Each week since COVID-19 caused schools to close we’ve been having Crew over Google Hangouts. It’s been wonderful to see Crew and have a chat to them, despite not able to be all together. We’ve not yet managed a whole crew hangouts – our maximum being 10 out of 12 members getting involved at once so it’d be great if we can all reunite soon!
Our conversations have covered what we’ve each been up to since the lockdown, how we’re getting on with completing work and our highlights and lowlights of the week. It’s been lovely to hear that crew having been busy baking, going out walking, going on bike rides, watching Netflix (Tiger King generated a lot of conversation the other week!), chatting to each other on PS4 and trying not to go stir crazy!
One of my favourite sessions we’ve had was today when we shared photos of us as babies/toddlers. Thanks for sharing these Crew – what a cute bunch you were!
Can other students/staff guess which photo belongs to which Crew member? Email me your answers!
As we come to the end of Week 6, I asked Crew to draw the 3 things that’ve made lockdown a little but more bearable for them. Here’s a snippet of some of the …erm… better drawings we had:
Some form of technology featured on most of the pictures (there were some very strange looking phones drawn!) Technology is certainly making the lockdown restrictions more bearable and it’s great that we can use it to “see” friends, family and Crew on a regular basis.
Technology also connects us to the world beyond our own little circle and, earlier in the week, our very own Noah was invited by our friends at EL Education to choreograph and perform a dance. They had spotted his talent when he featured in this previous blog post.
Noah’s dance will be featured as part of a wider celebration from EL Education for their #BetterWorldDay – this year’s focus is on expressing gratitude for those working on the frontline during the Covid-19 crisis and I think Noah’s performance is a perfect and emotional tribute.
You can watch Noah’s full performance here in our weekly ‘This Week in the Trust’ update, along with catching up on all the other wonderful things happening across the trust:
Another highlight of the week was seeing members of Crew receiving praise from Miss Haughey and Mrs Sprakes for their efforts: Bryn, Kobe, Dakota and Aden have all be recognised for working hard in Maths and Spanish.
My appreciation cards went to Thomas and Tom for their consistent hard work across all subjects, and to Ali for always stepping up to Crew challenges, be it contributing to blog posts (see below) or leading Crew check-ins (she makes a cracking Deputy Crew Leader!)
Looking ahead to Week 7, we’re kicking off a new STEAM expedition. Kobe has already tried (and failed) to guess what it’s going to be about. Here’s a teaser for you – any ideas?
That’s all from me – I’m handing over to Ali!
Mrs Parker
And now please welcome our Guest Blogger, the fabulous Ali, giving her account of her experience of living in lockdown:
Hello! This is Ali, updating you all during this quarantine period.
Honestly during this time I have been working hard and breaking this up by doing fun activities such as SFX makeup, that my crew saw during a check-in because I didn’t notice that it was earlier than usual.
I have been keeping in contact with my close friends everyday and having frequent exercise (while of course staying a safe distance from people, which I would do anyway).
Of course at these very unusual and difficult times it’s impossible to stay positive all the time so to increase these times I have been doing activities I enjoy such as: baking, writing, reading and watching great movies (mainly Marvel and Jurassic Park). During this time I somehow managed to make a cake that was supposed to take 15 minutes to bake and took 50 minutes to bake. Clearly I’m a magician. I also managed to fill an entire piece of paper with badly drawn fish, I’m running out of ideas for things to keep me occupied.
This week I’ve heard back from most Crew members, the majority of whom appear to be busily working their way through distance learning tasks that staff have been setting, as well as re-considering how they might now achieve the Duke of Edinburgh bronze award.
I was delighted to hear about Lewis D’s nomination as one of the few “Hegarty Heroes”, and this is timely recognition for all the hard work he puts into his mathematics tasks. He’s still training with resistance bands and going for a few runs to balance the academic with the athletic.
Maclaren continues to stay on top of his work, with a 100% work completion score in every subject area – well done Maclaren! He’s also keeping up with his online Tae-kwon-do training, and has bought himself a computer science book.
George reports that: “This week I’ve been going for walks in the woods with my family, such as Cantley Park and Kingswood. I have also been walking my dog Frequently” (strange name for a dog!).
Glad to hear that Keisha is still able to continue her voluntary work with horses whilst observing social distance measures, and has made a start on the St. John’s First Aid course in Common Mission.
Summer has swapped ice skating for dog walking for her DofE physical challenge, and her father is helping her with the First Aid training in Common Mission.
Isabel is catching up with Hegarty maths and Tassomai science, but missed the deadline this week for posting photos of her work.
It was lovely to check-in with members of Crew Churchill this afternoon to chat about how the week has gone.
Everyone was extremely positive, having now settled into regular routines for school work and free time.
It was also good to check-in with crew’s pledges which were made last week.
Here’s what Crew said:
Adam has tried to up his HUMs completion rate and this is improving. He’s pledged to join a hangout on Monday morning during which Mrs. Parker will go through any tasks students are finding tricky.
Kyle has been ticking along nicely and kept his pledge by emailing Mr. Portman to find out what he needed to do for Citizenship. Nice work, Kyle!
Rhys is just cracking on with his work and has completed everything he has been set!
Ruby has shared work she previously couldn’t hand in because of technical issues.
Theone has continued to work hard (as she always does) and feels really chilled!
Take a look at some of the work Theone has been completing:
As a crew, we also pledged to check out the Duke of Edinburgh classroom and make sure we’re having a go at the First Aid challenge and completing our physical section even though we’re not in school.
On the 4th of May- all year E24 and X24 at XP Trust will be starting their new expedition for STEAM. This will be starting with a week of immersion, adapted for the current lockdown home learning. Including experts, fieldwork and whole school Google Hangout quiz challenge! All students in year 9 in both schools will receive a Google Hangout invitation hosted by Mr Smith and Mr Said and learning coaches. This will have key information and challenges for the week to come.
The Hangout will be 1pm Tuesday 5th of May.
Below is a Teaser Trailer to the new expedition- Here Comes the Sun!
Another week goes by where online learning seems to be getting easier for Crew Frank. This week has highlighted the uplift in spirits and positivity in which the entire crew has shown. Whether this is through the quality pieces of work which have been completed or the enjoyment they are having during these tough times.
Let’s take a look…
Here is Caitlin and her family taking their postponed camping trip to their very own back garden. I love this and what a brilliant idea to keep the positive vibes around the campfire. Nice one Caitlin! 🙂
Id like to also mention Amelia from Crew Frank also…
Amelia has been working super hard on her maths and perfecting every single piece of work she does. After an email from Mr. Nixon, Amelia’s maths teacher, this just blew me away…
This is year 10 work Amelia has produced and she’s only in year 7!!! Amelia never shy’s away from difficult tasks and shows real resilience in ”getting it” and then helping others around her. So well done, and keep up the good work Amelia.
The ending of Y7 expedition ‘Only Joules and Houses’ in STEAM is yet another achievement for all those involved. Although we wish we could have finished this in school, it has been brilliant to see Olivia, Caitlin, Amelia, Charlie, Oliver, Jacob, and Thomas, show 100% engagement with tasks, making sure they are all attempted and completed whilst they are at home. Email from Mrs. Townson shows how impressed she is with you all, so a big well done!
Olivia from Crew Frank has a real passion for music and takes time to learn new instruments and sing in and out of school. To top this week off, Olivia shared with me a video recording of her singing which she had been working on for her Granny, so we could see what she had been up to. Olivia can’t see her Granny at the moment so she uses facetime to communicate with her. She says her Granny really supports her music and therefore created this video for her.
This is fantastic Olivia, what a brilliant voice. Keep up the good work from Crew. P.S. we love Granny!
A big well done to all Crew members for working hard at home and also a big mention to parents/carers for supporting our students. This would be impossible without your help. Thank you again!
Chris Mbano this week has gone above and beyond with his Common Mission work and been extra creative on his Youtube Channel. Chris has been onto old videos on YouTube and re-edited the first day of all students at XPE. Chris said he did this as a little reminder and to cheer people up of what we can expect when we go back to school.
If you haven’t already like and subscribe to Chris’s channel here.
Also this week there was some confusion with the day of the crew google hangout this week. As there was an invite sent for both Tuesday and Thursday this week. Big thanks to Corey A who checked in on both! As for everyone else, most crew members checked into at least one of the sessions, but just to clarify this week, the crew hangout will be on Tuesday at 11:30 as normal.
This week we’ve condensed our crew sessions and switched up our activities to make them more diverse, and I have really enjoyed the time we’ve spent on google hangouts together. I set up a kahoot this week with a tonne of questions on topics they had been learning about using their google classrooms. I mixed all their different subjects up, and added in some general knowledge and Shrek trivia, just for my crew. Annoyingly, the quiz I made didn’t actually work (I’ve saved it in my drafts for next week), but I found a good replacement and I’d like to congratulate Charlotte for winning the quiz!
I’ve had some wonderful submissions from crew members sharing what they’ve been up to this week. Sami has been going out daily to walk his dogs, and has been enjoying time at home with his brother. Jess has sent us more gorgeous pictures of the work she does on the farm with her horses and donkeys. Lewis has also showed us his new quarantine ‘do! I love these little updates!
An aspect of school that I am really missing are the community meetings on a Friday. The opportunity to appreciate someone is really important to our crew as giving thanks to others helps develop the character trait of compassion.
Just because we are social distancing doesn’t mean we have to give up on all the nice elements of social interaction. I asked each crew member to create a little appreciation postcard for another member of my crew, it didn’t need to be academic, just something nice that another had done for them, no matter how small. Here’s what they came up with:
It’s great to hear these stories of crew members supporting each other with work, or providing entertaining discussions – something we all need while stuck at home. I’m going to look at filling some more of these in this week during crew (Monday 11:30am and Thursday 2:00PM).
Excited to update you with more shenanigans next week!
This week we can show and tell you about some of the work that Crew Young have been getting their teeth into whilst under the current lockdown restrictions.
Earlier in the week each “Youngster” and their parents received a personalised “work completion review” document designed to reward and recognise those with consistently secure HOWLs, and also intended to prompt an informed discussion around emerging distance learning issues, and how these might be mitigated. It might be something as simple as incorrect work sharing permissions on a Google classroom, but at times it’s not always such an easy fix!
It’s clear that nearly all of us are sticking to the basic principle of “do what you can, when you can” and here Summer has shared some of her most recent digital art work.
George‘s contribution to this blog is centred around his current humanities work text study, whilst Lewis continues to make progress with his digital graphics:
Dominic is prioritising his art assignments, practising drawing sketches of characters from memory, whilst Louie has been considering how his involvement with the Fire Cadets might help enable him to achieve the Duke of Edinburgh bronze award through a different pathway than he’d originally planned:
I think it’s fair to say that, even though we’re not in school and have the challenge of working at home, our staff and students in E26 (Year7) and E25 (Year 8) are still Working Hard, Getting Smart and Being Kind.
Over the last couple of weeks, we have seen determination (when the work has been tricky), compassion (when helping our fellow crew members who have been stuck) and the completion of so much beautiful work, ranging from stand-out science assessments, amazing artwork, passionate speeches and marvellous maths!
Here are just a few appreciations for students and their beautiful achievements:
