Crew Ali just love being in the Sports Hall and having a go at a few teamwork activities. This week Tom took the lead, with some team games to challenge our speed and accuracy in jumping and running, as well as developing our throwing and catching skills.
In the latter part of the session we did a short mid-game debrief, in which we discussed the biggest challenge: some Crew members had become frustrated over different interpretations of the rules. We all acknowledge that sometimes we come across difficult moments in Crew and we got through it – with some clarification of Tom’s rules and an agreement to draw a line under it and move on, we got back to our game. Finally we finished with a good old game of football.
It’s always good to start the day with some physical activity – it definitely woke us all up!
This week we had an academic check in during Crew. The focus was to self reflect on the Habits of Work and Learning (HOWLs) which are Work Hard, Get Smart and Be Kind.
We discussed the behaviour and conduct that needs to be shown in order to meet the HOWLs to a high level. Each student graded themselves on how well they think they meet the HOWLs using a rubric. We discussed the importance of being able to self evaluate and reflect on your own conduct in order to identify strengths and areas to improve on. Each crew member then shared with crew what their reflections were and identified the HOWL that they most need to work on and set themselves a target for this – we’ll check in on this next week!
Crew Young visited Crew Ali this week to teach them about the Method of Loci: a technique which could help us to recall lists or key facts in a particular sequence. Find out more about their preparation and practice here on the Crew Young blog.
Our Crew were engaged throughout and it was interesting to see how many of the words from the list we were able to recall after doing the exercise. Many thanks Crew Young for taking the time to work with us!
E25 students have also been using this method, also known as the Memory Palace, in STEAM sessions, to help them understand the sequence of organs in the digestive system.
Last week, Crew Turing’s guiding question was ‘What can I do this week to be kind to my future self?’
We often reference acts that support other members of our school’s community when we discuss my personal favourite of all the HOWLs, ‘being kind’, but this week we flipped it on its head a little and thought about being kind to ourselves. This week has been strange in that many of Crew Turing’s siblings and friends have been gearing up for half term, but as others are winding down for a week off, we’ll be winding up! I thought that it was important that we focused on wellbeing and making sure we ended this term on a high, after such a brilliant start to the new year.
When introduced to the guiding question, we popcorned some ideas of how we can be kind to ourselves. Keeping on top of organisation, such as extended study and school work was a recurring theme.
Sami was able to lead the way with this as he had spent the weekend creating this incredible model of the Finch household from To Kill a Mockingbird, that wasn’t due until the following Friday. Sami shared that he’d got this done in a timely manner so he had more time in the evenings that week. Others shared they would be doing similar by going to extended study after school to get their work out the way earlier in the week so they felt prepared by the end of the week. I’m delighted to share that we had another week of 100% homework hand-ins!
On Tuesday we had a socratic-style crew, where we debated whether all schools in the UK should provide healthy snacks for their students, inspired by current events of the previous week in the news. The debate was extremely fruitful (sorry, I couldn’t resist), there were even policy suggestions put forward by members of Crew Turing. Dylan and Callum devised a suggestion where rewards were given to those who opted for healthy snacks that week. At the end of the discussion, we reflected back on ‘being kind to ourselves’ and how our eating habits and hydration levels affected our mood and performance in school.
On Thursday, we split crew in two and circled up for a basketball competition! It definitely got our blood pumping and woke us up a little. Reece and others commented in debrief that it was a really nice way to start the day because he felt that he was able to burn off some of the excited energy that can be distracting later in the day. We circled up to reflect on how well both teams had done due to their familiarity with one another, and how this had improved communication during the games.
Finally, on both Tuesday and Friday, we did some AR and spoke a lot about progress with our books and even made an addition to our crew wall. We now have a reading chart up, with 100 spaces waiting to be filled by Crew Turing’s book recommendations. Our goal was to read 100 books by summer time, and also aim to read for half an hour before bed to wind down for a good night’s rest – another act of kindness that we have discussed. Tomorrow we’ll be starting to populate the chart with our reviews during crew time. I look forward to curating something that other members of XP East who pass through my classroom might feel inspired by!
This week, Dylan ran a crew session on the Greek Gods, he wanted to share his passion with the rest of the Crew and I love hearing about crew’s interests! He explained to Crew about the Greek Gods and Mount Olympus, giving each crew member a God/Goddess to be. Once Crew had understood their character there was an activity where each Crew member had to design a palace for their god/goddess based on the qualities of the character. A game of pictionary was then played, where crew had to guess which god/goddess the palace belonged to based on the features of the drawing.
Dylan articulated his information about the Greek gods very well and he clearly put in a huge amount of effort in preparing for this session. He built upon his already existing communication, organisation and leadership skills to create a fantastic crew session enjoyed by all – a massive appreciation to Dylan!
Crew Ali have been expressing themselves in sign language recently, when Cerys taught us the British Sign Language alphabet in Student-Led Crew. We learnt how to sign each letter, practiced and practiced again, then took it in turns to spell out names of Crew members and had to guess who was being named. Taylor, Caiden and Marshall all successfully signed the names of some of their fellow Crew members before we moved on to learning numbers and practiced telling the Crew our ages (including Mrs Townson’s age – we share a lot in Crew!)
A Friday session involved using scrabble letters to create words which would stretch us and add to our vocabularies. We worked in mixed teams and swapped over after each round to ensure we worked with different people. In each round we had a time limit to create the longest words we could with the limited letters available on our table. Each team had to check their spellings and really think about how they could extend their words as far as possible.
I – N – D – E – P – E – N – D – E – N – T – L – Y was a clear winner but I have to say well done to the team who came up with T – O – W – N – S – O – N !
What a fantastic session in Crew Shackleton this morning! With a focus on team working skills, teams of 3-4 were pitted against each other with a challenge to create the tallest unsupported balloon tower. No hands. No walls. No chairs.
The winners (aided by the collapse of taller towers) were Nikodem, Jacob and Zach’s tower.
A fantastic session with lots to unpack – so many strengths, and plenty of things to work on to become a stronger crew and more effective team members.
Well done Crew! Watch the video for a glimpse of the session.
Some wonderful ingenuity from Woody, furiously rubbing the balloons on his head to create extra static to hold them together.
Thank you to Mrs Parker for popping my balloons for me! That’s a challenge I’m not yet prepared to overcome.
Crew Parkinson had a yoga activity crew session this week. We discussed how it is important to create time for yourself which is not just sat in front of a device screen! We followed a yoga sequence, piecing together positions which focus on balance and strength.
Some members of the crew found certain positions challenging and at first the session was met with apprehension by some – however it is brilliant that all crew members got stuck in and had a go.
We completed a whiparound after, where each student said how they felt – there were lots of comments about legs feeling tired, feeling well stretched and feeling like their bodies have been woken up! A great way of getting your muscles ready and awake to start the day.
This week in Crew we’ve spent a lot of time supporting each other in a range of areas: we’ve looked closely at issues arising from extended study; evidence of great HOWLs in and around lessons; and offered the day-to-day support that we all need from time to time.
So I asked some of the Crew to share what it means to them.
Lilly
Crew Shackleton has helped me a lot. This is because whenever I’m with my crew I feel like I can say anything and that they all have my back. It has helped me become a lot more confident in myself because whenever you say something, you know that you won’t be judged. We all work as a crew to help each other out. For example, if people need help in their academic studies, we can help them out and give them ways to be more organised.
Faith
Crew Shackleton has helped me because when I’m in crew I feel safe and they helped me get my confidence up onto higher levels. Since crew, I have been able to speak in a year community meeting and even in a whole school community meeting. Crew has also helped me with my confidence because I know I won’t be judged. Also when I have been with crew on a Monday we do a weekend check in, on Tuesday we do an extended study crew, on Wednesday we do a crew session where we could have a crew member leading our session, Thursday we normally do accelerated reader and finally, on Friday we do a community meeting crew and we discuss stands, appreciations and apologies. We have the best most caring crew and I am thankful that I am in this crew.
James
My crew (Crew Shackleton) has helped me from the beginning at XP East. For instance, at the start of the year I was struggling with my maths homework and crew gave me advice on how I could make progress and improve. We are all taking responsibility of each others’ actions and show courage in everything we do together.
Jacob
My crew have helped me out a lot with my academic studies such as getting my homework done I have now got 100% homework record. They have also helped with my growth mindset and how I work and speak. Our crew all help each other and all support and trust each other.
This past week has been really crucial in Crew Turing’s academic development. Each member of my crew was really determined to do well in their upcoming assessments, particularly the spanish writing task that they all had to complete.
We decided to dedicate a couple of crew sessions to revision and preparation. We followed normal crew protocols, doing count up, sorting lunches, greeting each other, but with a slight twist. We did almost the entire check-in in spanish! Crew members then paired up to work on their revision or practice together, which was really well focused and so helpful that we decided to dedicate another crew session to this.
Another highlight of our crew sessions has been all the baked delights my crew members have bought in. Over the week, more and more members of my crew have surprised us with their delicious cookies, cakes and sweet treats – Alice’s chocolate orange cake was to die for! I put on an after school session where we did a bit of a crew bake-off so that we could maximise donations to Cery’s charity bake sale. I set them the challenge of going away, pairing up, picking a recipe and organising ingredients without my input. I’d like to thank parents again for supplying ingredients for that and allowing them to stay, we had a blast, and amazingly, were baked and de-gunged in just 1 hour!
This week, I’m hoping to capture the same crew spirit of bake-off in some reflections of how this week’s assessments have gone. While it’s great to give to charities and bake, it would be great to refocus on how we can make a more optimum use of our time outside of school in preparing for assessments. We had conversations about this on Tuesday, where most crew members admitted that they had not done quite as much extended study as they would have liked to feel confident in their performance. I’ve seen some magnificent ‘Explore Further’ work from other crews, and I’d love to see members of Crew Turing engaging with some of the great stuff that is on offer on their expedition sites. With three weeks to go until half term, this is the perfect time to look at how we can ‘wind-up’ as we put it here at XP East.
Lilly
Faith
James
Jacob
