, the students searched web sites of the Coast Guard Auxiliary, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, and Boatsafe.com, to mention a few. They downloaded notes and pictures and then put their own spin on the notes and statistics in their individual articles on boating safety. It was a true hands-on learning experience, and a practical one at that.

EVERY student stressed the need to wear a life jacket. And the right size life jacket! They learned about boating fatalities in Virginia and the water taxi accident in Baltimore and how many people died without their life jackets (ALL).

They were surprised to learn that Virginia has no rule about wearing life jackets and no rule about having a license to operate a motorboat. Said one student, “That’s pretty dumb.”.

When it comes to kid safety, kids have some great ideas.