This week Crew Young have grappled with the concept of Memory Palaces and employed the method of loci to facilitate the retention and recall of lists of seemingly unrelated words. Beginning with watching the iconic, but already outdated “Shift Happens“, we considered the exponential global increase in data and information, and what we might reasonably be expected to remember at school, before sharing techniques that we already use, e.g. mnemonics, to recall academic concepts.

The method of loci (plural of locus = Latin for place) centres around the idea of visiting a special or significant memorable place in your mind, and “pinning” ideas or words to these locations, that are then subsequently “visited” in your mind to extract the information.

Later last week we experimented by applying the method of loci technique to improve our memory skills within the context of the XP East School site. We were given a series of twelve random words to remember, and on average we were able to recall around half of them. We then heard a story that included each of the twelve words found in school in a very creative and abstract manner, and on average we remembered around 90% of them.

The story will be familiar to our members of staff, especially to Mr Said (the author) as it featured on our last Staff Planning Day, and Crew Young will be working to introduce this technique (and the wacky story!) to other Crew groups shortly.

Alliteration is one of many literary devices that can be found in HUMS work archived in expedition portfolios. This week in academic crew, Crew Young have been reviewing their learning, and collating work stored in this very valuable document.

Expedition portfolios provide documentary evidence of progress over time, of our students’ ability to draft and re-draft their work following constructive feedback from staff and students that is kind, specific and helpful. They are readily available to external visitors and fundamental to our Student-Led Conferences as they provide the basis upon which our students are empowered to articulate their learning, progress and academic attainment.

Complemented by digital portfolios, our students’ expedition portfolios will become increasingly important as Crew Young approach the beginning of Year 9 and face the challenges of “passage”. As Ron Berger observes in his book “Leaders of their Own Learning”:

“Creating a portfolio and sharing it with a caring but critical audience is a powerful rite of passage for students. It expands the impact of common school passage traditions…to include ones that celebrate academic growth and achievement, putting scholarship for every student at the centre. Passage presentations with portfolios give students the opportunity to demonstrate their achievement and growth and underscore the link among assessment, learning and student engagement”.

Crew Young have now finalised their academic resolutions and these will be displayed in a prominent place in our Crew room. Discussions around attendance, punctuality, character traits, and our Habits of Work and Learning are routine, and it is through these discussions that we are beginning to realise that just as staff have very high expectations of us, then in turn we have increasingly high expectations of ourselves….and of each other.

To witness the degree of compassion that Crew members extend to their peers, whilst also listening as they hold each other to account, at times when needed, is a unique and privileged position to be in. It is due to the quality of relationships that we enjoy within Crew and with staff that we can have difficult conversations sometimes, but always with compassion, integrity and respect.

We continue to grow – in pride, confidence and in character – and whilst we are far from becoming the best version of ourselves, we have started out on the journey. We’ve hit the ground running…..and we’ve no intention of stopping. These are our pledges:

Crew Young are deservedly proud of their first place position on the HOWLs leaderboard, and following our first “data drop” of Year 8 it is clear that we continue to work hard, get smart and be kind. This week in Crew we are considering the merits of framing a weekly, year-based, or termly guiding question to focus our minds on our Habits of Work and Learning.

Crew Young have made a tremendous start to term three in 2019 and we’re delighted that we are well-represented on the weekly positive conduct log. Evidently, we have yet to break our academic resolutions of 2019…..

Crew Young got off to a blistering start to 2019, by tracing the origins of New Year’s Resolutions. We discovered this widely-held tradition dates back to Babylonian and Roman times, and has been linked to the reimbursement of monies owed to others and to promises made to Janus, the Roman God. On the left is an example of an early twentieth century New Year’s resolution postcard.

We have scrutinised Crew attendance data, and HOWLs grades to identify who gets smart, works hard and is kind to others. Whilst Crew Young were justly proud of their first place position in the Crew HOWLs comparison table, Lewis warned against the dangers of complacency, and pointed out that we could score even more highly.

This lead to a discussion about how we might answer our guiding question: “how can I hit the ground running in the first week back?”, and to the creation of a personal academic resolution that will be reviewed – and if necessary refined – and that we will need to consider when we appraise our performance in our next Student-Led Conference. Here are a selection of academic resolutions:

This week started with Crew Young’s completion of their “Earth, Wind and Fire” tree plaques, jointly with Crew Churchill, in our well-equipped technology workshop. The week ended with the official planting of the trees, together with the students’ plaques, in the grassed area adjacent to the perimeter fence. A very special appreciation for Mrs Duffield who not only gave master classes in the production of the plaques, but who also braved the elements this morning to help our students to curate their final product.

Between Monday and Friday we also dedicated time to silent reading and spent yesterday’s Crew session reviewing the reasons why we adopted “Crew Young” as our moniker. Crew Young lived up to the expectation that we do indeed think differently!

As Crew Leader I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of our Crew Young parents for their continued support of the school, to wish them a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and Happy New Year.

We start all over again at 8.30 a.m. on Monday 7th January 2019.

This week in Crew Young we have been encouraged to consider our perception of ourselves, and others’ perception of us, versus reality. This is in order to reflect on our adherence to the HOWLs in an accurate and informed manner. Whilst Alesha finalised her preparations for her SLC this evening, the rest of Crew Young looked at Extended Study completion, as well as other factors that directly influence our attainment. We graded ourselves on the bullseye chart and then challenged each other for a rationale.