Hiking, abseiling and presenting our reflections to a wider audience – and that’s only our first 4 days back at XP East!

By J Townson2nd September 2019

Smiling and ready to go! 

Our 8 mile hike on Wednesday of this week took us through a beautiful area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, where we tested our map reading skills and had the opportunity to catch up more from the summer holidays.  We stopped in the middle for a picnic lunch and were fortunate to have dry weather until the last hour of the day.  Well done Crew Ali and E25 as a whole – we all made it and kept one another going right to the end.

Thursday was a change of pace, including abseiling off an 80ft high bridge on the Monsal Trail in Derbyshire and orienteering using clues generated by the outdoor adventure team.  I’m so proud of all of our Crew members for encouraging one another through the abseil process; several of us were understandably nervous and for many this was the first time stepping over the side of something so high with only a couple of ropes to hold on to!  That’s what makes us Crew – doing it together, cheering from the bottom of the ravine, coaching from the top of the bridge and having the courage to traverse the space in between.  Many thanks to Crew Shackleton in particular for also supporting us during these activities, we aren’t just Crews, we are all members of XP East.  Mr Brown made a great video which can be viewed on Crew Shackleton’s blog here.

And it wouldn’t be XP East if the week didn’t culminate in a Presentation of Learning, to which parents and carers were invited.  We love sharing our reflections with a wider audience and the Guiding Question for the week had been ‘How Crew Are You?’  Crew Ali decided to focus their reflections on:

  • Our strengths as a Crew
  • Challenges we have faced
  • Challenges to overcome

We know we are not the ‘finished article’; in fact, every piece of beautiful work we do is created through drafting and redrafting, and we apply this principle to our own character development.  We have achieved much as a Crew, but we have so much more we can do to be the best version of ourselves.  We are going to rise to that challenge.

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life”  Muhammad Ali

Crew Parkinson’s Fantastic First Week Back!

By H Hickson31st August 2019

Wow! What a week. It was absolutely brilliant to be reunited with Crew after the Summer holidays. The guiding question for this week was ‘how crew are you?’

Here’s a summary of our wonderful week:

Tuesday: we had a check in where we shared the highlights of our summer holidays. It was wonderful to hear about the holidays, days out and family visits the crew had over the summer. We then discussed what we want from crew in year 8 and agreed to keep building crew over this new academic year, working on specific areas that need improving. Next, came the team building games – they ranged from activities revolving around construction to races to problem solving, it’s safe to say there was lots of laughter involved and communication skills being put into use.

Wednesday: we went on our Hike in the Yorkshire Wolds. Again, it was great to see crew chatting together and enjoying themselves in the beautiful surroundings. It was also tough at times with a few hills and a fair distance to walk – not to mention the rain (thanks to the Great British Summer). However, crew’s spirits were not dampened and there was a lively atmosphere amongst us as they were supporting each other, sharing food and checking in to see if they were all alright or if they needed a rest – that’s crew!

Thursday: this was by far the most challenging day for a lot of crew (me included!). We spent the day in Derbyshire completing outdoor activities such as orienteering and abseiling. It was great to see Crew working together to find the answers to the questions along the Monsal Trail – offering to go ahead to scout out different paths and helping Ava with the navigation, as well as double checking each others answers to make sure we got the right one. Needless to say this hard work paid off, we came first out of the Year 8 crews in orienteering, getting full marks! Next came the abseiling – get ready for nerves, tears and smiles. This was a real challenge for some members of Crew but it was lovely to see everyone supporting and encouraging each other. They truly showed courage and compassion when completing this activity. Dylan was a stand out student for me – he really faced a massive fear and with the help of Crew (particularly Rosie) he overcame that fear. What a massive achievement and we are all so proud. Feel the fear and do it anyway! 

Friday: Back to school! We reflected on the question ‘how crew are you?’. The students completed a solo where they reflected on and answered the questions:

  • what are your strengths as a crew?
  • what are your challenges as a crew?
  • how are you going to overcome those challenges in year 8, as a crew?

Once crew members returned from their solo, we discussed their answers and completed a silent conversation protocol to feedback ideas. Next, we had the remainder of the day to prepare and practice our Crew’s presentation of learning to answer the guiding question and share with the rest of the year and parents our strengths and areas to work on as a crew. This was a wonderful way to see how united we are as a crew and we had some fantastic discussions. We explored the idea that in our crew we have very different personalities but that brings different strengths. Shanna and Dylan thought of a lovely idea that crew is like a jigsaw puzzle – every puzzle piece brings something different but the image is only complete with all the pieces, just like crew.

So, after kicking year 8 off with a wonderful week, I am absolutely bursting with excitement for this new academic year with crew. We have identified our strengths and challenges as a crew and agreed that together we will work on these to make crew even stronger. I really do believe that this week we have become closer and made our relationships stronger and I am so proud of and thrilled to have Harvey, Aaron, Ava, Shanna, Dylan, Rosie, Florence, Kristian, Lacey, Marcus, Bob and Callum in my Crew.

It seems appropriate to end with some words from Harvey, which overtime has become our accidental crew catchphrase: huzzah and hurrah!

 

E24: Visiting Sheffield Hallam University

By K Poncia29th August 2019

Day 3 of E24’s first week back saw students visiting Sheffield Hallam University.  This fieldwork was designed to further develop students’ knowledge and understanding of how to get to higher education, what opportunities are available and what university life is like.

Throughout the day students discovered the different ways to get to further education, whether this is by completing A Level courses, maybe BTECs or through an apprenticeship, some of the many different types of degrees which could be studied (who knew that Surf Science was a degree?) and what else makes up life at college or university – anyone for a game of Quidditch at the Harry Potter Society?

A tour of the university allowed students to see the different facilities that are available.  The size of the lecture theatre made students gasp and the flight simulator, used by students studying aeronautical engineering, had them asking insightful questions.

At the end of our visit, feedback strongly showed that the majority of students would like to go to university and now feel more confident knowing how they can access this amazing opportunity.

Well done, E24!  Now, don’t forget your hiking boots tomorrow!

Crew Shackleton: that floating sensation!

By A Brown29th August 2019

What an amazing day abseiling in Monsal Dale, Derbyshire. Feeling a little sore from the 8 mile walk yesterday, Crew Shackleton tackled the short walk to the bridge we’d be abseiling from and then confronted their fears with courage and compassion for each other.

For many, this was a new experience, so hats off to everyone who gave it a go!

See the highlights from our morning…

Orienteering was excellent in the afternoon after a brief lunch stop. Unfortunately we were too busy dodging cyclists, checking out lime kilns, reading maps, looking for clues and attempting to trick Crew Ali with cunning decoys….that I forgot to take photos. But take my word for it, it was a great afternoon.

Well done, Crew Shackleton!

E25’s first day back

By Katie Haughey28th August 2019

While students up and down the country will be returning back to classes next week, XP East’s E25 returned on Tuesday to embark on a week long expedition, allowing them to re-immerse themselves in our school’s culture. Mr Brown kicked off the day with a community meeting centred on the incredible achievements of X21’s GCSE results. The underlying theme we noticed in the reasons for their success was crew, so we moved on to our guiding question for the week:

How crew are you?

Five weeks is a long time off, we had a lot of catching up to do in morning check in. Spending the first day back is fundamental, it allows time for us to familiarise ourselves with the support network we have built last year. We reviewed what had worked so well in the first year, and what we were going to do this year moving forward.

In session 2, we got stuck in with a crew challenge, where we had to build a tower from straws and other materials that would stand unassisted for a whole minute. Sadly, no crew managed it (it is very tricky to execute!) but the conversations that were had afterwards were reflective and really allowed students to unpack their role in the activity.

We often use the phrase ‘no pilots, no passengers’ to ensure that every person in crew is guaranteed a role. Listening to my crew analyse points where they may have taken over too much or when they were passive shows how much they’ve grown since year 7. We took the reflections from the tower session into the inter-crew competitions.

We spent the afternoon in the sports hall completing mini challenges as crews. I noticed a real difference in how well my crew cooperated in this session from the tower session. Students were giving others pointers and tips. I saw students encouraging others, sharing water, offering help with degunge. This afternoon, while it was fun, was also really valuable in reestablishing what crew is all about.

Some admitted to feeling nervous or worried about what challenges might lie ahead in year 8, with them no longer being the youngest in the school. We’ll tackle them together this year as crew. What was pretty lovely about that first day though, is that during check out, every member of crew said they had a really great first day back. Can’t wait to hear their reflections on ‘how crew’ they are on Friday!

Shackleton Crew Day 1: Egg Drop Challenge

By A Brown28th August 2019

What a fantastic start to the academic year for Crew Shackleton today. It was great to be back and see everyone again, and most of all see how keen (if not a little tired) everyone was to be back at school again.

Guiding question for the week:

How Crew are you?

Yesterday, as our Crew Challenge to help us consider the guiding question, we split up into random groups of 3, and undertook the challenge of protecting an egg as it was dropped from the top balcony of the school. All the groups had was:

  • 3 marshmallows
  • 10 cocktail sticks
  • a small piece of pipe foam insulator
  • 3m of tissue paper
  • sticky tape
  • a plastic bag

Highlights below…

A really successful activity that allowed us to start to get back into working as a Crew and work towards answering out guiding question by the end of the week. We made some excellent observations and reflections on how well we managed to work together, or not so well in some cases, and promised to revisit the challenge later in the term with fewer materials and a harder set of rules for the challenge. To not only complete the challenge more successfully, but work better as Crew to do it.

E24: Smashing it!

By K Poncia28th August 2019

Following on from a great first day back, E24 (Year 9) have had another excellent day!

It has been wonderful today to see such high levels of engagement, focus, co-operation and graft!

The day started with a crew session where crews were given four different challenges to solve.  These included: Radioactive Isotope, The Floor is Lava!, Precious Trophy and Scientific Breakthrough.

Here we are working as crew!

The next part of our day saw us building on our careers sessions from yesterday by finding out what potential employment opportunities might be suited to us.  Using a programme called ‘Start’, we discovered which careers matched our qualities, skills and interests.  We also researched what salaries different jobs would pay and the availability of specific jobs throughout the country.

Ali discovered that being an author could earn her anything from £9,800 a year to over £2million a year!  She’s already started writing her bestseller!

Rhys is interested in becoming a paramedic.  He researched the qualifications he needs to achieve this and found out that there are over 2,000 job opportunities in this field across Yorkshire.  We’d all be in safe hands with Rhys!

Throughout this session, learning and conduct behaviours from ALL students were exemplary!

The final session of today saw students introduced to ‘Passage Presentation’ which is an important piece of work students complete during Year 9 to demonstrate that they are GCSE ready.  More information to follow about this…

So, tomorrow, we are heading to Sheffield Hallam University.  We can’t wait!

First day back and Crew Ali have hit the ground running!

By J Townson27th August 2019

The first day back has been a whirlwind, but I’m happy to say that Crew Ali have taken it in their stride and ‘hit the ground running’ as we like to say at XP East.  We began our week as we always do, with a check-in to see how everyone was feeling after the summer holiday.  It was an opportunity to share stories and experiences, but also to discuss how we had built our character and challenged ourselves during the time away from school.

We did a kit check to make sure we are ready for our hike and activity days later in the week, as Craftsmanship and Quality in preparation is really important; unfortunately not all of our Crew were fully prepared for the check, but this is definitely a learning point for next time, particularly as we begin the Duke of Edinburgh Award next year.

Today’s activities included building a VERY wobbly Tower of Power (build the tallest tower you can in 30 mins using only paper, string and sellotape!  It didn’t stay standing but our debrief really helped us unpack what went well and what we could do better next time.  Our ability to reflect is a strength of what we do at XP East and it is a skill we continually practice.  The enthusiasm from the Crew in our afternoon’s inter-Crew Minute To Win It activities really set a great tone for the week.

Check out Miss Haughey’s video here:

It’s going to be a busy week, but we are going to have a great time in Crew!

What do a sports bench, hard-hat, handcuffs and crazy golf have to do with Crew?

By D Pearson27th August 2019

As Crew Young returned to school following the summer break they were immersed in a range of activities designed to “re-Crew”. Year 9 presents key challenges and opportunities, from achieving the Duke of Edinburgh Award, to undergoing an academic “right of passage” to exercising a degree of “choice” over future career pathways. We started and remained in Crew throughout the day:

After Crew Young completed a series of physical tasks, and the “rob the nest” sports activity they were introduced to the basics of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.

For the rest of today they met several career professionals, who demonstrated the “tools of their trade” before exploring career pathways into their chosen professions.

Highlight of the day was seeing Louie B in riot gear before being placed in handcuffs by a police liaison officer!

A local plumbing merchant showed how, with a little technical expertise, their trained engineers can turn plastic pipes into a crazy golf course…..

 

 

 

Crew Ali rise to the challenge on Sports Day

By J Townson23rd July 2019

Well, what a Sports Day!  Crew Ali are delighted to share the news that our crew were the overall winners on our very first Sports Day at XP East.  It was a tough day, with inter-crew rounders and football tournaments followed by track and field events at the fantastic Doncaster Keepmoat Stadium facilities.

The weather was great, the sense of community was palpable and today just felt like…Crew!  I was particularly impressed with how all of our students across the school pulled together through the events where some individuals needed more support and encouragement.  A huge thank you to all our parents and friends for helping our students to prepare and for your involvement this year.  Our students are a credit to you all.