Our GCSE Psychology group have had a brilliant start to the year. Mrs Pulham and I have been super impressed with how focussed everyone’s been and how hard they’ve all been working.
It’s hard to stay on task for 2 hours, especially when the emphasis is on being leaders of your own learning and undertaking a series of self-study tasks, but these lot are absolutely smashing it!
It’s fantastic to see our Y10 and Y11 students supporting each other in these sessions, demonstrating that the power of Crew is embedded into everything we do.
It doesn’t feel right typing that my crew are in year 10(!!!!), entering their fourth year at the school, and their final two years at XP. We spent the first week back working together in crew, where we asked ourselves‘how can we prepare for the next climb?’
One of the activities we partook in an intercrew competition, discussing strategies and cheering each other on while we completed the minute to win it tasks. While the activities were a little daft, it was nice to see crews circling up to strategize and making sure everyone was included.
On the Friday of the week we spent in crew, we were fortunate enough to get to walk the Monsal Trail. It was quite a physically demanding route at times, but the compassion I saw from my lovely ‘care bears/photographers’; Jess and Charlotte, was phenomenal. I’d like to give them a special mention for carrying others bags, slowing their own pace to help others catch up, and their supportive words during the route.
I’d also like to give Sami a special mention, he had the opportunity to flex his GCSE Geography skills as our navigator, and I felt he did a great job!
The walk was a great practice for the Y10s Duke of Edinburgh award, that I’m hoping that most my crew will opt to do this year. I took a tonne of pictures and videos on the day which I’ve compiled below:
Back in our new Crew Room in week 2, we discussed what is required of us over the upcoming two years with GCSEs approaching. We looked at how we procrastinate, and how we can start drip feeding a little revision into our habits at home to start the following two years right. Also, we celebrated Callum’s 15th Birthday the only way we know how – with chocolate fudge cake and lemon drizzle cake for the quirkier members of my crew.
Students in Year 10 took part in a wonderful visit to the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds yesterday. The purpose of Immersion is exactly that; to immerse students into the subject content that they will be exploring throughout this expedition. Going on fieldwork is just one of the ways we build curiosity and give students a visceral experience to get them to begin making connections between different subjects and the real world.
In this visit we were given a guided tour of the WW2 ‘Firefight’ exhibition and a handling session based on the theme of choice where students were able to hold and explore different weapons and artefacts from both WW1 and WW2.
Our students conduct and attitude to learning was exemplary and they really did our school proud. Well done, Year 10. Let’s see what comes next…
By Katie Haughey24th June 2021
We’ve waved goodbye to Crew Turing’s 15th member, Miss Narey, the fantastic trainee teacher who has been supporting as well as leading crew sessions the past few months. To celebrate her successes in passing her training year, we had a slightly early afternoon tea with scones. We wish her the best at Armthorpe and look forward to hearing from her through friends of my crew who attend the school.
Thanks to the girls in my crew for cracking a smile for the selfie!
Torran’s student led crew session
During half term, I received an email highlighting the incredible work Torran undertook during the break, supporting his family and local football team by supporting the coaching of the under 12s. I was inspired by his leadership and wanted to try and reboot something with my crew that we’ve not done in a long time!
I’ve got a big appreciation for Torran for hosting our first student led crew of the year. I’ve asked all of my crew to think up an activity that we can do in the remaining weeks, considering the purpose of what we do and how we can build our character doing these activities, as well as develop their leadership skills. Torran requested to lead a football skills and game crew session to help our sports day efforts. I’ve also challenged the rest of crew to come up with a session to run with us.
I’ve also added some footage of our crew stewardship duties to the video below, we spent a Friday afternoon litter picking and managed to fill two bin bags.
Pride
Miss Jones shared a really comprehensive set of resources on why we celebrate Pride, we have spent some crew sessions this month celebrating and learning about the month. Our crew is named after Alan Turing, who was persecuted for being gay which ultimately led to his suicide. We created a water painting mural to decorate our crew wall with, every crew member getting to add background rainbow colours to the image.
Here’s our final product!
Crew mile
This week, we have teamed up with other schools in the trust to run a mile to support Ray Mathews who has worked a lot with Norton Junior/ infant school raising money for charities through running. Ray is 80 this year and he would like the school to run 80 miles to help support the charity Age UK.
We did our 4 laps round both schools on Thursday this week and it was glorious! I am going to donate the money we raised to Age UK.
Just 4 weeks to go until we break up for summer, we’ve got some exciting work in the pipeline that will be ready for sports day that I look forward to sharing with you!
UV rays are most intense from 10 AM to 4 PM, and this is when students are usually outside for break, lunch and Physical Education. XP offers the following recommendations for keeping students sun-safe during the spring/summer months:
Clothing is the single most effective form of sun protection for the body, so send kids to school in densely woven and bright-coloured fabrics, which offer the best defence. The more skin you cover, the better, so choose long sleeves and long pants whenever possible.
Send children to school with a wide-brimmed hat and UV-blocking sunglasses, to protect their face, neck and eyes. If they won’t wear a wide-brimmed hat, a baseball cap is better than nothing.
Make sunscreen part of the morning routine: At least 30 minutes before children go outside, parents should apply a broad spectrum (UVA/UVB) sunscreen with an SPF 30 or higher to their skin. Older children should learn to apply sunscreen themselves and make it a routine habit. To remain effective, sunscreen should be reapplied every two hours or immediately after swimming or sweating. At a minimum, remind children to reapply sunscreen before outdoor activities.
One ounce of sunscreen (about the size of a golf ball) should be applied to the entire body. Remind children to cover those easy to miss spots, such as the back of ears and neck, as well as the tops of the feet and hands.
You should also note that windy, warm, and sunny days can increase levels of pollen turnout.
If you’ve ever suffered from a snotty nose, watery eyes, or itchiness, then you know exactly how annoying allergy season is for many – especially when it’s finally warm enough to enjoy the outdoors again.
Allergies can be especially frustrating in a year like 2021, when most people have been limited to the confines of their homes for months on end. Plus, thanks to climate change, it turns out that people’s allergies are actually getting worse over time. Temperature increases lead to more pollen production, which can be a major irritant for those with respiratory issues like asthma. This might be the longest, most intense allergy season yet.
But knowing when exactly allergy season will start this year, and how to prep your body for any allergen invaders, will help you fight back. To get specific information around this, Pollen.com has a National Allergy Map that provides an up-to-date allergy forecast in different areas around the country and an Allergy Alert app that gives five-day forecasts with in-depth information on specific allergens.
Allergists recommend you start taking medication a couple of weeks before the allergy season arrives, or at the latest, take them the moment you begin having symptoms. Taking them early can stop an immune system freak-out before it happens, lessening the severity of symptoms.
If your child requires hay fever medication, please ensure you fill in a medical form and hand their medication to a staff member at reception. We must not have medication in students’ bags.
Our C25 / Year 9 GCSE Spanish students have been working hard to promote a charity fundraising initiative in aid of Save The Children, as part of our current work on Fair Trade, social equity and child poverty in Latin America. This involved students producing and displaying posters in both schools, and visiting Crew rooms to invite their peers to guess the number of Fair Trade chocolates in a jar. At £1.00 a go, the winner with the closest guess to the actual number of chocolates would get to keep them and the jar.
This morning we can reveal that Mrs Cunningham and Crew Rosa won the chocolates in XP School, and Mrs Newrick correctly guessed that there were 99 chocolates in XP East’s jar. As a result of our students’ activism, they helped towards fulfilling the volunteering element of their Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award, but more importantly (and with the odd extra donation) they raised a total of £122.55 for Save The Children.
A huge appreciation goes to C25 students and Crew Leaders for helping to raise a three figure sum for charity.
Crew Turing have loved being outside during Monday’s crew sessions to do check in, catching 45 minutes of sun before we go back to session. Now that lockdown restrictions are lifting slightly the check-ins are far more interesting. Everyone seems cheerier now they’re able to see friends and family, and carry on with the sports they’re involved in.
We’ve also managed to get booked into the sports hall during crew a couple of weeks back, we enjoyed a rather competitive game of dodgeball. We mixed crew to random teams, and even Miss Narey and I played.
As mentioned in my previous post, as a crew we’ve been self-assessing HoWLs leading up to the actual data drop, which finally got released last week. We spent the crew session adding our updated HoWLs to our crew narrative, gains were made across the board. We then compared the new data with our previous crew targets that were made in November 2020. Those targets were:
– Improve extended study record as a crew, aiming for 95%+: we greened this target as this has massively improved thanks to daily reminders in crew and students working together to support each other on any work they’re unsure about
– Improve HoWLs in art and HUMAN, aiming for at least secure in all HoWLs grades: this is partially completed, as HoWLs in these subjects have gone up across the board, however we’ve not 100% met the ‘secure’ section of the rubric or above in these subjects. I’ve got to appreciate Dylan, Callum, Torran, Mollie and Sami for smashing these targets, some of whom even received HoWLs in the excellence category!
In the coming weeks, we’ll be looking at where we can be making improvements using Crew Turing’s HoWL improvement project. Every student in my crew has identified a subject in which their HoWLs could do with some work. I then asked students to write a rationale explaining why they’d chosen that particular subject and a SMART target that another member of our crew could peer-asses them on.
I then gave each student someone to peer assess on a mini HoWL tracker. Every student gave at least a secure on the peer assessment, and knowing that someone was tracking engagement, meant that members of my crew really pushed themselves in those sessions to contribute and ask clarifying questions. I’m going to try this again in a few weeks to get snapshots of what is going on in sessions.
To celebrate our successes, Dylan treated us to homemade sponge cake with custard and Torran bought in a chocolate birthday cake. Not only this, Miss Narey who has been with us over the past few months prepared a quiz for us to enjoy! Big appreciations to those who made Friday’s crew session so fun, and congratulations to Mollie, Charlotte, Dylan, Callum, Sami and Jess for winning the quiz.
Each crew at XP has a chosen charity that they raise money for. This charity resonates with the crew, ensuring all of the mindful work that is done is going towards something we hold near to our hearts. Crew Anoa’i chose Make-A-Wish UK.
Make-A-Wish was founded in 1980 after a young boy, battling Leukaemia, wished to be a police officer for the day. The charity was inspired after Christopher Greicius’ family and friends came together to grant his wish ‘to be a police officer’. This kindness created a movement that would transform the lives of millions of sick children across the globe.
41 years later, Make-A-Wish has been granting life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses in nearly 50 countries, across 5 continents of the world. More than 500,000 wishes have been granted since that day.
Every year, Make-A-Wish brings people together in celebrating World Wish Day on April 29th, the anniversary of the wish that inspired the founding of the charity.
This year, the charity’s campaign ‘Don’t Wait for Hope. Create it.’ stems from the fact that wish families have been some of the hardest hit by the global pandemic. Feelings of detachment and trepidation have become the new normal for everyone, but they are often felt deepest by the most vulnerable, including children with critical illnesses.
Now more than ever, wishes can bring hope, joy and a sense of normality back into the lives of wish kids and their families. We can help make life-changing wishes come true, and that’s what Crew Anoa’i did this week.
On Thursday 29th April, World Wish Day, Crew Anoa’i held a raffle to raise money for Make-A-Wish UK. We gathered several prizes, ranging from confectionery to bath bombs sets, ensuring there were lots to be won. We then collected donations and drew the winning tickets. Let’s take a look at some of our lucky winners.
In total, we raised a whopping £90 in just two days!!
Crew Anoa’i would like to appreciate everyone who donated money towards our raffle, we couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you everyone!!
Today Crew Anoa’i were on litter picking duty. This involved the whole crew taking part in our weekly clean up session. During crew time, we collected the equipment and headed out to the field at the back of the school. There we started our hunt to collect all of the litter we could find and dispose of it appropriately. Everyone got stuck in, taking it in turns to use the pickers. We found lots of different things along the way!
Surprisingly, Crew Anoa’i found this very entertaining. It was great to see some smiles this morning whilst we helped keep our environment clean and safe. As we made our way around the field, we found more and more rubbish. It was alarming to see how much rubbish that had gathered at the bottom of our school field. Good job Crew Anoa’i were here to clear things up!
It was also really great to see everyone working as a team. James and Jacob led the way by thinking outside of the box to creatively work together to gather some rubbish on the outer border of our school premises. Great work lads!
Crew Anoa’i would like to appreciate April Crawshaw in particular for getting her hands dirty and demonstrating great cleaning up skills. Well done April, keep it up!
‘A spine-chilling story about a boy who finds himself drawn to an empty house. He enters the house to find twelve ghostly figures sitting around a large table. A thirteenth chair is pulled out for him. He takes his place at the table and the story begins.’
Crew Anoa’i have been reading Thirteen Chairs by Dave Shelton as part of our weekly book club. Each week, on Tranquil Tuesday, we read a new chapter of the book. Taking it in turns to read aloud, we follow the story of a boy called Jack. After reading a chapter, we answer a set of questions that help us understand and retain what has happened before we move onto the next chapter. Each chapter is one of the thirteen tales told by the ghostly figures. So far, we have read up to chapter 3. Each week we learn something new about the characters in the story – Jack doesn’t know anyone at the table, the ghostly figures have names and the tales that are told are eerily cryptic.A few students from Crew Anoa’i wanted to share their thoughts about our book club. Let’s see what they’ve got to say.
Lucie-Mae Cordell
I am finding the book club interesting, as it is a fun way to learn about reading. It also gives us a chance to find a new story to read. Thirteen Chairs has given me a break from my usual type of book. Having the book club helps me to focus on one story at a time.
Zachary Hague
I am really enjoying the book club in crew, as the book Miss Mitchell has chosen is interesting and it’s from a genre that I wouldn’t normally read. It’s fun to read something new and exciting. I’m looking forward to reading the next chapter!
Faith Farmery
I’m really entertained by this book club we have during crew, because Miss Mitchell has chosen a book for all of us to read together instead of reading individually. This gives us a chance to communicate over the same book and wonder together instead of alone in our own world. Everyone is there with you in this world. This type of book isn’t one that I would normally pick up off of the shelf, it is a good change and something out of my comfort zone.
