This is Jeff! Jeff was the creation of Alfie and Adam in Pioneer STEAM expedition ‘Why Me?’
Jeff was the product of genetic inheritance. Pioneer found that some characteristics are controlled by a single gene, such as fur in animals and red-green colour blindness in humans. Each gene might have different forms, and these are called alleles. The monster Jeff shows the dominant and recessive genes in shown in the Phenotypes! Great work Pioneer!
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 decided to buddy-up today to work on their extended study together. I love how keen they are to continue learning outside of formal lesson time, and how they’re all supporting each other to work hard and get smart!
We focussed on the Quotation Explosion task set by Mr Brown – a big appreciation to him for producing a really helpful video guide which we watched and discussed, too!
Just take a look at Noah’s beautiful work:
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:
This morning in Crew Churchill we shared work we have been doing in STEAM so far in our new expedition.
We shared a piece of work we were proud of and told crew key facts we had learnt.
Theone shared her piece of work focusing on the structure of cells. Her work also demonstrated beautiful craftsmanship and quality.
Lewis was proud of his paragraph where he could name and describe some of the bones in the human body.
Kaiden spoke confidently about an experiment he had carried out which investigated how finches had adapted to life on the different islands of the Galapagos, with their beaks adapting depending on the type of food they ate.
Take a look at some of our beautiful work!
We also had a HoWLs check-in and then Crew Churchill used this session to make a pledge about how they are going to drive their learning even further forward throughout this week.
We can’t wait to find out how we have done at our check-in on Friday!
Last week we spent a lot of time exploring how we can Get Smart, as we continue to support each other with our HOWLs. Our particular focus was on our attitude to learning, using the video above to help us recognise the differences between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.
We followed this up with a ‘self-awareness’ task, where we had to list three of our recent successes, and say why we were successful and then two things that we could could have done better, and explore what we could have done differently.
We also discussed some of the fixed mindset phrases we are all guilty of using, and flipped them to be more positive, for example:
I have to say, it was good to see Mackenzie employ some of the tactics and strategies we have spoken about in Crew during a particularly tricky maths session on Friday 🙂
By the end of this week, we will all have a Growth Mindset Action Plan in place, to help us refocus and keep trying instead of giving up when the going gets tough!
Well, it’s fair to say that Crew Churchill have had one of our best weeks ever!
Throughout our first week back, we had to think about the guiding question:
‘How can I hit the ground running?’
After sharing our HoWL grades for Work Hard, Get Smart and Be Kind, we decided we wanted to do even better. We revised the pledges we had made following our SLCs as these are our foci as we move forward.
At the end of the week, we had a HoWLs check-in to see how we are getting on in our different classes.
Take a look:
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…..
The first week of E24 new expedition in STEAM highlighted the beautiful work of crew Mandela. Outstanding work came from Raven posing as his tables manikin to identify the location and name of the major bones in the body. Beth has consistently worked hard all week, with all teachers agreeing her conduct is above a 4.0! Well done Beth! Frida has also displayed fantastic presentation and improvement to work towards her MEG in her STEAM book! Keep it up Frida! In addition to these names, all students in crew Mandela were on the praise conduct form at least once last week. What a week crew Mandela, this week we go again.
What an amazing first week back for Crew Finch, perfectly summed up in this photo… but more about this later!
I for one was happy to return to school after the Christmas break, ready to get back into a routine and eager to start our new expeditions. There were a few tired faces in the circle during Monday morning’s check-in, which prompted a conversation about night-time routines and getting quality sleep.
Our students are used to hearing the staff telling them that we don’t wind down during the last week of term; we wind up! Equally, we are all expected to come back to school after every break fully prepared to start learning, from the very first session on the very first day.
This message was reinforced during the first community meeting of the term, where Mr Portman introduced the Guiding Question for Crew:
How can I hit the ground running during the first week back?
This GQ coincided with the release of the Habits of Work and Learning Crew league tables. Unfortunately, we were shocked (and a little bit embarrassed) to see that Crew Finch were at the bottom in every category! On the flip side, we were very proud to see some of our Crew recognised for achieving or smashing their MEGs, so well done to Nicole, Tom, Thomas, Dakota, Noah, Alanis and Megan.
This got us thinking: if over half of our Crew achieved or surpassed their MEGs – which surely shows that they are working hard and getting smart – then why are we not performing as well as we should be in our HOWLs as a whole Crew?
We spent the rest of the week really focussing on the HOWLs and discussing not only how we can hit the ground running, but also what we need to do as a Crew to make sure that we are all working hard, getting smart and being kind. We have already made academic and HOWLs pledges after our latest SLCs so it was a good time to revisit and check-in with those, too.
We looked at the relationship between getting high grades on our HOWLs and achieving or smashing our subject specific MEGs. We also broke down what the HOWLs actually mean and who in Crew were letting us down by not always being as focussed on these as they should be. I think Dakota hit the nail on the head when she said:
We’re not just responsible for our own learning. We’re responsible for each other’s, too.
On Wednesday, Crew shared how they had hit the ground running so far. For example, Tom told us how he was making an effort to get smarter by taking notes in Humanities, and Noah shared that he had been on the Get Smart board twice already for his focus, and that he’s making a concerted effort to manage his distractions in class.
I’m really pleased with how my Crew have reacted to the league tables and turned a negative into a positive challenge. They have really pulled together this week to reflect on their performance, and I honestly believe we will see a vast improvement in their individual and combined HOWL scores at the next data drop. We’ll continue to check-in on performance and progress 🙂
So, back to the picture at the start of this post (and well done if you’ve got this far!)
On Thursday, we took part in the Inter Crew Basketball Competition, where we won all three of our games to be crowned champions – that’s another one for the trophy cabinet, after winning the Badminton competition last year! Just look at the skills and sportsmanship on display here:
A big appreciation to Mr Portman for recognising our Crew’s achievements on the praise form. I’ll end this post with his lovely words which provide the perfect summary of our first week back:
Great to see Crew Finch win the basketball tournament as I know that they have taken their HOWLs league table performance very seriously. However, I’ve been more impressed with their mature discussions about hitting the ground running this week, as apart from a few blips I’m delighted with their determination to put things right. What. A. Crew.
