This afternoon three members of Crew Young delivered their final Student-Led Conference of the current academic year. Isabel, Ella and Aaron shared their learning and progress with their guests, and they found the process to be academically rigorous as they were at times challenged to evidence their assertions. All three were a credit to their parents and have set the standard for others to follow. Well done Isabel, Ella and Aaron
Last week Crew Young began to prepare for their final round of Student-Led Conferences of the current academic year. Following the success of their recent Presentations of Learning for work completed in HUMS and the quality of their final products that are nearing completion in STEAM, it promises to be a very positive and comprehensive appraisal of their learning this term.
Further details will be circulated nearer the time, and as before, we are looking at the quality of students’ portfolios and the content and delivery of their presentations.
Crew Young were delighted with their first place position on the “work hard” HOWLs leaderboard that was shared with X24 and X25 / Year 7 and Year 8 students in Community Meeting last week! This is full vindication and recognition of all the collective effort that they are putting into their learning expeditions presently, and I am justly proud of each and every one of them. Great news Crew Young! As we “wind up” (as opposed to “wind down”) towards the end of term we are determined to push ourselves even harder…..for we’re convinced that we can exceed a 0.3 increase next time!
Towards the end of last week we explored the possible reasons why our position on the “be kind” leaderboard is not yet where we would wish it to be and – having identified the issues that may have influenced our current rating – Crew Young are making a collective effort and holding each other to account for ensuring that we raise our game in this area.
We spent one session on a “drawing twins” activity. This is a useful exercise that Crew Leaders themselves engaged with during the new staff induction programme. Essentially it is an opportunity to practise listening and develop oracy skills, to explore misinterpretations and frustrations when working on a task where you are allowed neither to give nor to receive feedback. We then compared our outline sketches with the original and then changed the rules to allow for deeper questioning and clarification opportunities in “round two”. The improvement in outcomes was self-evident! Effective and meaningful feedback, phrased with compassion and enacted upon, was the driving force and determining factor behind the success of Austin as he drafted and re-drafted his famous butterfly……
Despite the very short week due to the Easter Bank Holidays, Crew Young still found time to engage in some creative artwork yesterday, in a morning session led by Ella on the theme of mindfulness. Crew members were invited to select a piece of music of personal significance to them, and this played in the background whilst the artwork was being produced.
Ella’s session followed other student-led sessions on table tennis and baking. Thanks Ella!
What do 20 balloons, a roll of sellotape and a length of string have to do with being Crew? This week Crew Young grappled with producing a free-standing balloon tower in just 20 minutes from start to finish. Over-exuberance with blowing up (to bursting) some balloons cost one group valuable centimetres over their opponents, as they had fewer balloons with which to create their tower.
Watch how we did it below…..
Today’s Crew Young was led very competently by Alesha. I really must appreciate her for her detailed planning and delivery of a baking session that everyone enjoyed and took part in. Alesha selected a cookie recipe, mindful of the time limits, calculated a cost price and went shopping on behalf of 12 other students…..showing skills that students in year 9 at XP School are currently developing on their Duke of Edinburgh programme. Thank you Alesha, we loved the session!
Today Crew Young were tasked with selecting a piece of recent work which best represents their adherence to our HOWLs, and/or progress against MEGs, and/or of which they are particularly proud. In a similar way to our Student-Led Conferences, students were then encouraged to share and articulate their learning, as a focus of Academic Crew, explaining how they had shown particular resilience or where they had produced work of notable craftsmanship and quality.
Dominic chose his Macbeth assignment because: “Sir said it’s the best piece of work you’ve ever done“.
Keisha also chose her Macbeth piece: “although I found it frustrating, I enjoyed it a lot and spent quite a bit of time on it“.
George was most proud of answering questions to a very high grade on his HUMS test, which considerably exceeds his MEG.
Aaron shared his work on how characters were influenced in Macbeth, whilst Adam surprised us with his technical terms used to articulate his choice of maths as: “I am most proud of performing inverse operations to find the missing number in calculations“.
Lewis was delighted that he achieved the highest grade in HUMS, as it is a grade that considerably exceeds his MEG.
A very positive and encouraging academic crew check-in from Crew Young – well done everybody!
The concept of students as leaders of their own learning permeates everything we do at XP East. This week Young’s student-led Crew session was centred around a table tennis tournament. Thanks to Louie, supported by Aaron, for setting out the equipment, explaining the rules, organising the pairings and collating the scores. Quite by coincidence Louie eventually won the tournament.
Other students in Crew Young are planning their student-led sessions – with baking and mindfulness featuring amongst the ideas currently being considered. Thanks Louie!!!
When do you stop being XP? In our Community Meeting last week our students volunteered several answers, but the consensus was that our character traits are considered as being for life. We certainly do not stop being XP at the end of term, nor after school on Fridays in the Mountain Biking Club…..
Our “regular riders” loan bikes built with craftsmanship and quality, they show courage when riding more technical trails, they exhibit compassion and integrity towards each other and they respect other road and trail users.
We use GPS tracking technology to monitor our cumulative miles ridden, and – coached by our professional cycling instructor Chris Green – we ride cycle paths, quiet roads and local woodland. No two rides are exactly the same, but sample routes are below…..
During the week when Professor Dame Sally Davies, the UK Government’s Chief Medical Officer, issued advice on screen usage time, Crew Young decided to keep an audit for 7 days to record their own use of technology. We started with a silent conversation protocol to consider: “what devices do I access?” and “my use of screen time? and next week we’ll blog the results.
Later during the week Crew Young visited Mr Smith’s Y8 Crew and Mrs Townson’s Y7 Crew to deliver a workshop on “The method of loci”. Feedback from staff and students was extremely positive!
