This is the fourth occasion when I can proudly report that Crew Young top the E24 / Year 10 leader board following our Term 2 snapshot review of their Habits of Work and Learning! I was first able to recognise this achievement two years ago, when I noticed: “HOWLs about that? Crew Young hit the ground running” in January 2019.

Four months later I reflected on Crew Young’s HOWLs success in coming first place on the E24 and E25 leader board in May 2019, and then reiterated my pride in Crew Young at the end of that year.

Last term, in all three categories, they demonstrated the strength of their work hard, get smart and be kind HOWLs, and they will no doubt wish to reference this in their next Student-Led Conference, and improve further on their current ratings.

Great work from the Youngsters”!!!

Today we received the certificate of appreciation, below, in respect of Crew Young’s recent donation to Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity – our chosen Crew charitable cause – in lieu of Secret Santa this year. Thanks, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.

To add to the plethora of appreciations made by E24 / Y10 students in our Community Meeting yesterday morning, is a very special appreciation that I would like to make to Crew Young. They decided that they would donate the money that they would have spent on Secret Santa this year to our Crew’s chosen charitable cause, which is Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity, based in Sheffield.

Their kind donation of £40.00 in total will be used wisely by this very worthwhile charity, to offer some dignity, compassion and support to patients in South Yorkshire and beyond that suffer the physical and emotional consequences of this dreadful disease. It’s a cause that I regularly support, so I’m really grateful to my Crew for their generosity, and for thinking of others at this time of year.

Until a letter of appreciation can be compiled by the Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity fundraising team, I’ve attached a receipt from their clerical staff in recognition of this gesture.

Thank you!

With thoughts turning to this festive time of year, and as we slowly wind up towards the end of term (next Friday 18th Nov) and dig out our Christmas jumpers for our charity event this Friday, Crew Young spent Mindful Monday  today making snowflakes, using resources and an instructional video provided by Miss Taylor courtesy of the National History Museum. Appreciations to Miss Taylor for her contribution to our Crew!

A series of six at first perhaps seemingly disconnected words: thoughts, words, actions, habits, character and destiny should be read from bottom to top and not, as is convention, from top to bottom.

Just over three years ago Crew Young and their E24 / Y7 year group would join a weekly Community Meeting by sitting amongst their peers on the bottom row of steps in the heart of our school. As they then progressed through the year, and up the steps into Y8, they were encouraged to turn their thoughts into words, by making public apologies, appreciations and stands, and upwards and onto the Y9 step then their words became actions as they honoured their pledges, held each other to account, acted on kind, specific and helpful feedback, and strived not to be passengers in classes.

Due to Covid-19 we’ve not yet been able to meet as a whole school community, but if we were able to do so then Crew Young would now routinely occupy the fourth row of steps – habits – in our Community Meetings.

The focus of recent work in Academic Crew on “Thoughtful Thursdays” has been to support our students’ ownership of their first round of HOWLs “snapshot” data, and their analysis and interpretation of how their Habits of Work and Learning have been assessed by teaching and support staff. We began the process whilst in self-isolation, by completing a “HOWLs predictions” chart. This was then compared with students’ actual HOWLs grades data, and some of their reflections were captured on a Padlet wall.

The next steps will be to work collaboratively to collate student and Crew Leader pledges, that will then facilitate the creation of a Crew Narrative for success. As you can see, Crew Young averages out at around 75% OK or higher rating for work hard and get smart, and a really pleasing 81.8% rating for “be kind”. For Crew Young compassion remains above all.

We are now in a position to begin to ask: “what is the data telling us?” around the 27.3% rated concern in work hard and get smart, and to explore the correlation between Habits of Work and Learning and academic success, as we continue to grow in character and ultimately seek to fulfil our destiny. This process has begun……