Due to the fantastic efforts of our incredible staff, we are delighted to be able to offer so many extra curricular opportunities to our wonderful students!
Please see attached an updated version of our enrichment timetable. On here, you’ll find sports clubs/fixtures, Arts clubs (including our new Vocaleles!) and KS4 Revision sessions with staff. We would encourage our students to attend as many of these sessions as possible to secure their GCSE grades and achieve their potential!
I can also share with you that D6 will begin again this coming Saturday, November 13th. D6 is our Saturday provision where students are able to come and work with coaches in school from 9am – 12:30pm. For the time being, D6 is open to year 11 only.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the staff running any extra-curricular activities, or myself at [email protected].
Thank you for your continued support – we look forward to seeing many of our students in these sessions!
Mel Cocliff XP Y11 Phase Lead Crew Macmillan Crew Leader
I’ve been popping in and out of sessions all week and have been blown away by the hard work and focus of every single student, in every single lesson as they prepare for their upcoming mocks. One of the highlights of my week was seeing Aden give himself a little victory fist pump after successfully working through a particularly tricky maths question!
I’d like to give a massive appreciation to all staff for going above and beyond to support students this week, especially to Miss Poncia and Mrs Desborough for putting on extra revision sessions during lunchtimes this week. This was reiterated during student appreciations at our year group community meeting. As Louie said, these revision sessions have been “amazing.”
The Y11 team are putting together a timetable of subject specific ‘learning labs’ which will run during lunchtimes and after school – full details will be posted here very soon.
D6 is also restarting on Saturday 13th November, 9am-12.30pm. This is open to all Y11 students with Student Coaches on hand to help them with their studies and exam prep.
As I said, all students have been working extra hard this week, but a special mention has to go to Lewis D and Tom D for working exceptionally hard in lessons at school, revising at home and for actively seeking out extra support and advice from subject teachers – this is what getting smart is all about.
We’re in for an intense couple of weeks so I’d just like to end by saying that even though it’s important to stick to revision timetables, it is just as important to schedule in some downtime to focus on your own wellbeing. Go for a walk, watch a film, read a book, check in with family and friends, eat well and get plenty of sleep!
Year 11 will be sitting mock exams over a 2 week period, starting on Monday 8th November:
Please note that Wednesday 10th November may be subject to change due to the school nurses being in to administer Covid Vaccines.
Students have been given revision resources to help them prepare for these mocks, as well as having access to Seneca (science), Hegarty (maths) and all their previous session slides on google classrooms.
Last week Crew Anoa’i, with the help of some of our friends from Crew Ali, took on the task of degunging our school. We had a week of cleaning up, making sure our school was clear of rubbish and ready for session time.
On Monday morning, we took our turn to litter pick around the school grounds. We quickly gathered the equipment from reception and headed out to the back field. The grass was wet and there was a chill in the air. The whole crew took turns to use the pickers and collect as much rubbish as possible. We moved with great pace and found many different things on our journey around the field, including a large tub of ice cream!
Throughout the week, we ensured our crew room was spotless for others to use. We tucked the chairs under after using them and we sanitised the tables. We also cleared the room of any lost property and bits of rubbish left from the previous day.
On Friday morning, we went into ‘degunge mode’. This included us carrying out our weekly class pack check. Everyone in our crew has a ‘degunge’ duty, where they count and check all of the equipment in our crew’s class pack.
Once this was complete, we then moved onto tidying up our library. A handful of our crew took charge with this task, ensuring all of the portfolio folders were stacked appropriately in neat rows. They finished this task in record time and joined the rest of us in our crew room, to help sort the lost property.
Sorting the lost property included us taking all of the lost items out of the box, taking a photograph of the items and then folding them back up to be placed in the box once again. As there were a lot of lost items this past week, all hands were on deck. We even had a system in place to speed up the process. We had Jacob, Woody, James, Fin and Denim on unpacking duty. Then Nikodem, April and Thea on photograph duty. Moving onto the next step, we had Zach H, Faith, Lucie-Mae and Zach M on folding duty. To finish the process, we had our friends from Crew Ali (Ruby, Ruben, Charlie and Caiden) on packing duty. With this amazing team, we managed to complete all of our degunge duties in just 15 minutes! That’s a record for Crew Anao’i.
The last step of our degunge process was to sanitise the tables and put the chairs up on to the tables. This then allowed Miss Mitchell to hoover the room after we had gone home. Then our crew room was truly spotless!
We have thoroughly enjoyed the degunge process and wish to continue this next term.
Don’t forget to check the latest Lost Property post on our website to see all of the lost items. Remember to claim your lost belongings before Friday 5th November.
This time, the beautiful work has come from E25 Explorer in Science!
Explorer have been working hard on understanding DNA – And these are just some examples of the Craftsmanship and Quality of learning taking place in Mr V’s classroom this morning.
This is an example of a quality diagram from Kris of a DNA Nucleotide – a building block of our DNA.
And some beautiful examples of the double helix that DNA molecules form, from Lucie, Billy, Faith, Lewis and Caiden !
Students this week have been given their own copy of the revision guide for our History exam board OCR B SHP History. All students should have named their copy so that if they are misplaced they can be returned. Students are encouraged to annotate and highlight the guide as they carry out their revision.
The revision guide has a number of different topics, however, students will need to focus on the following sections for revision:
The Elizabethans
The People’s Heath
Living under Nazi Rule
The locations of these topics can be found in the contents page. We would recommend in general students start by revising The People’s Health as well as focusing on page 88 in order to prepare for the upcoming assessment in lessons.
If any student has been absent when these revision guides were handed out, they can see myself or Mrs Hannam directly and we will make sure they get their copy.
A further revision guide focusing on the Viking Expansion will be issued to students in the coming weeks.
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.
Today again Scott Faulkner from New College delivered a presentation to our year 10&11 cohort. I can now confirm that there is an opportunity for all our C24 & C25 students from both schools to attend the NCD taster day on the 27th September.
Could all students complete the form below for the taster day at New College on Monday 27th September. They need to choose 3 options and then a 4th standby. This information needs to be completed by Monday and prospectuses have been shared. The links to the college for both taster day options and the online prospectus are below.
Please encourage your students to choose sessions they think they will enjoy or are intrigued by rather than in friendship groups, this is an important opportunity to try out before they enrol. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to email me. Crew Leaders will also be able to support and advise.
On the day we will be picked up by a coach at XP schools and taken to New College, we need to ensure all students leave from XP. Lunch is provided by college which I am excited about. They will attend 3 sessions and return to school by the usual finish time.
C26 (Y9) across both schools have made a the first steps toward achieving their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award!
Students, with the support and guidance of dedicated DofE Leaders and Crew Leaders, will spend time each week working on a programme of activities which include:
Skills: students will be undertaking a 3 month First Aid programme.
Volunteering: students will spend 6 months raising money for their Crew charities, becoming reading mentors to younger students and litter picking around our community.
Physical: 3 months of undertaking any sporting activity done as part of an organised club out of school, or by joining any of the after school clubs which will be launching soon!)
Expedition: planning for and undertaking 2 days/1 night hiking expedition (dependant on Covid restrictions at the time).
By the end of the academic year students should have done enough to have achieved their Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award. Students are expected to achieve all sections of their Bronze award programme unless they have a valid reason not to.
The DofE programme forms a crucial part of the Trust’s Outdoor Curriculum, and we are extremely grateful to the FXP for their continued support and fundraising efforts to ensure that we are able to purchase the Bronze welcome packs and enrol every student onto the DofE award scheme. The welcome packs will be delivered to your home addresses after students have registered on the eDofE app and include a handy discount card for outdoor specialist shops!
If you have any questions specifically about the Bronze award, please contact your child’s Crew Leader, or you can contact me (Angella Parker) direct: [email protected]
*Just a note to add we have plans in place for C24 and C25 to complete the expedition element of their DofE award later this year!
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.
