That’s the question I posed to Crew on Friday afternoon (and no, I didn’t sing it ‘Miranda’ style!)

Apart from a few exceptions – for instance, Brendan being proud of scoring a goal with his left foot and Aden being proud of exceeding his MEG in his latest Math’s assessment – Crew were mostly proud of their completed propaganda posters.

And so they should be!  Take a look at the craftsmanship and quality on display here:

Year 8 have been working on these posters as their final product for their current HUMS expedition, ‘Making Your Mind Up.’  The aim of the poster is to highlight how we can avoid being manipulated by all the information we’re bombarded with everyday, whether that’s from the media or from posts shared on social networking sites.

Noah said that he was really proud of the hard work he’d put into his poster to have it completed on time, especially as he’d missed a couple of the planning lessons because he was taking part in a dancing competition.

Tom said he was proud of his work because he doesn’t really like art but feels he has produced a quality poster (I agree!) He persevered when he faced problems, particularly when it came to the detailing on his social network logos.

Mackenzie, Bryn and Thomas all said that they were proud of their posters because they listened to and acted on feedback from their peers to improve their first drafts.

Amazing work, Crew Finch! I’m particularly proud of the craftsmanship and quality evident in all your work and can’t wait to see them on display.You have every right to be proud of yourselves and the progress you’re making across all subjects.

Inspired by Crew Mandela’s “What is going on the world?” session, we took the idea and made it our own!

We spent Wednesday morning exploring the BBC News website and reporting back on the stories that caught our eyes, as well as exploring how each story made us think and feel.

We noticed that the all but one of the stories we read and discussed were definitely bad news stories, the only exception being Noah’s excellent story choice about a determined African boy’s journey to the Artic.

We explored how the news stories and general headlines made us feel: Crew used words like ‘depressed’, ‘anxious’, ‘sad’, and ‘scared’. We left Crew thinking that only bad things were happening in the world and, whilst it’s important that we recognise that, we really needed to look for some good in the world!

So, for today, I set Crew the challenge of finding some good news stories to see what a difference it makes to read and discuss solely positive news articles.

Here’s a selection of our feel good stories, including our favourite about the Waving Granny!

After 12 Years of Waving to Students From Her Window, Watch Her Reaction to 400 Kids Saying Goodbye

The people who are trying to reunite a divided island

Dog receives 500 tennis balls for his birthday

Russia agrees to free 100 captive whales

Protesting climate change in Preston

Beavers are now protected in Scotland

Girl with backwards legs walks for the first time thanks to generosity of strangers

Louis Tomlinson helps Widower with his bucket list

Snow Leopards

World’s first plastic free supermarket opens in The Netherlands

We noticed that all these stories had several features in common, such as resilience, kindness and determination. They all inspired us in some way.

So, how did we feel after reporting back on today’s happy news? Happy, hopeful, and, as Brendan said, “optimistic for the future!”

I’m not saying that we should avoid or ignore everything bad that’s happening in the world. In fact, we discussed how keeping up-to-date with current affairs makes us more aware of the world around us allowing us to form our own opinions and engage in well-informed conversations.  Thomas made a good point when he said that reading the bad news stories should actually make us think about how we could stop “things like that” happening again.

The purpose of this session was to experience what a difference it makes to see and read solely positive articles (which are a lot harder to find on mainstream media sites). We certainly left Crew in a more upbeat mood than the day before, eager to share our happy news!

Finally, I’m a big fan of The Happy Newspaper – a quarterly publication that celebrates all that’s good in the world.  I can’t wait to share the next edition with Crew.

We regularly check in with each other regarding extended study, particularly on hand-in days.  However, I had noticed that the same Crew members were repeatedly not handing in their extended study and thought it was about time that we tackled this as a Crew, especially as we have a collective responsibility for our HOWLs grades.

We looked at the homework log together and were quite shocked to discover that only 4 members of our Crew have a 100% hand-in rate!  We do, of course, take into account valid reasons for not being able to hand in homework, but still agreed that this needs to be improved upon.  Time to pull your socks up, Crew Finch!

Firstly, we discussed why extended study is so important.  Not only does it help us to increase our knowledge and understanding of specific subjects, it also helps to build good habits, revision skills and shows that we are taking responsibility for our own learning.

Some members of Crew shared how they managed their extended study.  Thomas said that he liked to do his over a number of days, whereas Tom always does his on a Sunday afternoon.  We discussed what to do if we don’t understand the task, instead of just not doing it (check with the teacher who set it; ask a student; come to extended study).

We also discussed where we could get help if working at home was difficult: school runs an extended study session after school (3.15-4.30) Monday-Thursday.  So in other words, there is no excuse not to get the work done!

We’ll continue to monitor extended study hand-in rate.  I will also be contacting several parents over the next week to ask them to attend a meeting with their son/daughter to discuss their poor hand-in rate.

After absolutely storming up the HOWLs league tables this term, we have taken some time to reflect on our grades and discuss how we achieved them (‘what worked well’) and what we could’ve done to improve even more (‘even better ifs.’)  As ever, there has been some real insightful, honest and mature reflections from Crew.  For example, Noah stated that although he was very proud of Crew HOWLs and his attendance/homework hand-in rate, he realised that he could do more to raise his academic HOWLS by sharing his learning more in class.

We also discussed how we need to up our game even more this term!  Crew have set their own targets for this term, both in terms of the HOWLS they want to achieve and improvements to their learning behaviours.  We will check-in on these during our academic crew sessions, and hopefully – with the support of Crew – everyone will reach, or exceed, their personal targets.

In other news, Ali kindly offered to lead a Crew baking session last week, but with a bit of a twist: each team would be judged Bake-Off style by myself, Miss Haughey and Mr Smith!

We judged the cupcakes on appearance, taste and decoration.  There was some questionable use of food colouring, but Team Mountain Climbers (Megan, Aden and Bryn) presented us with a chocolate delight and were crowned Star Bakers.

Massive appreciations to Ali for organising, for Crew for working so well together in the kitchen, especially during the cleaning-up process (trust me; it was messy!), and to my fellow judges (it’s a tough job, and all that…)

It might just look like rows of numbers to you, but to me it’s proof that the work we’ve been doing in Academic Crew around our habits of work and learning is paying off!

I’ve had a sneak peek at the latest assessment data for Crew Finch, and I’m pleased to say that there has been a massive improvement in the grades awarded to our Crew members for getting smart, working hard and being kind across Humanities, Science and Maths.  I’m also pleased to report that the Crew average in all areas has risen since the last data drop in November (assuming my maths is correct!)

I’m going to wait for Mr Portman’s “big reveal” before posting our results, but let’s just say it’s looking good for Crew Finch!

But, do you know what? Wherever Crew Finch appear on the year group league table, I do not doubt the effort they have all been putting in, both in Crew and in classes.  The data tells me all I need to know and I’m super proud of them all 🙂

During this last week of term, Year 8 students have been busy preparing for and delivering their STEAM Presentation of Learning, as well as going on fieldwork to Leeds University where they attended seminars and presented to medical students there.  We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: we don’t wind down at the end of term, we wind up!

However, we took the opportunity in Crew to explore ways in which we could ‘wind down’ a little bit by having a yoga session.  We began with a discussion about why yoga is beneficial.  We are quite a sporty crew – we are a mix of runners, dancers, footballers, MMA fighters, rugby and basketball players! – so we all appreciate the physical benefits of stretching, strengthening and improving our flexibility. However, yoga also helps us to improve our focus and to persevere, as well as encouraging us to practice compassion to others and to ourselves.

We worked through a simple Sun Salutation flow (with a cheeky Warrior pose thrown in for those who wanted a bit more of a challenge!) ending with a 5 minute guided relaxation. We then circled up and discussed how yoga had made us feel.  The boys especially enjoyed it, with Thomas and Mackenzie both commenting that yoga was actually a lot harder than they thought it would be (the grunts and moans I heard from them whilst getting into poses confirmed this!) Aden particularly enjoyed the relaxation at the end, saying that he loved the bit where he was instructed to breathe in peace and relaxation, and breathe out anything that was bothering him. He felt “hypnotised” by the end of it.

We will be doing more yoga and mindfulness activities next term, and I’ve already had a request to do a Warrior sequence – seems to be a favourite pose!

In a nod to Valentine’s Day, we have spent the week sharing some love!

On Monday, we had a “speed dating session” to find out more about each other.  Crew were set the challenge to find out more about each other in 45 second intervals, including what their favourite book was, what they were most proud of, and what advice they would give to someone to make them feel happier, reporting back to us all at the end of the session.

On Tuesday, we had a bit of a “self love” session, so we all had to think about what made us unique and special.  We’ve created a lovely display of peacocks, and I hope Crew will refer back to these when they feel like they need a bit of a confidence boost.

Thursday was all about sharing the love, so we made these little appreciation cards to hand out to friends or family.  I was particularly touched to receive my own little Valentine’s Day gift and message from Crew – they know the way to my heart is *always* through chocolate!

What a lovely way to spend the week, but we need to remember that showing appreciation to others and being kind to other people (and ourselves!) is not just for Valentine’s Day – it’s for life!

Much love from Crew Finch x