7DPE Crew blog – update

By D Pearson12th December 2017

Monday 4th Dec – We invited those students who hadn’t had the opportunity to share a favourite song with us last week to do so. For some, their “soundtrack of our lives” song choice was quite emotive.

Tuesday 5th Dec – We had an Accelerated Reader session in Crew. We are aware of the importance of regularly reading for pleasure in order to raise our literacy levels.

Wednesday 6th Dec – We spent Crew reading the next chapter of our anchor text, Lion, by Saroo Brierley.

Thursday 7th Dec – In our Crew session today we met up for an XP East Community Meeting to hear reminders about stewardship and safety on the steps.

Friday 8th Dec – Our whole school Community Meeting provides a weekly opportunity to give apologies and pledges, share appreciations and make stands for things that we feel strongly about. Mr Pearson shared the latest photos of our new school building when we met to review the week on Friday afternoon.

Monday check-in

By A Parker11th December 2017

Monday morning check-ins are my favourite, as we regroup and tell the rest of the Crew what we got up to at the weekend.  Highlights from this weekend include trips to Lincoln’s Christmas Market and Old Trafford; family time; birthday meals; a wedding and a concert!  But it’s not all about the good times.  We also had to deal with a fallout between brothers, and a viscous cat!

Today, we also pulled names out for our Crew’s Secret Santa.  Remember the rules: the gift should cost no more than £5 (bonus points for a handmade present!) and we’ll be gifting them on our last day, Friday 22nd December.

 

 

 

Fantastic work !

By C Duffield5th December 2017

After hearing so much positive feedback from our students SLC’s over the last few weeks, I was so lucky to be invited to Alanis’ SLC. I was so impressed with how well she spoke about her learning and the use of her portfolio throughout. Her confidence is growing and her personality really shone through.

It is easy to forget that our students are only in their 12th week at XP East and secondary school, especially when listening to them articulate what they have learn’t.

Thank you to Alanis and a huge well done to all of our students on completing your first SLC.

Good luck to those who have got theirs over the coming week.

Clean up crew

By C Duffield5th December 2017

I was lucky enough to join Mr Smith’s and Mrs Parker’s crew on clean up.

It was fantastic to see our students taking pride in the environment around school (even in the freezing cold), something I know will carry forward when the students are in the new building and XP East grounds.

 

 

The latest from Crew 7DP

By D Pearson30th November 2017

Monday 27th Nov- Teachers and Staff had a training day where they had different activities to do with planning our new expedition.

Tuesday 28th Nov- We had an Accelerated Reader session in Crew, whilst Mr Pearson shared individual attendance data with us, and reminded us of the clear link between excellent attendance and academic achievement.

Wednesday 29th Nov- We had a community meeting, discussing people’s homework and hand-in rate between classes.

Thursday 30th Nov- We shared a song which sums up or means something special in our lives, to create a soundtrack of all our lives in XP East. Dominic chose a song by Westlife that is significant to him, and we felt that the lyrics: “You raise me up to more than I can be” summarise the power of the peer support possible through belonging to Crew.

Friday 1st Dec – Our whole school Community Meeting provides a weekly opportunity to give apologies and pledges, share appreciations and make stands for things that we feel strongly about.

Thanks to Alesha Malik for authoring our blog this week, and to all our Crew members for the courage, respect, craftsmanship and quality they showed throughout their Student-Led Conferences.

Week Beginning 20/11/17

By J Smith28th November 2017

This week was a busy week for crew JSM.

We are unfortunately the lowest attending crew in the whole of the XP Trust. This was very disappointing to both me as a crew leader and the crew as a whole. After discussion with out crew we have established a number of strategies to support those students with less than 95% attendance as a crew. We have a long way to go to get to the top of the attendance league table, but we are confident as a crew we will get there.

We have only one crew blog entry this week due to community meetings and staff days.

 

Wednesday 22nd (Written by Corey A.)

Today we talked about our new conduct sheet. This is the sheet that students who do not meet expectations are recorded on and reviewed inside crew. After that everyone went outside to do clean up service but then Mr Pearson’s crew had already taken the equipment. A few minutes later crew JSM went back up to crew to talk about what we wanted to be when we are older and leave school, for example; Lewis Hutton stated that ‘I want to be an F1 driver.’ After we discussed in a whip around what we needed to get to achieve these goals everyone turned to  accelerated reading or taking a test for accelerated reading.

            

Clean-up crew

By A Parker28th November 2017

Today we donned our finest hi-vis jackets (as modelled by Tom D, Mackenzie C and Thomas H), grabbed our litter pickers, a few bin bags and headed outside to clean up our school grounds.

The concept of “leave no trace” and respect for our environment is really important to us at XP. East.  The fact that we are all responsible for keeping our learning space clean and tidy – both inside and outside – reinforces the sense of pride we have in our school.

Good work, Crew!

(Big thanks to Mr Smith’s Crew for helping out, too!)

 

 

Well done!

By A Parker25th November 2017

A big well done to Dakota, Thomas, Mackenzie, Aden, Bryn, Tom, Megan and Nicole. You  absolutely smashed your SLCs this week!

You all made your parents – and me – very proud!

Looking forward to hearing what Alanis, Brendan, Libby and Noah have to say about their learning and progress next week.

Update from Crew 7DP

By D Pearson23rd November 2017

Monday 20th Nov – We began this week with a quick whip-round of single words that we would use to describe our feelings about the SLCs: “calm”, “anxious”, “secure”, “worried”, “ready”, “agitated”, “ecstatic”, “disturbed” and “confident”.

Tuesday 21st Nov -Today in Crew we held a community meeting where we considered the importance of maintaining excellent attendance to school, and the impact of learning time lost when ours does not meet minimum expectations. We were also introduced to a monitoring tool, designed to both challenge and support us to meet our school’s Habits of Work and Learning (HoWLS).

Wednesday 22nd Nov – Our Crew completed their share of service to our learning community, by donning “day-glows” and borrowing litter-pickers, to retrieve, bag and bin items of litter that were found on the school site. “Clean-Up Crew” had a job to do!

Thursday 23rd – Due to the Staff Days tomorrow and next Monday we used Crew time to check-in and review the week. During this session we explored the concept of “proportional participation” and Lewis calculated the amount of time each Crew member spoke as a percentage of the total.

SLC prep

By A Parker18th November 2017

We’ve spent most of our Crew time busy preparing for our Student Led Conferences (SLCs), which begin on Monday.  Students have really had to think hard about the work they want to present to parents.  As well as showcasing the work they’re most proud of (and there’s lots of it!), they’ll also be discussing where they feel they need to improve, and what their targets moving forward into the next expedition.

We’ve spoken a lot about MEGS during our prep, and I’ve been struck by how all my Crew are determined to work hard to improve their initial grades.  As Tom D said, “None of us know what the future will hold for us. We all know that this first score isn’t all that important, but what is important is the score we leave school with.”

So, good luck to all my Crew over the next two weeks – I personally cannot wait to celebrate all your academic achievements!