Silver Duke of Edinburgh Award
Silver Duke of Edinburgh Award Another year of mixed weather, great views and exciting adventures. This year the Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award saw many of last year’s cohort receive their awards, three fantastic year 11 teams take to the hills for training and assessments and a record year 10 sign up. Congratulations must first go to Freddie Metcalfe, Duncan Anderson, Varun Balupuri, Patrick Borer, Edward Deytrikh, Ben Jeffrey, Chris Robinson, Neil Stanwix, and Emma Anderson for completing their silver awards and William Barnes and Calum Matthews for completing their Bronze Awards. Our Year 11 teams performed well in the training sessions and demonstrated all the skills required to pass their practical assessment. A training expedition in April saw the teams head down the road to Middleton-in-Teesdale for a 2 night practice expedition, all the teams performed well here, special mention must go to Tom Vickers who had to drop out due to a recurring foot injury. To pass their three day assessment teams are required to walk for seven hours or more each day, be self-sufficient by carrying all their personal equipment and food for the three days.
The Barnardian Magazine
Team 1 Calum Matthews, Hugh Carter, Chris Moore, Euan Hobson, Andrew Hutchon Team 2 Rory Abraham, Ellie Dinnes, Jack Roberts, Nick Packham, Georgina Lea, Katie Ferguson Team 3 William Barnes, Becky McKitton, Tom Vickers, Lucy Parkinson, Jonny Connors What a cracking 3 days the silver assessment expedition groups had during 3-5 July. As well as fantastic weather they all completed their assessment with flying colours. The assessor was David Ewart. He was very impressed with the standard and competence of all three groups. The aim of their expedition was to complete a preplanned route over three days and be self sufficient. Two of the groups set off from Sleighholme farm – one group walking via Tan Hill and the other group heading over the tops and through Arkendale. The third group was dropped off in Gunnerside. From here they were going to do a slightly different expedition: to spend three days investigating and studying the mining heritage of Swaledale. This meant a slightly shorter distance but more time at various mining locations. Mr Brettell joined the group on the Sunday on Melbecks Moor as he has a good local knowledge of the area and its mining heritage. On the Monday the group had arranged to visit the Mining Museum in Reeth. The expedition would not have been possible without the help of Mr Fairwood, Mr Brettell and Mr Waddington. Many thanks to them for their help. In year 10 we saw record 57 students sign up for DofE Silver and begin training for their expeditions. All year 10 DofE students are enrolled on the new
EDofE service which requires students to track and update their progress online rather than in the log books used in the past. Two training days were laid on in the autumn term to give students an idea of how to get started and to give them a taste of the skills they will need on expedition. There are four sections to the Silver Award: Service, Skill, Physical and expedition. Many students have chosen to use CCF as their service but others have chosen to volunteer elsewhere such as the school library, at a local charity shop, at an animal shelter or as a Young leader with a scout group. The service must be undertaken for at least six months and be unpaid. For their skills section students have selected a variety of activities; football coaching, computer studies, journalism, paintball and horse riding to name a few. When it came to deciding on what sort of Physical activity to undertake the field was equally diverse; football, badminton, scuba diving, skateboarding and cricket were amongst the activities chosen. The DofE silver award would not be possible without the help and dedication of the staff who give up their free time to help run the program.
HWF / PCO
2011
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