The Letter

1. The Letter Imagine that the Board of Trustees at school are discussing whether Cambridge High should continue to offer outdoor activities, as they are concerned about student’s physical and mental safety. Your letter therefore needs to outline your responsible behaviours and how your experiences on camp ensured safety during your chosen activities.

2. Include: • An understanding of your responsible behaviours for safety during outdoor activities by describing them • An in-depth understanding of how and why you demonstrated those responsible behaviours for safety, giving reasons (how effectively did your behaviours result in physical /emotional safety) • Support your evaluation with examples and evidence from your participation in the outdoor activities • Lastly include how you or others could improve on these, even if you think you demonstrated “perfect” safety behaviour. - Did I need to change anything? If so what and how? -What was the result of any changes that I did make? - Are there alternative ways I can demonstrate my safe behaviours?

3. Read through the first example and analyse, why this is that particular mark?

4. Structure • (who you are writing to) Dear Board of Trustees • (and why) I am writing to convince you that outdoor education trips like the one we did in Year 11 sport science are.....

5. Exemplars Not achieved, Achieved, Merit, Excellence

6. Why?

7. High not achieved • The evidence lacks detail in the description of responsible behaviour for safety. They have been identified but the answer does not provide an account of what was done or said by the student to demonstrate them. • The student has addressed physical and emotional but not necessarily from a safety perspective. The statement ‘we weren’t scared because we knew we were safe’ also requires greater detail.

8. Now read through the rest and analyse why they fit into those marks?

9. High Achieved • Responsible behaviours suitable to the outdoor experience have been described, often giving good detail as to how they were applied. What is lacking to achieve with Merit is the detail on how specifically safety was enhanced by the behaviours.

10. Low Merit • Provides good detail on actions taken to demonstrate responsible behaviours. Explains why this was important to do in relation to safety. Also at times explains how safety would be compromised if these behaviours were not demonstrated. • The evidence is lacking in specific examples (except for team work evidence) of how safety was enhanced by demonstrating the behaviours. • This is a Low Merit. A clear Merit would use specific examples from participation to add detail to support explanations that behaviours enhanced/or didn’t enhance safety.

11. Low Excellence • The evidence provided on identified risks and skills which are developed through outdoor activities shows good depth of knowledge. • Detailed explanations of how and why the responsible behaviours are applied in relation to both physical and emotional safety are provided for two outdoor activities. Good reasoning is shown here and behaviours explained clearly link to minimising the identified risks. • The student tends to make judgments based on the positive aspects of applying the behaviours. It would be beneficial to also show the ability to identify aspects which needed further development. However the student does make judgments and in some instances does go as far to suggest modification for the future with clear reasoning as to how these modifications link to safety. • Overall judgements could be strengthened by use of more specific examples.