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.
Crew Finch have spent the week preparing for the first Student Led Conferences of Y11. They will be reflecting on their Y10 mock exam results and sharing how they are preparing for the next round of mocks in November. Their presentations will also be focussing on the bigger picture of what they need to achieve in order to move onto the next stage of their learning journey, post-16 – and how they’re going to get there.
I’m really looking forward to welcoming Crew parents back into school for the first face-to-face SLCs in over a year. I sent out an email with the booking form link last week; if you’ve yet to book your slot please do so.
With the next round of mocks just a few weeks away, it is encouraging to hear that some students have already started revising. We will spend time in Crew looking at different revision techniques to find out what works best for everyone. Meanwhile, Crew have shared their revision tips with each other: the most popular method so far seems to be watching videos to reinforce learning.
I think that the time spent reflecting on their Y10 mock exam results along with last week’s taster day at New College has motivated Crew to really think more about how they are going to succeed, and this has been reflected in how they’ve been working in class. I’m pleased to see lots of praises for working hard and getting smart being put on the praise form from subject teachers for all Crew members.
It’s been a fantastic start to the year and our Y11 learning journey is right on track. Let’s hope it stays that way 🙂
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 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.
I can’t quite believe that we’re ready to begin the final chapter of our Crew Finch adventure. I’m sure this chapter will include many more exhilarating twists and turns as we step onto the final road of this epic journey, overcoming obstacles and celebrating triumphs, which will ultimately lead Crew to GCSE success. We’ll end as we started: Together (I do love a happy ending!)
We’ve spent our first few days together regrouping and refocusing on Crew. We’ve had some to time to reflect on our Y10 results and map out what our Y11 learning journey will look like. This hasn’t been a solo activity; we know we can’t get there without the support Crew so we’ve been focussing on our Guiding Question:
How can we can everyone to the top of their mountain?
This generated a very mature and compassionate discussion about how everyone’s journey to the summit will look and feel different, but we need to respect each other’s journey and be on hand to support those who need it and respectfully challenge those who may be holding others (or themselves!) back. Crew have also created some amazing learning journey maps, which I will share with you next week.
We also had some time in sports hall playing dodgeball and even snuck in a bit of yoga! And can you spot our new crew pet?? (I’ve pledged to buy a souvenir from every place we visit together this year and will raffle them off at the end of the year!)
On Tuesday we travelled to Flamborough Head, where we hiked from North Landing to South Landing. This featured as the highlight of the week for most of us, especially as we were lucky enough to spot a cove full of seals! We reminisced about some of our other hikes and Malham Cove is still a firm favourite!
The nicest thing about this week for me has got to be the fact that it’s “business as usual” at school (albeit with some extra precautions in place). It’s been absolute joy to see different year groups mixing at break times. Y11s talking to our new Y7s at break times. Lots of excited chatter and activity around the school. What a buzz!
I’m also excited that we can start having parents back into school and I can’t wait to see you all soon at our first face-to-face SLCs for a while! I’ll contact you all soon with more details and other key dates for your diaries.
I’m writing our end of year blog whilst self-isolating, which is not where I was expecting to be! I know that members of Crew have also been told to self isolate, so it’s a very strange end to Y10 for Crew Finch. Maybe not as strange as our last day of Y9, though…
However, we were lucky enough to be at school for our end of term breakfast yesterday, where I did get to take our traditional end of term selfie! I can’t believe next year’s selfie will be our last one together as Crew… We’re already starting to think about what we can do to celebrate end of term next year, with a request to go back to Malham Cove to specifically recreate one of first ever Crew photos:
So, despite it being another year of lockdowns, restrictions, in-school bubbles and online learning, Crew Finch have so much to be proud of:
As much as I’m looking forward to the summer holidays, I’m already excited for getting back together on Wednesday 1st September for 3 days of Crew activities. Let’s get ready to smash Y11!
Wishing all of Crew and their families a Summer full of sunshine and smiles.
Mrs Parker 🙂
We are super excited to be taking C24 out on fieldwork on Thursday, 1st July.
We have arranged to take the whole of Y10 to Shrewsbury Prison, to support our final expedition of the year: Karma Police – have we got justice right?
Shrewsbury Prison was decommissioned in 2013 and now provides an “interactive prison experience” for visitors. It was also recently used as the location for BBC’s drama ‘Time’, which gave a harrowing picture of prison life.
We’re not giving too much away about the activities we’ve got planned for students, but we promise not to leave any of them locked in the cells 😉
We are booked in at the prison at 9.30am meaning that we do have to set off between 6.45am-7am at the latest. If this is a problem for anyone, please let your Crew Leader know as soon as possible.
We will be leaving the prison at approx 1pm, so hope to be back at school between 3.30-4pm, traffic dependant. We will update socials on the day.
Please make sure students wear comfortable clothes and take a jacket as it can become cold in the prison and sensible shoes. Students will also need a packed lunch and sufficient water for the day. Please don’t pack any products containing nuts in packed lunches as we are a nut-free school! If your child is in receipt of free school meals, a packed lunch will be provided for them.
Mock exams are in full flow and Crew Finch have been working so very hard! We’ve been trying to keep our Crew time quite relaxed this week but it has, of course, been dominated with exam talk – be it comparing answers or discussing how easy or hard the previous days exams were.
We’re always up for finding ways to make revision a bit more fun, so today we played History Hangman. The usual rules applied but with an added twist: whoever chose the word had to end their turn by explaining how that word or phrase linked in with either of our two History exam topics: The People’s Health or Living under Nazi Rule.
Top Marks to Kenzie for ‘hanging’ the rest of Crew with his choice, John Snow. Kenzie then went on to remind us that Snow was responsible for identifying the water source responsible for a major Cholera outbreak in Broad Street in 1854, by plotting cases on a map of the area. The water pump was removed and cholera infections immediately dropped.
Crew have been absolutely amazing throughout this first week of mock exams. This is their first experience of sitting in an exam room and having to work under exam conditions. Having to stay still and quiet for up to 1 hour 45 minutes at a time is probably more difficult for them to manage than the exam content itself! As ever, they are making me proud 🙂
Here’s an update on Crew Finch’s 500 Mile Challenge for Firefly.
We have pledged to walk, run or cycle a total of 500 miles over a 3 month period – find out more in this previous blog post.
We’ve totted up the miles for March and I’m delighted to announce that we have already smashed our target with a combined total of 509 miles done in the first month of the challenge!
Massive shout out to Noah for clocking up the most mileage, by walking and cycling a total of 167 miles – that’s the same distance from Doncaster to Cardiff (although Noah stuck to walking around the lake and woods near his house 😉 )
When we first spoke about setting the mileage target we thought 500 miles was going to be tough for us. But Crew have really pulled together here to reach the target and to raise much needed funds for our Crew charity, Firefly.
Even though we’ve reached our target, we’re going to carry on walking until the end of the challenge to see just how far we can go together.
Thank you for the donations so far. We are still a little way off our £100 target so all donations are gratefully received and will really push us to put a few extra miles in.
Here’s the link to our Virgin Money Fundraising Page.
Thank you 🙂
I’ve lost count of the number of ‘Crew Finch are back!’ style blogs I’ve written, but here’s another one! We are (finally) back together in Crew for – can you believe it – the first time in 2021!! Fingers crossed that this time, we are back for good…
What’s struck me this time round are the good vibes coming from Crew who seem genuinely happy to be back at school with their friends and are even, dare I say it, enjoying being back in ‘proper’ lessons. Although I can’t praise the quality of our online provision and our students’ engagement during these challenging times enough, there’s nothing like the real thing!
Understandably, some of our Crew were anxious about being back in school so we spent the first couple of days together just doing what we do best: pulling together to help alleviate some of those worries, giving each other a safe space in Crew to talk about how we feel about things (with no judgement) and just generally helping each other settle back in to our new school routine.
We also reconnected with some speed dating! After not seeing each other for over 3 months, it was good to spend 1:1 time with everyone, finding out more about what makes us tick by asking deep, probing, philosophical questions 😉 such as:
I won’t be looking at some of our Crew in quite the same way after the answers they gave to some of the questions!
I enjoyed taking a step back and just watching them all interact during this speed dating activity. It made me smile to see them laughing with – or, in some cases, at – each other and I feel reassured that, whatever life throws at us, we always find our way back to Crew.
Some fantastic work going on- as shown by the appreciation from staff and students within crew Churchill, for the work around student led crew sessions and self assessment of HOWLs!
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