Activities and goals

In order do complete a DofE level, you have to choose a skill, a physical activity (sport) and volunteering. You set a SMART goal in each activity and you have to work 1 hour per week towards reaching that goal. Each level has a set amount of hours that you need to complete in order to finish your level:

Bronze: 13 hours per activity (26 hours major ativity)

Silver: 26 hours per activity (56 hours major activity)

Gold: 52 hours per activity (78 hours major activity) + gold residential project

To set your activities and your goals, log in your ORB (Online Record Book) - that's where you registered for DofE - or download the ORB participant app via App Store or Google Play on your phone. I recommend setting up your activities and goals on your laptop and then using the app for your logs.

CHOOSING YOUR ACTIVITIES

You have much freedom in choosing your activities. You can either choose to learn something new or get better at something you already practice. You can choose to practice in a team, with a coach or an instructor or independently (typical for jogging, biking etc.).

• Skill - this covers any kinds of arts, crafts, music, languages, sciences, cooking and other skills

• Physical activity - this covers both team and individual sports, exercise, fitness, dancing... 

• Volunteering 

  • You can choose a regular volunteering activity that you enjoy and that helps others or your community. In the past students have been cleaning up trash in their neighbourhood weekly, tutoring or babysitting children, helping in animal shelters, elderly homes, sports or after school clubs etc. 

  • At ISB you can regularly help in the library, help teachers in the after school activities, clean up the school playground regularly, join support clubs (sustainability, peer mentoring...) etc. ask your teachers about details

  • There are various irregular volunteering opportunities at ISB (sandwich drive, service learning, helping with Colours and Flavours and other school events...) - ask your teachers about these opportunities. If you choose to volunteer with ISB irregulars only, set your volunteering activity as "charity", activity type "other"  and label your other activity as "the ISB volunteering crew" In your goal, you can then describe that you will volunteer in various activities through the school.

PLEASE NOTE that tutoring or babysitting your siblings or helping your family in any other way is not considered volunteering, that's something you should do naturally :) You also mustn't get paid for the volunteering work.

SMART GOALS

For each activity you must set a SMART goal and describe it in 5-10 sentences in your ORB profile.  Please check your spelling and punctuation before submitting your goal. 

THIS SITE gives you clear instructions on how to create a SMART goal including examples. 

Answer these questions and your goal will most likely be SMART:

Where you are now / how much experience do you have?

Where you aim to be in 13 / 26 weeks /52 weeks- realistically?

How you intend to get there - what do you intend to do to get there?

When and how often will you do it?

Where will you do it?

Who will assess you?

What types of evidence will you provide?

When you submit your goal, Ms. Adela will either approve it or send it back to you asking to fix something. If you have trouble creating your SMART goals, please talk to Mr. Smith and he will help you.

Volunteering is typically difficult to measure, but don't worry, in this section it is mostly important to clearly describe what, where, how, why you will do.

ASSESSORS

For each activity (skill, physical ativity, volunteering) you need an assessor. 

• The assessor cannot be a member of your family or your peer (they must be 18+yo). 

• If there is a leader, a coach, a teacher or an instructor coordinating your activity, that should be your assessor. Ask that person whether they are okay to be your assessor and then add their name and email to the assessor section of the activity (no need to fill in the phone number). They don't need to worry, it doesn't take more than 5 minutes to approve your activity in the end. That's all they need to do.

• If you do your activity independently with no supervisor (for example painting or jogging at home on your own) just add Ms. Giulia (giulia.zilotti@isob.cz) as your assessor

When you complete all your logs in an activity, the assessor receives an email automatically generated by ORB where they click on a link and approve that you were consistently working towards your goal and reached it. They may add a report that doesn't need to be longer than a couple sentences.

MAJOR ACTIVITY

When setting up your activities,  you choose one that will be your MAJOR by checking the "major" box. Your major activity is the one you have to do twice the amount of hours. It should be the activity that you are sure you will do regularly the whole school year - ideally a club or course you attend regularly.

LOGS

When your activities are set up, you may start working towards your goals and submitting regular logs to your ORB profile.

• each log should be at least 3 sentences long and correct spelling and punctuation should be used

• in your logs, describe what you did, what went well, what needs improvement, how you felt, what you did in order get closer to reaching your goal...

• include pictures (not compulsory, but welcome)

• the system counts only 1 hour per week, not more 

• be consistent! Typically, the students who don't submit their logs regularly never finish their level

COMPLETING YOUR LEVEL

Your level typically needs to be completed by the end of November of the following school year (GOLD participants have more time). 

In order to finish your level you must:

1. Complete all 3 of your activities 

Your activity is finished when:

• you completed the required amount of hours and submitted all your logs

• you reached your goal

• your assessor approved the completion of your activity 

2. Complete your expedition - submit your expedition outcome, upload a reflection in ORB, have your expedition approved by your supervising teacher