For the past week, Crew Turing have focused on personal wellbeing – we’ve been exploring how to make sure we practice some self-care during the stressful GCSE exams that are coming up!
One way we chose to de-stress as a crew was by running a ‘spa morning’. We kept some humour in it, though, by choosing funny face masks! We also welcomed Jay into crew who will join us for this week!
Lewis seemed to really enjoy the cucumber slices… and I’ve never heard a better “disgusting” than when Dylan put his hands in the moisturising gloves! A big thanks to Mrs Parker for providing smoothies, too!
We’ve kicked off the new term with Y11 students heading straight into their Art exam. Next week, Spanish students have their Speaking exam, and we then begin the final countdown to the full GCSE exam window.
We are going to keep you up to date with all our important information/reminders/messages leading up to the exams by publishing our weekly ‘what’s on our plate’ (WOOP) briefing. This is shared with students during Monday’s Crew session.
Further to the Spring Newsletter which you will have received earlier in the year, please find the attached letter which details some additions to our current offer of Extended Study and study support. This will come into effect fully after next weeks mock exams and leading up to the start of the summer GCSE examinations which begin during the next half term.
We would like to appreciate everyone who came to our GCSE Support evening. We hope you found the information useful and that you and your son/daughter feel more confident about where and how to access revision support for each subject.
We know there was a lot of information to take in on the night so we have attached the presentation for you to go through again in your own time.
As mentioned at the evening, the GCSE Revision Support website is now live with subject specific resources, links to Y11’s 2023 calendar, our current revision timetable and lots more information for students and parents. Please bear in mind that this is a work in progress with new links and information being added as we speak!
If you do have any more questions, here’s a reminder of who to contact (please include your child’s Crew Leader in any emails you send.)
If you have any other questions your feel weren’t covered in the presentation, please contact your child’s Crew Leader or Phase Lead: Angella Parker for XP East ([email protected]) and Mel Cocliff for XP ([email protected])
We’d also like to take this opportunity to say a massive ‘well done’ to all the Y11’s who have completed their Student Led Conferences over the past few weeks. This was their opportunity to reflect on their mock exam grades (which most did with honesty and integrity!) and discuss how they are going to keep focussed and motivated during the next few weeks leading up to exams.
Our Crew SLCs have kicked off this week and it’s been really interesting to hear our students talk to us and their parents about their recent mock results, what worked well with their revision leading up to mocks, and what they want to improve on moving forward.
Crew members have spoken with integrity, managed some difficult conversations and the level of self-reflection has been really impressive.
Special appreciation to those of you have taken the time to seek feedback from ourselves or your fellow Crew members, and have presented some of your most recent work to us during your SLC.
During SLCs, we have asked Crew what we can do to help them achieve their GCSE targets. So far, all have requested that we schedule in additional Academic Crew sessions. This is something we are more than happy to facilitate. We have agreed to focus on developing revision strategies and will create a subject specific timetable next week. Plans are already in place to create a Quotation Wall to support our English Literature exam!
As part of Y11’s History course, we have a wonderful opportunity to visit the site of Wabtec in Doncaster – which was formerly Doncaster Plant Works – a massive part of our heritage! One of the history GCSE papers Y11 will sit is based around this local site and we’re really privileged to be able to visit the birth place of both The Mallard and the record breaking Flying Scotsman – where students will gain a real insight into the site’s significance, both locally and nationally.
ALL of E25 will be attending on Tuesday 24th January 2023. Explorer’s fieldwork will take place in the morning, leaving XP at 9:15am and returning at 11:30am. Explorer will be in sessions as normal in the afternoon.
Pioneer’s fieldwork will take place in the afternoon – leaving XP at 1:15pm and returning back to XPE for around 3:00pm. Pioneer will be in sessions as normal in the morning.
Lunches should not be affected, but students may wish to bring a packed lunch. We have now secured a coach to transport us from XPE to Wabtec Rail.
If you have any questions/queries, please contact crew leaders, or the following:
This week Mrs Parker took us all out for a morning crew sessions around the fire pit! We had hot chocolates, a selection of biscuits (apart from the ones Dylan dropped!!!) and a wonderfully relaxing time. Even Miss Cocliff (who LOVES being outdoors)… was thrilled with the session – but it was incredibly chilly!!!!
The icing on the cake was Lewis and Tyler doing everyone’s washing up… which we didn’t know Lewis did on a weekend anyway!!!!
Huge appreciations to Mrs Parker and Mrs Watson for organising this session – despite some of our faces we had a really lovely time, and it was a wonderful way to end a smashing term for Crew Turing, who have all worked brilliantly!
We wanted to update you about Crew Turing’s first week back at school! Along with welcoming a wonderful new crew member, Tyler – who has started to settle beautifully – crew have been up to loads of activities this week to reestablish their bonds as crew, ready for their final year at XP East!
Crew Turing joined the rest of Y11 in walking around Flamborough Head. They were absolutely fantastic! Ralph & Lewis led the way beautifully, Crew showed compassion by checking in on each other, and it was lovely to be out and about getting to know Turing more.. (and have a sneaky ice cream at the Lighthouse!)
We had a gorgeous day for walking, and took in some stunning scenery. Behaviour was impeccable, and the day was a beautiful start to Y11!
On Wednesday, we had a crew activities day – again, this was a lovely opportunity to get to know students in crew more, to start to build solid relationships, and to just have a laugh! We started to think about our journey through Y11 and the challenges we may face. We spoke at length about how crew Turing can support each other throughout the upcoming year – Crew has some beautiful ideas about how they can do this, and began to create some amazing ‘road maps to success’!
We started and ended the day with some card games – UNO seems to be a favourite! (Sami doesn’t like Liar, though – he ended up with half the deck!!) During the day we also took part in Mrs Elliott’s version of ‘the Cube’ – I’m very proud to say that Crew Turing’s sterling efforts, Sami, Lexi & Dylan’s FABULOUS point scores, and Mollie’s photographic memory meant that Crew Turing came out as the champions with 6,500 points!
On Thursday, Crew took part in more crew team building activities with an external company called Wise Up. We couldn’t even pick out a superstar from Wednesday – all students in Crew were AWESOME! They worked together really well, built each other up when they needed it, and offered loads of support! It was fantastic to see them come together as a crew to work out brain teasing conundrums and physical challenges throughout the day.
We ended our first week back with more crew activities and a presentation of learning. We’ve reflected on our time as crew from year 7 to now – identified our favourite moments (LOTS of them with Miss Haughey – gone but NEVER forgotten!) – and got some photos together from Y7 to now (and Lewis hasn’t changed a bit, but Lexi is unrecognisable!) Crew presented their slides to the rest of Y11 and did a great job!
A fanstastic start to what will hopefully be a fantastic final year.
As Y7 and Y8 go off on their Outward Bound adventure, Y9, Y10 and Y11 will also spend the first week back with their crews undertaking various activities because, if we get Crew right, we get everything right 🙂
The plan for the week is above, and you will notice that it includes a coastal walk to Flamborough. Details of the coastal walk for each year group have been posted on separate blog posts:
