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 in crew, we have been sharing work from our current STEAM expedition, ‘High Voltage!’
We talked about different pieces of work which we felt showed mastery of our learning so far.
Ben read out a piece of writing which showed an excellent understanding of the national grid. He said it showed excellence because he had taken into account the advantages and disadvantages of different types of cables.
Adam explained about how he had worked with Denzil, playing a memory game to remember the names and roles of electrical symbols / components. Adam graded his understanding secure as he achieved 100% on his test. Well done, Adam!
Theone showed her answers to different ‘Charge Problems’ which were challenging questions about the positive and negative charges of protons. The questions got progressively harder. Theone achieved 13 out of 14. Excellent!
Alyssa and Ruby shared their written responses for one of the immersion activities – Capital Punishment. They were both proud of their work and the arguments they had written to show whether they were for or against it.
So, Crew Churchill are certainly powering on with their STEAM work. Well done!
Over the last two weeks, Crew Churchill have been analysing our recent grades for academic attainment and HoWLs.
We were delighted to find out that all of our Crew’s HoWLs grades have improved. So, well done, Us!
We are now busy making notices, wonders and writing questions about our data.
From this, we will be talking to staff to help us set targets and make pledges to help us progress even further!
We’re on it!
During Crew today, Crew Finch went down to the sports hall to have a mini bench ball tournament against Crew Mandela.
We won 3-2 and I think this is because we pulled together as a crew and communicated well. In addition to this, members of our Crew would pass the ball to someone else if they felt like they had the ball a lot without being told to do so. We supported the weaker players by ensuring the ball was passed to them once the stronger players were on the bench.
A big well done for Crew Finch for showing what we are capable of doing when we pull together as a team, and now we know just how much we are capable of, we have set the standards even higher!
These Crew events are important as they help us to bond together more and work together as a whole Crew. No one gets left behind.
After the tournament, we circled up in Crew to discuss what worked well for our team. Aden said that us winning today shows how far we’ve come as a Crew, and we wouldn’t have done so well this time last year. We all agreed that we have definitely grown stronger as a Crew in Year 8.
On behalf of Crew Finch, I would like to thank Crew Mandela for inviting us into the sports hall.
Written by Megan.
Photos by Dakota.
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!
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 🙂
Crew Mandela have a new protocol for Academic Crew!
All students have their own Academic Research book, each week a topic will be selected by a crew member for students to take home and lead their own learning on extended study tasks set by crew.
This week I chose the first topic and this was based around the STEAM expedition ‘Is knowledge power?’ and static electricity!
The research books have been taken by all members of crew and will form our academic check in on Tuesday. Raven was particularly excited about leading his own research into how lighting can strike in the same place twice and how electrical storms form.
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!!!
You may remember that Crew Finch pledged to work cooperatively to improve their HOWL grades, after the last data drop saw them at the bottom of the school league table (more in this blog post.) . Well, it’s data drop time again and I look forward to seeing how my Crew have done with their academic HOWLs, which are set by their subject teachers.
As Crew Leader, I have the job of assessing them on their Crew HOWLs and – as we’re all in this together – I wanted to see if Crew agreed with my gradings. I gave Crew the opportunity to give their opinions on what each person should be graded, based on what they specifically bring to Crew, including:
I was quite reassured to hear that the grades they would award to one another more or less matched the ones I had already given them. It was lovely to hear them talk about how they thought individual Crew members had improved, and advise on how they could continue to do so.
Whatever results we get, we will continue to focus on both academic improvement and personal growth, because this is what Crew does best: we encourage each other to become better versions of ourselves 🙂
