Crew Ali have spent much of their Crew time over the last couple of weeks reviewing their progress, monitoring targets and selecting pieces of work to share with their parents and carers in their Student Led Conferences (SLCs) at the end of the month. This involves a great deal of self-reflection and an opportunity to share successes and challenges with a wider audience, as well as set themselves action plans to ensure they hit the ground running as they start Year 8.
Some students have pledged to ‘get their head down’, whilst others are celebrating smashing their Minimum Expected Grades (MEGs). In all cases, they have to plan what they will say, produce notes or slide shows to support their delivery and ensure they can speak articulately and confidently about their learning.
As their Crew Leader, I’ll be right there with them to support and critique. We are really fortunate at XP East that parents are so involved and supportive of our students, and I look forward to seeing our parents and having a chance to catch up face-to-face too. Keep it up Crew Ali, one week to go until the SLCs begin!
Last week we started with a bang! We’ve been thrown straight into our expeditions after the holiday and Crew have certainly stepped up.
We began the week with check-ins from the 2 week holiday – it was lovely hearing the great activities, social events and relaxation that crew members took part in during their time off.
On Tuesday we didn’t have a crew session – but don’t despair we spent the day at Jodrell Bank! This fieldwork was part of the ‘Escape Earth’ expedition and was a brilliant way to spend time with crew in a different setting. I loved hearing how enthusiastic and curious crew members were when discussing physics and asking questions about space. We took part in a number of workshops which revolved around Newton’s laws of motion and gravity, an inflatable planetarium and the constellations.
What a wonderful day!
(All video credits to Miss Haughey – definitely not my area of expertise!)
When we returned to school our crew sessions were then directed around the upcoming Student Led Conferences – students began to choose the pieces of work they are most proud of, found challenging and would like to improve to showcase during their SLCs. This is a great way for crew to reflect on their learning and understand their academic strengths and areas to improve on as well as their HOWLs.
More information will be released about SLCs shortly, so watch this space!
Yesterday during community meeting Mrs Poncia asked X25 about their highlight of the week, and I amongst other members of my crew struggled to pick! We have just six weeks left of this academic year, it is wild to think how quickly my crew’s first year at high school has passed and how much we’ve crammed into 2018-2019.
Both staff and students are winding up to the grand finale of the STEAM and Human expeditions, where they will be working on final products and preparing to share their learning in a presentation of learning. In STEAM, they are continuing on with ‘Escape Earth’ and yesterday their new Human expedition was announced.
On Tuesday X25 visited the Jodrell Bank Space Observatory, which is home to the UK’s largest radio telescope and the 3rd largest in Europe! Each student was immersed in workshops and classes that allowed them to discover elements of our universe, experience Newton’s Laws, and watch real accounts of the astronauts that visit the Space Station. I’ve uploaded the video file above, check out the incredible resources and facilities that we had access to!
We will be taking the lessons we learned from the specialists back into school to help answer the expeditions guiding question:
“Should humans leave Earth?”
With growing reports of the danger that climate change poses, and the scientific advancements in the technology that could allow us to potentially re-locate our species to another planet, X25 will be concluding what they think the future for our species and our home will be. I can’t wait to hear their responses.
I chose the backing track for the video from an album I really love by a band called Public Service Broadcasting, I was struck by this line that was originally part of a JFK speech from 1962:
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things
Not because they are easy, but because they are hard”
I’m taking this particular message back to crew this week. We will be encountering difficulty over the next six weeks with deadlines. We will be setting up Student Led Conferences over the coming weeks, to reflect on and review this years work. We will be finalising products and developing our presentations of learning. It may be the last few weeks, but as per every other day we spend at XP East, I hope that each of my 12 crew members recognises that despite this work being hard, it is also extremely important, and that working hard, getting smart and being kind is fundamental if we are to achieve.
Congratulations to everyone in Crew Parkinson who gave absolutely brilliant performances of their speeches during the Stand Up expedition’s Presentation of Learning. I’m so proud of Crew for showing courage, maturity, compassion and hard work when writing, rehearsing and presenting their speeches.
As we have our final term fast approaching, we finished our pledge butterflies ready for when we begin back at school. Each member of crew has made a pledge which they have based on their most recent data drop record. The pledges are focused around a subject, a specific HOWL or an academic grade/MEG. I know they will work hard to complete these and we will be checking in on the progress of these as the weeks progress.
Below are a selection of the Crew’s pledges:
Aaron: I pledge to achieve above my MEG in science, I will do this by asking for help from the teacher when I need it
Callum: I pledge to stop making silly comments in crew so that I can increase my Be Kind HOWL. My howl used to be a 3.5 and is now a 3 – I want to get it back to a 3.5
Harvey: I pledge to improve my Work Hard HOWL fro maths because I need to improve it since it is a 2.9 and the rest of my HOWLs are 3 and above.
On Thursday, Ava led her first crew session. The activities she prepared were games which revolved around practising drama techniques. Every member of crew really threw themselves into this session and it was enjoyed by all – it provided us all with lots of laughter, a lovely way to end the term. Thank you Ava for organising a wonderful crew session.
Finally – I hope Crew has a wonderful holiday, see you all next term!
This week we were fortunate to see some of the artwork Junia has been doing at home, as drawing is a passion of hers. She uses a range of styles and particularly enjoys drawing and painting her favourite anime characters. We discussed the craftsmanship and quality in her work and invited her to to lead a Crew session on drawing skills with Lacey, who is also a keen artist. It also takes courage to share your work with others; well done Junia!
A huge thank you to Faith and Lilly today for the student-led crew session. It was an excellent session, enjoyed by every one of us!
Read on below to find out what we did…
Check-In
We were asked to think of a song that portrays how we feel, with an explanation if possible, to share to the rest of the group. “Happy” by Pharrell Williams was a popular choice, but there was an eclectic range within the crew.
Main Task
Everyone then took a piece of paper and some coloured pencils. Faith and Lilly had carefully selected a range of different styles of music, from classical to club classics, and played them to the crew. The objective: draw on your page whatever you feel inspired to draw from the different types of music.
Closing Circle
Finally, we were invited to to circle up around everyone’s artwork and do a Notice Wonder protocol. Lots of originality, including drawing images inspired by the music, such as a beach hut when listening to more tropical music; to a collection of shapes and squiggles that represented the feel and mood of the music.
It’s brilliant to the see the character growth of the students still in year 7 that have grown in confidence to be able to lead their own session and come up with such an excellent idea. Well done, Faith and Lilly.
This week in Crew Turing, we have been building on the data analysis that we completed last week during crew. I asked that each member of my crew come up with 2 specific action points to work on between now and the next data drop, so we can work on our weaknesses and improve our standing in the crew league tables.
I have loved how well considered these targets have been. Each member of my crew have really honed in on what aspects of their school life they need to work on, be it through their grades or their HoWLs. Here are a few examples:
Ralph:
My actions points are keeping up productivity in lesson and keeping my extended study organised, I can use my fries post-it notes to remind me what deadlines or if I need to remember my kit the following day. I also need to remember to bring a ruler and pencil to class, because I always forget these 2 pieces of equipment.
Callum:
My action points are to let people talk in crew and don’t talk over them because in my data drop 2 my be kind in crew is a 2.8 and a 3.8 in the previous one.
My other action points is working hard in science because in November it was a 4.0, but now it is a 3.6 and I think I could use the explore further section of the website to push for excellence.
Lexi
My science grade went down by 0.5 and that could be because my homework wasn’t in on time and I wasn’t paying enough attention because I drift of a lot, so my target is to stay on task and be tuned in. I will do this by trying to contribute at least twice, by either asking a question or answering one.
Lewis
In maths my action points are to work harder on be kind as my grade decreased. I will do this by working well in collaborative groups and staying focussed. I will also try to be more active in leston and try not to drift off. I will also work harder on my WH average and GS average as they stayed the same I will improve these by:
Contributing more in lesson even if I don’t think my answer is correct
Stay more focused on my work
Putting extra effort into my hegarty to consistently get 100%
Alice
My HUMs grade has gone up 0.7 but i’m slightly off my MEG by 0.1 To improve my grade in HUMs to achieve my MEG I will be more productive in lessons and use the expedition website more often to further my understanding of the topics we study.
I will be doing fortnightly check-ins with crew to make sure they are showing integrity and working hard to achieve the targets I have set them. I hope that as a group, we can all maintain that level of crew accountability and make each other proud by fine tuning and ironing out those targets.
During another crew session we were inspired by the words of Greta Thunberg, and her impassioned TED talk on climate change. I felt this was a really good example of a WAGOLL of their HUMAN final product and also was an issue that my crew are really passionate about.
It moved us on to a really interesting discussion about why nothing (or not enough) was being done about climate change?
In previous weeks in the news, Lexi pointed out that billions had been raised in the space of a week for Notre Dame Cathedral, yet the destruction of our planet was not attracting any attention despite calls from climate scientists and experts on the issue. Dylan built on this, pointing out how many of the victims of Grenfell are still homeless, where are the millions being raised for them and other victims of tragedy? We’re going to follow the climate stories over the next few weeks and also address what we might be able to do as a crew to contribute our bit, however small, to protecting our planet.
These last two weeks have also seen the birthdays of three members of Crew Turing: Lexi, Alice and Torran! We ended the week on a fully deserved high – eating cake!
What a week we’ve had! After our check in on Monday, I set crew a challenge: to get more than half of Crew on the praise sheet this week. They certainly stepped up to the challenge and succeeded with 8 people getting put on the praise sheet this week – with some people such as Florence, Dylan, Callum and Shanna getting 3 and 2 mentions respectively!
I brought in sweets as a reward and we spoke about instant gratification – that immediate reward for completing a goal and delayed gratification, for example, hard work paying off over time and reflected in HOWLs and academic data drops and which is more important.
A highlight for me was seeing Harvey genuinely thrilled that he had been entered onto the praise sheet for maths – which is an area he sometimes finds difficult. We discussed how this feeling of being proud and impressed with yourself is what should help to drive academic conduct in school.
A massive congratulations to Florence, Kristian, Ava, Callum, Shanna, Dylan, Bob and Harvey for being entered onto the praise sheet this week. Here are some of the entries:
Harvey: ‘Worked really well this afternoon on his metrics activity, thinking very logically on the task and asking great questions to help him get unstuck’ – maths
Ava: ‘In Crew activity Ava absolutely gave it her all. Although she acknowledged football wasn’t something she found easy she put loads of effort and determination in and even managed to score a goal – a great attitude!’ – crew.
Shanna: ‘Requested and attempted much more complex grapple task after completing easier version of same activity – showing she is willing to push herself harder in Spanish. High levels of productivity over time’ – spanish
Kristian: ‘ Smashing your MEG when writing your historical source analysis!’ – Hums
I’d also like to appreciate Callum for his crew activity – football. He incorporated skills practice such as dribbling and a series of games which led to a session enjoyed by all. He gave good explanations and demonstrations to help crew improve – well done!
What a fantastic joint crew session this morning with Crew Shackleton and Crew Ali, trying out a bit of yoga in the morning to flex and focus the mind and the body.
A huge thanks to both crews for keeping an open mind and giving it their all, especially those who stepped outside of their comfort zone and set themselves a new challenge.
“Change begins at the end of your comfort zone.” – Roy T. Bennett
We believe at XP East that it’s important to keep setting ourselves new goals and new challenges, however big or small it might seem.
For many students today, this was a new experience; for some, an opportunity to practise what they already do. And it’s fair to say each student will take something different from the experience.
But the world is full of many experiences, and if we’re up for it, we can make any one of them a new challenge and part of building the best version of ourselves we can.
And of course a big thank you to Mrs Townson for leading the session.
Crew Ali have had a busy couple of weeks, trying to get lots done around our days off for Easter. We have checked in as a Crew this week by sharing what we have been up to over the holiday.
The data drop results have of course been at the forefront of our minds, as we analysed our HOWLs grades first of all and this is discussed in a previous blog post. This week and last we have been focussing on individual subject grades, taking into account progress against MEGs in English, History, Geography, Science, Maths and Spanish. Each Crew member has completed their own data record which we can use as a supporting document in our Student Led Conferences in June. We have used colour coding to help us see what progress we are making against MEGs.
It is really important to mention that we look at progress very much on an individual basis; two Crew members may have the same grade, but it is their Minimum Expected Grade which we measure against, rather than one another. We’re very open about grades and it’s important we can celebrate and further challenge those that have met or even exceeded their MEGs and support those who are working towards theirs. A student’s MEG will rarely change, but the content will become increasingly more difficult as they go through school, so even if you meet your MEG now, be prepared to keep working even harder to maintain that grade!
Each Crew member is also working on an individual pledge which they will focus on in the next three weeks leading up to our May holiday.
Zak:I pledge to achieve my MEG in at least one more subject.
Billy: I will maintain my Work Hard grades and increase some of them to at least a 4.0 by arriving on time and participating fully and mindfully in class.
Charlie: I pledge to keep trying my hardest in maths and stay focused on what is going on in the lesson. I will try to get more work done and do it to the best of my ability at all times.
We also saw a new side to one another when we did a ‘show and tell’ activity on Tuesday morning, including visits from Ruby’s budgie, Blue, and Caiden’s stick insect, Woody; a taster of one of Zak’s favourite albums by Billie Eilish; a photo of Charlie’s top of the league football team; Lacey’s new business venture making hair bands; Cerys’ family holiday album from a visit to Rome, as well as many more.
We also saw a new side to one another when we did a ‘show and tell’ activity on Tuesday morning, including visits from Ruby’s budgie, Blue, and Caiden’s stick insect, Woody; a taster of one of Zak’s favourite albums by Billie Eilish; a photo of Charlie’s top of the league football team; Lacey’s new business venture making hair bands; Cerys’ family holiday album from a visit to Rome, as well as many more.