C24 have linked in the immersion week of capital punishment via electric chair and their knowledge of how electricity works. We investigated how electricity can result in death and how this occurs. We found that water can make the skin 100x less resistant to electrical current, which is why they use a wet sponge when sending people to the electric chair!
The habits of work and learning in C24 Explorer have been outstanding this week and this in an example of the craftsmanship and quality that has been produced from Lewis Dawson.
Below are a few highlights of the last STEAM expedition ‘Why am I me?’
This has been by far my most enjoyable time whilst teaching in secondary.
All thanks to the hard work put in by C24 students and learning coaches of XP East.
Fieldwork: Leeds University
Presentation of learning and Final product: Student led experiment demo
Expedition Wall Curation: Photo of students at various stages of their life
As we come to the end of our current STEAM expedition, Y8 students will be visiting Leeds University on Wednesday 27th February. The Health Sciences Outreach Team have organised an exciting day of workshops which will enable students to consolidate their learning and prepare their answer to the expedition’s guiding question: “Why am I me?”
The arrangements are as follows:
All students to arrive at school by 7.45am to ensure a prompt departure from school at 8.00am.
Students will need to bring a bottle of water and optional snack (no glass bottles or fizzy drinks or sweets.)
Please bring any prescribed medication required, clearly labelled in a plastic bag or envelope with your child’s name and required dosage.
Sensible clothing, coat and shoes need to be worn (we will be outside for part of the day.)
Lunch will be provided free of charge for all students.
Students will return to school at approximately 3.15pm – although we will post updates on the website and social media.
In the interests of ensuring a prompt departure from, and return back, to school it is important that – as always – our students arrive on time on these fieldwork days.
As part of this term’s STEAM Expedition, “Why Me?”, Year 8 students have been studying genes, DNA, cells, reproduction and the theory of evolution in order to answer the guiding question “Why am I me?”
They are now ready to share their findings with you, and would like to invite you to join in with a series of practical activities on the following dates:
This week crew Young visited Crew Mandela to deliver a session on the method of loci. The method of loci (loci being Latin for “places”) is a method of memory enhancement which uses visualisations with the use of spatial memory, familiar information about one’s environment, to quickly and efficiently recall information. The method of loci is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, or mind palace technique. Crew Mandela found the method extremely useful and all students improved their memory of a single list of words!
The final product for the Y8 expedition ‘A Place Of Our Own’ has culminated in a ‘Print Run’ where copies of students’ artwork will be exhibited in public buildings across Doncaster: CAST theatre, Civic Centre, Frenchgate shopping centre and Dreambakes.
This process was launched last Wednesday when Doncaster’s Mansion House hosted a group of our Y8s where we officially donated an A0 size print of the building. Check out the video below:
You can read more about the specific details concerning the expedition ‘A Place Of Our Own’ here, but I was immensely proud of the rigour that underpinned every aspect of its work: the anchor text that ran throughout the expedition was John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’, a historical enquiry revolved around studies of the causes and consequences of the 1930s Great Depression as well as the Suffragette movement in Doncaster, creative writing focused on prominent parts of Doncaster, renewable and non-renewable energy including an application for Eco School’s Bronze accreditation were explored in STEM, and the culmination of the artwork took place in X-Block where an expert from Sheffield’s Print Club taught students how to create prints of their work on local buildings.
Students also developed their scientific understanding even further by studying biodiversity and how humans can support healthy ecosystems and how to transfer energy in ecosystems, using food chains and webs, pyramids of number and biomass. Students accompanied their artwork with a first-person poem that embodied their vision of Doncaster and how to make it reflect their own aspirations – based upon Tony Walsh’s poem ‘This is the place’. In addition to this, students applied their knowledge of geometry and architecture in Maths to create blueprints of their own Eco-school, and used a computer aided design app called Room Sketcher to create specific designs.
Students, as always, then presented their work via the Presentation Of Learning to a wider audience of parents on 18th December. What an expedition!! Stay tuned for the curation of student work around school.
This is Jeff! Jeff was the creation of Alfie and Adam in Pioneer STEAM expedition ‘Why Me?’
Jeff was the product of genetic inheritance. Pioneer found that some characteristics are controlled by a single gene, such as fur in animals and red-green colour blindness in humans. Each gene might have different forms, and these are called alleles. The monster Jeff shows the dominant and recessive genes in shown in the Phenotypes! Great work Pioneer!
Last Friday we invited three very talented actors from Box Clever to deliver our own personal performance of Macbeth, complete with interactive workshop. And what a performance it was!
Year 8 were amazing and were fully immersed in the experience – a real credit to the school! They made such a positive impact on our visitors, who decided to join us for lunch to soak up some of the XP East ethos and chat to the students.
E24 are gearing up for their final assessment in STEAM by revising the content we have covered in our expedition A Place Of Our Own. They used a scaffold to support their summary notes of the main concepts and key words, using colour, text and images to highlight the information in ways which they felt were most meaningful to them. Here they are sharing best practice and supporting one another in filling in any gaps in their knowledge:
E24 have been Working Hard learning about biodiversity in ecosystems through the use of diagrams to illustrate data: food chains, food webs, pyramids of number and pyramids of biomass. Brendan was really proud of the effort he had put into his food web, drawing coloured circles around each organism to show whether it was a producer or different types of consumer; Theone’s food chain incorporated colour coding and a key; Mackenzie’s pyramid of numbers was a good example of a scale diagram drawn with a pencil and ruler.
