Crew ”Mindful” Frank

By Brandon Burke24th September 2020

Over the past couple of Monday’s Crew Frank has been looking at ways to be ”Mindful”. We started this by exploring what mindful means to us and together as a crew, we defined our meaning of this as…

”a conscious or aware of something you’re sensing or feeling in moments of life. It opens up our thoughts to what extent something is cared for in ongoing surroundings” 

As a crew, we spent time thinking of being mindful and looking at where we fit this into life. It was really clear that when we think of being mindful, its an act of stepping back and thinking of others when we act, think, or say things to each other. With prompt to think about how we are mindful, charities became a topic of discussion, and it was clear when we think of donating and raising money for a charity, we are being mindful of others who may need our help.

As a crew task for the ongoing year, we will be working towards supporting local charities in our community. As an activity, the crew spent some time looking at ways of fundraising and different charities that are close to us personally and locally to Doncaster.

Brilliant focus and hard work on the research task from Crew Frank, some unique ways of fundraising for possible local charities we can support.

Crew Ibbotson

By Web Blogger24th September 2020

For the last two weeks we have been looking closely at diversity in crew, resulting in some fantastic and really mature discussion. We have looked at what diversity is, what ways people are different and why we should embrace these differences. This creates a culture at XP that is like no other!

I would like to thank a few crew members individually – Tammy, Alyssa, Brodie and Riley – for sharing some really personal and difficult things in crew, which I think brought us all closer together and really consolidated our bond. We have each other’s back in crew Ibbotson NO MATTER WHAT and that is evident from the courage and compassion shown in these sessions. We understand that whilst we may not all play in the playground together, WE ARE CREW, and that’s what matters.

It’s an honour to work with such wonderful young people. 

We have also been working on memory techniques in crew last week. We played some memory games and tried to figure out the best way we remember information as individuals. You can see Alex, Cam and Ben in the picture trying very hard to remember all the items they were shown (I promised the winner a sweet!). It was so much fun  and very insightful for us to figure out which way worked best for us, hopefully to help us in our sessions!

Improving Our Skills!

By H Hickson22nd September 2020

Crew have started their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award. This is a really exciting opportunity and experience for year 9 and will help to develop their skills, character and relationships. The expedition is not until next year but I’m sure when we start it will remind us of our time in Wales when we walked with our massive rucksacks for a night of wild camping – I’m sure we’ll have just as much fun but hopefully it’ll be a little easier this time as they’ve grown so much!

But, for now we have started our Skills section journey – students are undertaking a 12 week course to learn all about how to deal with different first aid scenarios. This week was focused on how to cope in an emergency, the steps to take and how to put people in the recovery position. These are valuable skills that are needed not only to complete DofE but will potentially help students in the future if they ever need to give first aid. As you can see, the level of focus was fantastic in this session as students worked independently using their booklets, videos and specific websites to understand and develop their knowledge of the correct way to give First Aid.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader!

By Natalie Johnson22nd September 2020

After a long weekend break, it was nice to get back into Crew and get down to business this morning.

Today we started by reflecting upon our Accelerated Reader results from the test we completed in last weeks Tranquil Tuesday. We were all pleased to see that we had all made progress from last year and we were keen to take this to the next level.

We spent some time thinking about a previous session, ‘Why is reading important?’ and reminded ourselves that GCSE papers are set using the reading age 15 years 7 months. We discussed how much more difficult we would make it for ourselves if we didn’t reach this goal… and although GCSE’s are a long way off, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day!’

During Crew this morning we started by looking at just how much we had improved, but also how far off we were from the target of 15 years 7 months. We discovered that many of us still had work to do, but some of us were ready:

Harvey                                                                                        Shawn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’d like to personally appreciate both boys who showed compassion towards their peers in Crew today by not bragging about how much they had exceeded the target reading age, but offering support and advise to their peers about how they too can reach the same goal and exceed it.

We decided that you don’t stick to anything unless you pledge it. So in true XP style we cut out pictures of a reading book and wrote a pledge which we thought would support us in improving our reading ages. We then agreed to include a note of just how many years and months worth of improvement we wanted, so when it lives on the wall it will be a daily reminder of our goals.

I was proud of how Crew maturely dealt with their results and supported one another to make achievable pledges. I will be even prouder to see the result when we come to the next testing period!

It would be brilliant if Crew parents could discuss the pledge your son/ daughter has made with them, and ask about their reading age and what goals they have. In school we offer reading time for 15 minutes at the start of Sessions 1 and 4 in order to reach the advised 30 minutes a day but I know some pledges included home reading too!

Dashboard update: 

I have spoken to a number of Crew parents and agreed that the blog posts will also feature an update on the praise and conduct log. Students are aware that this will happen too so the stakes are high! This weeks praise log looks like this:

We remain on the highest average praises this week too! Great effort Crew Rowling- keep it up!

Stay safe, look after yourselves. 

Year 9 E25 Extended Study STEAM

By Martin Said22nd September 2020

Students in E25 Explorer and E25 Pioneer have three pieces of extended study, all due for Monday 28th Sep.

  1. Redraft answers to questions on adaptations in their Mastery eBooklet.
  2. Answer the comprehension and application questions on extremophiles, plant and animal adaptations in their Mastery eBooklet.
  3. Students have been set either: revision of keywords in Quizlet OR experimenting with a simulation demonstrating natural selection.

Full details can be found on Google Classroom.

Wise Wednesday meets Thoughtful Thursday – AND my favourite photo so far showing compassion on DofE Fridays

By D Pearson20th September 2020

Last week Crew Young blended the use of graphic organisers with academic study of other techniques used to help retention and recall of key facts and concepts. We started by pooling our ideas, using the “silent conversation” protocol, whereby in 2 groups we annotated ways and means of fixing knowledge in our long term memory, piggy-backed each other’s ideas before then swapping our notes with the other group so as to silently consider and build upon theirs.

Tried and tested techniques such as graphic organisers, flashcards, mnemonics, spider charts, colour coding were discussed and later we practised creating spider diagrams of things we enjoy doing to see how we might apply this in hums and steam sessions.

Last Friday we began our DofE Silver skills challenge with a full re-boot of the online St. John’s Ambulance First Aid Course, and my favourite photo of compassion so far from Louie shown towards Adam…..

 

New subjects, new start, new students

By J Smith18th September 2020

After a long period of time off, Crew Mandela and E24  have started their choice subject for a common mission! The crew have been well and truly on it this week,  This week, we reviewed extended study that has been set in common mission and the craftsmanship and quality of the work produced in the crew has been amazing to see.

An example of this is one of the best pieces of work I have seen as a crew leader. Holly used some left over wallpaper to produce a revision resource for the second session in triple science. 

We have had a lot of conversations this week during Mindful Monday to discuss how XP is different from other schools. This has been supported by the voices of two new students who have joined crew Mandela. The students have made a brilliant start and it has been refreshing to hear other students thoughts and opinions of why they have chosen XP. 

 

Coming back stronger and wiser

By A Parker12th September 2020

Crew have been well and truly on it this week, no more so than on what we now call Wise Wednesday, where we’ve started to look at revision techniques to help prepare for GCSEs (it’s never too early!)

This week, we looked at memory recall – in particular, cognitive load theory and the forgetting curve (thanks to a master class from Mr Portman!) which illustrated why it’s so important to keep on going over new information until it is stored in our long term memory.

So, Crew have started to create flash cards to help them remember key points from their GCSE text ‘A Christmas Carol’ which they can keep on revisiting over then next 18 months or so, and I’ll be encouraging them to do the same for other subjects, too.  Hopefully this will make the last few weeks before exams a little bit less stressful as they will have had a head start on retaining key information.

It’s really great to see how Crew are becoming leaders of their own learning since returning to school and already planning how they can do their absolute best in their exams.

We’ve had lots of discussions around our HOWLs and getting back on it over the last couple of weeks, and I’d like to give a special mention to Thomas H who has been working exceptionally hard and contributing in all lessons.  He is setting a fine example to the rest of Crew.

Welcome back Crew Mercury!

By Rachael Rothwell11th September 2020

What a great start to the new year Crew Mercury have had!

I was so pleased to see everybody and to see the crew members in person.

This year we have started Crew Curriculum, and crew have really embraced Thoughtful Thursday. As a crew we looked at out most recent data for HOWLs and grades, then each member made an academic pledge.

Check out some of Crew Mercury’s pledges…

 

 

Josh – ‘I pledge to achieve a 3.0 or higher in HUMS by asking more questions’

 

 

Jayden – ‘I pledge to improve my be kind HOWLs to at least a 3.0’

 

Ella – ‘I pledge to improve my HOWLs in PE and crew are going to support me by giving me lots of encouragement’

 

Even with COVID-19 nothing has stopped us having our weekly whole school community meeting. Every Friday we have had the community meeting via Hangout and lots of appreciations, apologies and stands have been made.

Would just like to give a big shout out to Lynden for making his first stand during the community meeting. Well done Lynden! Lots of courage shown!