Today we received the certificate of appreciation, below, in respect of Crew Young’s recent donation to Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity – our chosen Crew charitable cause – in lieu of Secret Santa this year. Thanks, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.
To add to the plethora of appreciations made by E24 / Y10 students in our Community Meeting yesterday morning, is a very special appreciation that I would like to make to Crew Young. They decided that they would donate the money that they would have spent on Secret Santa this year to our Crew’s chosen charitable cause, which is Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity, based in Sheffield.
Their kind donation of £40.00 in total will be used wisely by this very worthwhile charity, to offer some dignity, compassion and support to patients in South Yorkshire and beyond that suffer the physical and emotional consequences of this dreadful disease. It’s a cause that I regularly support, so I’m really grateful to my Crew for their generosity, and for thinking of others at this time of year.
Until a letter of appreciation can be compiled by the Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity fundraising team, I’ve attached a receipt from their clerical staff in recognition of this gesture.
Thank you!
A massive appreciation to our Y10 families who donated items and gifts for our Christmas Hampers. Here are Silver DofE students Mackenzie and Thomas sorting out the boxes, which will be delivered to St John The Evangelist Church in Balby and The Trussell Trust at Christ Church next week.
We’re still accepting donations, but anything received after Monday 15th December will be donated to our school’s Kindness Boxes instead.
Thank you.
With thoughts turning to this festive time of year, and as we slowly wind up towards the end of term (next Friday 18th Nov) and dig out our Christmas jumpers for our charity event this Friday, Crew Young spent Mindful Monday today making snowflakes, using resources and an instructional video provided by Miss Taylor courtesy of the National History Museum. Appreciations to Miss Taylor for her contribution to our Crew!
A series of six at first perhaps seemingly disconnected words: thoughts, words, actions, habits, character and destiny should be read from bottom to top and not, as is convention, from top to bottom.
Just over three years ago Crew Young and their E24 / Y7 year group would join a weekly Community Meeting by sitting amongst their peers on the bottom row of steps in the heart of our school. As they then progressed through the year, and up the steps into Y8, they were encouraged to turn their thoughts into words, by making public apologies, appreciations and stands, and upwards and onto the Y9 step then their words became actions as they honoured their pledges, held each other to account, acted on kind, specific and helpful feedback, and strived not to be passengers in classes.
Due to Covid-19 we’ve not yet been able to meet as a whole school community, but if we were able to do so then Crew Young would now routinely occupy the fourth row of steps – habits – in our Community Meetings.
The focus of recent work in Academic Crew on “Thoughtful Thursdays” has been to support our students’ ownership of their first round of HOWLs “snapshot” data, and their analysis and interpretation of how their Habits of Work and Learning have been assessed by teaching and support staff. We began the process whilst in self-isolation, by completing a “HOWLs predictions” chart. This was then compared with students’ actual HOWLs grades data, and some of their reflections were captured on a Padlet wall.
The next steps will be to work collaboratively to collate student and Crew Leader pledges, that will then facilitate the creation of a Crew Narrative for success. As you can see, Crew Young averages out at around 75% OK or higher rating for work hard and get smart, and a really pleasing 81.8% rating for “be kind”. For Crew Young compassion remains above all.
We are now in a position to begin to ask: “what is the data telling us?” around the 27.3% rated concern in work hard and get smart, and to explore the correlation between Habits of Work and Learning and academic success, as we continue to grow in character and ultimately seek to fulfil our destiny. This process has begun……
Our Y10 Silver DofE students have been unable to undertake their usual charity fundraising activities this year, so they’ve decided to create food hampers for our local food banks.
We’re all very aware of the financial impact the various lockdown/tier 3 restrictions have had on our community, especially on those who have been furloughed or are self employed and unable to work. So, in addition to the staple non-perishable items (cereals; tinned and packeted foods; tea/coffee/juice) we are specifically asking for donations of those ‘treat’ items that some families may have to go without this year.
For example:
If you are able to contribute, please can you send items in to be passed on to your child’s Crew Leader by Monday 15th December.
The hampers will be donated to St John The Evangelist Church in Balby and The Trussell Trust at Christ Church during the last week of term.
Thank you in advance for your generosity.
Kindness boxes:
The school are also collecting items for our kindness boxes, which we’ll be putting together to support families within our XP Trust. See this blog post for more information and, again, please donate if you can.
Thank you.
#aboveallcompassion
Several centuries ago the Romans observed the connection between mental and physical health – “mens sana in corpore sano” translates from Latin as “a healthy mind in a healthy body” – and more recent research has shown that physical exercise can not only help arrest the decline in cognitive skills amongst older generations, but also boost memory, neurological networking, concentration and mood in younger learners.
Last Friday Crew Young and their E24/Year 10 group were given a choice of physical activities in Crew time, though limited by the need to maintain social distancing wherever possible, they were intended to promote team work and competition with their peers. Most opted for dodge-ball, whilst Lewis and Tom refined their basketball skills. Very impressive!!!!!
E24/Y10 Students in Crew Young were asked recently to select a piece of work of which they are proud, to share this with the others, provide a context for learning, reasons for their choice of work, and outline the next steps. This reflection on their learning and articulation of the process formed part of a weekly academic crew check-in that is known as “Thoughtful Thursday”. Below the photos are the students’ own, unscripted comments on their selection of work: 
Last week Crew Young blended the use of graphic organisers with academic study of other techniques used to help retention and recall of key facts and concepts. We started by pooling our ideas, using the “silent conversation” protocol, whereby in 2 groups we annotated ways and means of fixing knowledge in our long term memory, piggy-backed each other’s ideas before then swapping our notes with the other group so as to silently consider and build upon theirs.
Tried and tested techniques such as graphic organisers, flashcards, mnemonics, spider charts, colour coding were discussed and later we practised creating spider diagrams of things we enjoy doing to see how we might apply this in hums and steam sessions.
Last Friday we began our DofE Silver skills challenge with a full re-boot of the online St. John’s Ambulance First Aid Course, and my favourite photo of compassion so far from Louie shown towards Adam…..
It’s been absolutely brilliant to see Crew Young return to school with such a focused start to their year 10 after months in lock-down! Last week we watched a video that showed the origins of XP School, and how the first year group set the bar……it’s fair to say that at XP East our “Youngsters” are doing the same!
I also asked our Crew for their reflections on their return to school and it’s clear from their comments that they just want things to be back to normal:
“At first, I was excited to see all of my mates, but at the same time, I had a slight worry in my mind of how the norms would be when we return back to school. Overall, I was happy to be back at school and it had exceeded my expectations”.
“To be honest my return on school didn’t make me feel anxious to be mixing with a large group of people at all as during lock-down I still mixed occasionally with people when I could whilst playing basketball. I was more anxious about the fact the GCSEs are coming closer which causes unnecessary stress. However, now that stress has somewhat subsided and isn’t as much of a worry but glad to be at school as it’s a sign things are normalising again”.
“To reflect on my return to school, I wasn’t very worried about coming back because I knew that the guidelines would be followed by school and that I wouldn’t feel unsafe at all…..”.
“Before coming back to school, I was thinking about how it would all work whether it was class or just around school. I was excited to see my friends again but I also wasn’t looking forward to possibly having to keep 2 metres.Now I’m not as concerned about any of this because nothing has really changed other than having to sanitise my hands every time I enter the building”.
“…..During the quarantine, I didn’t meet my school friends even once, and we only really started keeping contact again a couple of weeks before we came back. Despite that, the idea of getting to see my friends was exhilarating after months spent isolated. And finally, I was glad that the ordeal was over. As somebody who was quarantined a week longer than the rest of the UK, I began to feel how tedious lock-down had become by the fourth month. I found myself counting the days until I was back at school again, purely because I longed for some sense of normality, for feeling like a functioning human again. That’s why I was extremely glad that school managed to open”.
We’re back….even stronger than before!
