The productivity of 7X!

By Jamie Portman6th October 2017

I’ve been absolutely delighted with every single student in 7X this morning.

After a very busy week due to our walk to Doncaster’s Hyde Park cemetery for fieldwork and two hectic Y6 Open Evenings on Wednesday and Thursday (which many students attended) we continued to work hard on the first draft of our reflection work on answering ‘What makes a successful Community?’

After weeks of learning about the different elements of Community, and an extended study assignment, students began to write a reflection piece in order to conclude and assess understanding of Case Study 1.

After a brief discussion, and with a break in between, students wrote continuously from 9:30am up until 12pm.

As highlighted on my blog post about 7P, being productive is an essential element of being a great learner, and ‘work hard’ is a key habit of work and learning at XP East.

I think a well earned rest is in order after a very productive week!

 

 

The productivity of 7P

By Jamie Portman3rd October 2017

I was so struck by 7P’s focus and effort this morning, I simply had to write about it.

Every single student was totally absorbed in their first draft of what makes a successful community. After drawing up a brief plan (and after yesterday’s creation of an opening paragraph) students have continuously worked for over 2 and a half hours on their reflective writing.

It must be said that being productive for such long periods of time are qualities of being a great learner, and students should be commended for this. Mrs Poncia introduced short activities in which to re-energise everyone’s concentration, and this clearly helped to make students to remain so focused on their work.

Emphasis on redrafting certainly puts a clear focus on quality and craftsmanship (one of our character traits) and I’m looking forward to reading about the completed pieces of work.

I intend to show examples of student’s work from 7P to my own group (7X) as this will help them to visualise what success looks like, and to aid their own efforts in answering ‘What makes a successful community?’

Great work everyone!

Becoming a ‘Youtuber’

By J Smith2nd October 2017

Explain Everything is an app that allows people to create videos and upload them to Youtube using an iPad and an Apple Pencil. It is designed to fit with any teaching and learning environment, and I have recently started using it to create learning resources in support of our expedition. 

I am no Steven Spielberg and I have a long way to go in terms of practice, but my first revision resource has really helped with our understanding of physics calculations in 7X.  I can also officially say I have become a ‘Youtuber’.

So if you have not already, subscribe to my channel via the this link!

Great start in X-Block Noah N!

By Jamie Portman1st October 2017

I must congratulate Noah N. on his great start to his Art lessons during X-Block.

In only his 2nd lesson, he is already building on his 1st draft of a bird of prey by creating a 2nd draft as part of his homework.

AT XP East, we have been teaching students the methodology of Peer Critique via the video as shown below. It encourages students to be kind, specific and helpful in working together to improve their work until it is excellent.

Mr Pearson asked me to come into his lesson to see the rapid progress that students are already making. When Mr Sprakes and I visited the class, I was struck by how focused they were in collaborating with each other to improve their work.

Well done everyone so far – especially Noah!

Using student models in class

By Jamie Portman1st October 2017

Creating WAGOLLs (What A Good One Looks Like) can help to show students what success looks like in practice for any particular task, and whilst this can definitely bring benefits to the learning process, models created by students can be so much more powerful.

In the analogue traditional classroom a teacher may seize the opportunity to do this by reading aloud a successful piece of work by a student. Sometimes however, this may be an abstract thing for the rest of the class as they can only hear it, but not see it.

The environment at XP allows us to use technology to quickly and effortlessly share models of student work visually – and at any time during the lesson. For instance, the Apple TV that is connected to the main TV in each of our classrooms allows us to use an iOS device like an iPhone or one of our iPads to quickly take a photo of a piece of work and airplay it to the TV in seconds. By using the pinch feature, you can zoom into a particular sentence, keyword or use of punctuation to then emphasise and visualise the success in action, leaving the abstract nature of the analogue method behind.

We’re also beginning to use the Notability app for the iPad Pro as the use of the Apple Pencil for the iPad allows you to draw on the screen and annotate student work which shows up on the TV in the classroom – all live and again at any time during the lesson.

We’re only 5 weeks into the first ever term at XP East, but we’re already developing the Teaching and Learning practices needed to ensure outstanding progress for our students.

The art of (silent) conversation

By A Parker29th September 2017

Our 7P students are preparing to write their first piece of reflective writing next week, where they’ll consolidate all their ideas and evidence around what makes a community successful.

Mrs Poncia introduced a new protocol in class this week: the ‘silent conversation.’ We presented the class with five different images (one on each table), gave them some marker pens and the instruction to move around each table, consider the image for a few moments, and then write down what it represented to them… all in complete silence!

This protocol gives students time for some focused thinking, allows them to reflect on the views of their classmates, and helps to stimulate new ideas for them to include in their own work.  It also means that all students have the same opportunity to share their thoughts with the rest of the class.  It really is a silent conversation!

At the end of the exercise we discussed the common theme, which we agreed was around the sense of ‘belonging’ to a community.

Mrs Parker

Thank you Alesha M

By Jamie Portman28th September 2017

A special mention needs to go out to Alesha M in our HUMAN class. This morning I took a photo of her excellent work on explaining where aspects of community existed within the animal kingdom, and printed it out on an A3 sheet. Students then analysed her work, paying particular example to her choice of vocab, use of conjunctions, openers and sentence structure. This was used as a model to help students to progress withi their work.

Whilst students did this, Alesha and Arendeep explored ways in which would make the extract even better. Arandeep reported back to the class on how a range of sentence types, as well as the use of synonyms for different keywords would improve it even further.

Thank you Alesha!

7P Fieldwork to York National Railway Museum

25th September 2017Jamie Portman

7P recently visited York National Railway Museum as part of our fieldwork for our ‘Society, Steam and Speed’ expedition. When we arrived, the expedition’s guiding question was presented to students:

‘What does the community of Doncaster owe to the Railway?’

The event acted as a kick off to immerse students into the detail of our guiding question. Students explored the museum to find any pertinent links to Doncaster, and begin to consider the transformational impact of the railways during the Industrial Revolution.

Students behaviour was superb throughout.

Check out the brief video below:

Learning devices at XP East

By Jamie Portman16th September 2017

All students have now had input concerning the use of ICT from Mr ap Harri this week, and consequently the use of personal devices from home such as laptops and tablets are now permitted. These should be used for educational purposes only.

Such devices will enable students to use resources that can potentially transform the way that they engage with their learning, but with this comes great responsibility. Stay tuned for updates on how we will be using Google Apps and other ICT approaches.

This ‘Acceptable Use of ICT’ policy was signed during the meetings with either myself, Mr Said or Mr Sprakes during the induction meeting process before the Summer holidays.

Devices will be connected to XP School’s wifi system, and consequently all student internet usage is monitored via the Smoothwall filtering and firewall software.

We have a store of Google Chromebooks in school for students to use if they do not own a device. We understand that devices ordered by parents from Freedom Tech will be delivered soon.