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!
What an afternoon with year 8 Pioneer! We headed over to use the seminar tables in the music room and had a full session of discussion using the Socratic Seminar protocol. Amazing contributions from the whole class – focussed, attentive, respectful.
And the session was so successful because of the hard work they’ve been putting in leading up to it, and being persistent when challenging themselves to investigate and understand Shakespeare’s language.
We explored 3 questions:
Was Macbeth’s imaginary dagger an invitation or a warning?
Was Macbeth free to choose whether to kill Duncan?
Was the murder of Duncan Macbeth’s peripeteia?
Take a look at a brief moment from this afternoon.
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 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.
C24’s X-Block product has finally become a reality thanks to help from our expert Hannah from Sheffield Print Club, and I am delighted to say I absolutely love how they have turned out!
This Monday and Tuesday the Year 8 groups have been in a screen printing workshop, picking up new skills and creating more beautiful work to contribute to their final product. Their learning target for this term has been ‘I can create a 2 layer screen print of a Doncastrian building’ and it has required weeks of preparation. Our product started in immersion week, where we took a gallery walk to check out the local architecture, taking pictures as we went.
Since then, in Art C24 have been creating detailed drawings and fact files of a building of their choice. Seven images were then shortlisted to be the top layer in our screen print designs for the product. We took inspiration from Andy Warhol’s screen prints, and his fascination with creating artwork from the everyday, from items such as soup cans and brillo pads. We used this theme to bring some old, and in some cases rather rundown and underappreciated buildings across Donny back to life.
I’d like to say a huge thank you to Hannah, who was with us for the two days and managed to pull off a small miracle, creating 250 prints, with 49 students in the short 3 hour workshops. It couldn’t have been pulled off without everyone pitching in during de-gunge. All three sessions were a delight to supervise, and I was immensely appreciative of the year 8s for making this such a success.
It’s felt impossible choosing which prints ended up on this blog post, I was so happy with all the work that has been created. Seeing C24 produce such high quality work just goes to show how many budding artists we have here at XP East.
Also, getting to specialise in a digital-free and rather uncommon trade, in an age where technology is involved in most of our everyday processes has been really refreshing. We discussed how unique each students 5 prints truly were, and that if we’d done this using computer aided design or manufacture, the work wouldn’t be as special.
I’ve always dreamed of owning my own Warhol pop art print, but I have got to say, that I think I’d rather hang a few of these up in my living room instead.
We have been working towards answering our guiding question ‘What does it take to build a place of our own?’ Part of that consists of looking at what we already have. Doncaster is rich in cultural and architectural history, and it has been wonderful being able to appreciate that in this expedition.
Stay tuned for more info on what’s coming up next for C24 and their final product launch!
E24’s most recent STEAM Learning Target was “I can evaluate to what extent my school meets the criteria to become an Eco School”. The Guiding Question for this joint HUMAN-STEAM expedition is “How can we build a place of our own?”
They researched what it takes to apply for Eco School Bronze Accreditation and presented their findings to E25 students; consequently they drummed up so much interest we now have 47 nominees for 8 positions on the new Eco Committee!
E24 students then carried out their own Environmental Reviews of the school, identifying what we are doing well and what we could improve on across 10 topic areas. Thank you to all the staff who helped in answering questions ranging from “do school meals use fish from sustainable sources?” to “what steps have XP East taken to reduce energy usage?” All of this builds on the work we have been doing since September on energy usage, sustainability and efficient building design.
Finally the students each created their own Action Plan with suggestions which the final Eco Committee may take forward in the real whole-school Action Plan. Here are photographs of a selection, including Nathan’s, which considered increasing student intake of fruit at sporting events; through live class critique of his work on the board Nathan could share his original ideas as well as gain constructive feedback as to how to improve his answers in the ‘monitoring’ column.
Watch this space to learn more about who is selected by their Crews for positions on the Eco Committee as well as the Committee’s final three focus topics for the school Action Plan…
We explored 3 questions:
