Noah and Nicole asked if they could use Skittles during their crew session.  Sugary sweets at 8.30am? How could I refuse?!

They actually used these to play the Skittles Feelings game.  The bowl full of skittles were passed around, and we had to answer questions according to the colour of the sweet.  I’ve posted a picture of the rules below.

This was a great way to show compassion to eachother, especially when we were disclosing what makes us scared or sad or angry.  We sometimes react by laughing at people’s fears, but we must be mindful that what seems a little thing to one person, could be a huge, upsetting thing to another! Me – I’m scared of spiders 😱

Another well-planned session where all the crew participated. We even forgave Tom D for dropping the full bowl of Skittles on the floor!!

We used Thursday’s crew session to check-in with our HOWLS (Habits of Work and Learning.)  Crew were asked to give examples from over the past few weeks where they have been particularly proud of their performance against the HOWLS, but also reflect on those instances where they felt they could have been better (from low level disruption in class, not doing homework, and forgetting pens and pencils.)  As ever, crew support was amazing: we applauded eachother’s achievements and discussed how we could help each other improve in areas where we may need to improve.

The HOWLS underpin everything we do at XP. East, so it’s really important that we revisit these on a regular basis so they don’t just become “words on a poster.”

On Wednesday Ali and Libby invited us all to create our own identity chart.  Some of our self portraits were more flattering than others!  We really loved this session, especially as Ali and Libby linked it to the current work we’re doing in HUMANS around exploring our own identity.

We enjoyed it so much that we’re going to have a second session next week!

We were proud to support Megan’s fund raising for St John Ambulance by hosting a cake sale.

Big thanks to everyone who baked and bought cakes.  We raised £28!

Find out more about the great work St John Ambulance do here.

In today’s crew we discussed friendships, and specifically how to deal with conflict within our friendship circles, and considered how our behaviour and words impact on others.

We used our character traits as a reference point for appropriate behaviour (see – they’re also relevant for our lives outside of school!) and we were able to start to resolve an issue between some of our crew members.  We kept on coming back to the notion of ‘crew are family’, and discussed how upsetting it was to us a whole unit when people fall out.  One thing we all strongly agreed on is that any issues which occur outside of school or at break times should be ‘left at the door’ and not impact on lesson time.

Building and maintaining good friendships is always tricky no matter how old you are.  We’re in the unique situation of starting at a new school with new people to get to know.  There are bound to be a few squabbles along the way.  But we are also crew, and crew sort things out together.