Mollie & Callum did Crew Turing proud at tonight’s Madrid Fieldwork Presentation of Learning. It was AWESOME to hear about what they had been up to – although we’re not sure we’d have managed as many rides as they did at the Warner Bros Studios!
Fantastic work, guys. You’re already making us proud!
Miss Cocliff & Mrs Parker x
We had a wonderful morning this morning in Crew Ali. We sat together and discussed our attendance and HOWLS, then we each made pledges about how we can improve in these areas. Whilst munching on our crumpets and toast we each discussed the pledges we had made and why we had chosen them. It was great to hear students really considering how to improve and better themselves! We will be checking in on our progress towards these pledges each week.
Also, a massive appreciation to Billy, Marshall, Tom, Leoni, Zak and Ruben who all had excellent attendance last term! Our whole crew target for this term is for us to attend school everyday and have an overall attendance score of 98% or higher!
We (Mrs Elliott and Mrs Gargen) are loving leading Crew Ali and have really enjoyed our time getting to know each student. We have alot planned for this term, from crew experts, inter-crew challenges, fundraising activities and much more. We excited to continue to bond as crew and share these experiences together. Watch this space as we blog our journey through these next two terms!
What a fantastic two days students across XP and XP East have had!
On Tuesday, Citizenship students, who have been studying the role of the police, and their year group were involved in 3 seminars from Doncaster Police and South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue. These included Road Safety, Gun and Knives and Exploitation.
After a fantastic Tuesday, things only got more exciting here at XPE today…
Students listened to a talk regarding Dog Handling and were introduced to not one, but two real life police dogs! Isn’t Hudson wonderful?
If that wasn’t enough, students were given time to ask all their pressing questions in a Q&A session. Students also experienced all the equipment police officers are trained to use, including riot gear and operating police cars.
A fantastic two days had by all students and staff! #WeAreCrew
Just a quick notice to let all Y10 students and parents/carers know that History revision sessions will be resuming after the holidays, starting this Monday.
We will be offering two nights of History revision:
This is an excellent opportunity for students to embed their learning, to gain support, to practice exam technique and to push themselves further. It really is important that students are revising outside of lessons and this is perfect space to be able to do this successfully.
Students are welcome to come to both sessions or just one. In these sessions we will be recapping GCSE content and applying this to exam questions as well as giving students time to self study areas which they feel they need further development.
Y10 have made a fantastic start to their History GCSE and are working really hard in sessions. We now need to continue this hard work outside of the classroom, there is an expectation that students should now begin revising in their own time to embed the content already covered and prepare themselves for their GCSE exams.
If you have any questions regarding extended study, please don’t hesitate to email Mrs Elliott ([email protected])
Looking forward to seeing you this week!
Mrs Elliott / Miss Hickson
It seems like a lifetime ago when we first started to prepare for the Year 10 History mock exams and finally now the whole process is complete and I am really proud of how the students conducted themselves through the process. It all started after October half term with weekly revision being set and the start of after school revision classes – it was great to see so many students taking responsibility for their learning and putting in the effort to prepare for their exams. In our lessons we spent time going through exam technique and what to expect from each style of question and it was clear to see that this advice had been absorbed and acted upon. After the mocks had been marked, students spent their time FIXing the assessments, responding to feedback to improve their answers to the questions and I am confident that they will do themselves proud if they continue. It also highlighted the importance of revision, with some students who maybe didn’t put enough work in being disappointed by their result, I hope this acts as a lesson to learn from and not make these same mistakes as we continue through their GCSE content – as we keep saying, if you don’t know the content you can’t write an answer!
A massive well done to all students who achieved their target grade and a special mention to students who did exceptionally well: Lewis, Zach H, Harvey, Rosie, Mollie and Ava – we are so proud of you and all your hard work has paid off! Keep going and you’ll smash your final exams in year 11.
A reminder as well to keep revising using both the Nazi and Vikings textbooks and to attend the after school revision sessions on Monday and Tuesday with myself and Mrs Elliott.
It doesn’t feel right typing that my crew are in year 10(!!!!), entering their fourth year at the school, and their final two years at XP. We spent the first week back working together in crew, where we asked ourselves ‘how can we prepare for the next climb?’
One of the activities we partook in an intercrew competition, discussing strategies and cheering each other on while we completed the minute to win it tasks. While the activities were a little daft, it was nice to see crews circling up to strategize and making sure everyone was included.
On the Friday of the week we spent in crew, we were fortunate enough to get to walk the Monsal Trail. It was quite a physically demanding route at times, but the compassion I saw from my lovely ‘care bears/photographers’; Jess and Charlotte, was phenomenal. I’d like to give them a special mention for carrying others bags, slowing their own pace to help others catch up, and their supportive words during the route.
I’d also like to give Sami a special mention, he had the opportunity to flex his GCSE Geography skills as our navigator, and I felt he did a great job!
Back in our new Crew Room in week 2, we discussed what is required of us over the upcoming two years with GCSEs approaching. We looked at how we procrastinate, and how we can start drip feeding a little revision into our habits at home to start the following two years right. Also, we celebrated Callum’s 15th Birthday the only way we know how – with chocolate fudge cake and lemon drizzle cake for the quirkier members of my crew.
That’s us checked into Y10!
Written by Aaron, Ava, Lacey, Kris, Rosie, Dylan, Florence, Marcus, Harvey and Bob.
It was a welcoming and fun start of the new school year. We settled back into the Crew talking to everyone as we had our Crew breakfast. This helped us to settle back in and get used to being in Crew again. Then we did Mandala drawings to put up on the Crew wall for everyone to see, we drew images and patterns to represent our identity. Near the end, we did Minute to Win It games with the year group… our crew came last in them, but spirits we still high.
On Tuesday we played Sportshall games with the year group. During this we did multiple games to strengthen our team work and healthy competition between the Crews. Crew Parkinson and Crew Anoa’i managed to win one round with some amazing dives by the alliance piloted by Marcus.
We then had a Careers session to make a charity and research the careers and job roles needed to start the charity. We did this activity to understand the different roles and qualifications needed in different career paths, for example we needed advertisers, fundraisers, medical professionals and accountants. We talked about how one of the ‘climbs’ of this year will be starting our GCSEs and the future ahead and began thinking about the qualifications we might need for our careers.
The whole year group were given prompts in order to write a letter to our future selves. We did this as part of a ‘solo’. By writing these answers we would be reflecting on our current and past selves to see what we could improve and set ourselves future goals – we’ll see what the future holds!
On our walk on Friday, we showed lots of character traits, which included: helping Miss Johnson up the steps when she couldn’t get up them, we regrouped on the steep hills, and we overcame the challenge of the two steep and tall hills. This demonstrates that we don’t just give up at the slightest challenge but persevere and support each other, we all hit the ground running, and if we get Crew right, we get everything right!
Students who hold prescribed medication at school will be handed back their medication tomorrow. Students who require medication to be taken at school in the new term 2021/22 will be required to fill in the medication form.
The Google form is required to be filled in and then press send. This then gives staff consent to administer medication and for it to be kept on school premises.
Please ensure Inhalers, Epi-pens and other prescribed medications are sent into school with the child’s name and expiry date clearly visible.
Thank you!
We’ve waved goodbye to Crew Turing’s 15th member, Miss Narey, the fantastic trainee teacher who has been supporting as well as leading crew sessions the past few months. To celebrate her successes in passing her training year, we had a slightly early afternoon tea with scones. We wish her the best at Armthorpe and look forward to hearing from her through friends of my crew who attend the school.
Thanks to the girls in my crew for cracking a smile for the selfie!
During half term, I received an email highlighting the incredible work Torran undertook during the break, supporting his family and local football team by supporting the coaching of the under 12s. I was inspired by his leadership and wanted to try and reboot something with my crew that we’ve not done in a long time!
I’ve got a big appreciation for Torran for hosting our first student led crew of the year. I’ve asked all of my crew to think up an activity that we can do in the remaining weeks, considering the purpose of what we do and how we can build our character doing these activities, as well as develop their leadership skills. Torran requested to lead a football skills and game crew session to help our sports day efforts. I’ve also challenged the rest of crew to come up with a session to run with us.
I’ve also added some footage of our crew stewardship duties to the video below, we spent a Friday afternoon litter picking and managed to fill two bin bags.
Miss Jones shared a really comprehensive set of resources on why we celebrate Pride, we have spent some crew sessions this month celebrating and learning about the month. Our crew is named after Alan Turing, who was persecuted for being gay which ultimately led to his suicide. We created a water painting mural to decorate our crew wall with, every crew member getting to add background rainbow colours to the image.
Here’s our final product!
This week, we have teamed up with other schools in the trust to run a mile to support Ray Mathews who has worked a lot with Norton Junior/ infant school raising money for charities through running. Ray is 80 this year and he would like the school to run 80 miles to help support the charity Age UK.
We did our 4 laps round both schools on Thursday this week and it was glorious! I am going to donate the money we raised to Age UK.
Just 4 weeks to go until we break up for summer, we’ve got some exciting work in the pipeline that will be ready for sports day that I look forward to sharing with you!
Crew Turing have loved being outside during Monday’s crew sessions to do check in, catching 45 minutes of sun before we go back to session. Now that lockdown restrictions are lifting slightly the check-ins are far more interesting. Everyone seems cheerier now they’re able to see friends and family, and carry on with the sports they’re involved in.
We’ve also managed to get booked into the sports hall during crew a couple of weeks back, we enjoyed a rather competitive game of dodgeball. We mixed crew to random teams, and even Miss Narey and I played.
As mentioned in my previous post, as a crew we’ve been self-assessing HoWLs leading up to the actual data drop, which finally got released last week. We spent the crew session adding our updated HoWLs to our crew narrative, gains were made across the board. We then compared the new data with our previous crew targets that were made in November 2020. Those targets were:
– Improve extended study record as a crew, aiming for 95%+: we greened this target as this has massively improved thanks to daily reminders in crew and students working together to support each other on any work they’re unsure about
– Improve HoWLs in art and HUMAN, aiming for at least secure in all HoWLs grades: this is partially completed, as HoWLs in these subjects have gone up across the board, however we’ve not 100% met the ‘secure’ section of the rubric or above in these subjects. I’ve got to appreciate Dylan, Callum, Torran, Mollie and Sami for smashing these targets, some of whom even received HoWLs in the excellence category!
In the coming weeks, we’ll be looking at where we can be making improvements using Crew Turing’s HoWL improvement project. Every student in my crew has identified a subject in which their HoWLs could do with some work. I then asked students to write a rationale explaining why they’d chosen that particular subject and a SMART target that another member of our crew could peer-asses them on.
I then gave each student someone to peer assess on a mini HoWL tracker. Every student gave at least a secure on the peer assessment, and knowing that someone was tracking engagement, meant that members of my crew really pushed themselves in those sessions to contribute and ask clarifying questions. I’m going to try this again in a few weeks to get snapshots of what is going on in sessions.
To celebrate our successes, Dylan treated us to homemade sponge cake with custard and Torran bought in a chocolate birthday cake. Not only this, Miss Narey who has been with us over the past few months prepared a quiz for us to enjoy! Big appreciations to those who made Friday’s crew session so fun, and congratulations to Mollie, Charlotte, Dylan, Callum, Sami and Jess for winning the quiz.
