Decipher the Data Drop

By Katie Haughey23rd April 2019

I have been immensely impressed with my crew’s contribution to our school’s community during the week running up to the Easter bank holiday, considering lots of their friends and family are off! Here’s a snapshot of what’s gone on in crew over that period:

Abi brought in a phenomenal model of our solar system in to show us, that links in really nicely with the STEAM expedition, Escape Earth. Her craftsmanship and quality really blew me away, it’s great to see her going above and beyond to set an example of what a 4.0+ (in the excellence category) looks like! As part of our academic crew session and assessment prep for maths, we did a Kahoot competition, where quickfire questions were presented to crew as a race against the clock. They clearly knew their stuff, and I’d like to congratulate Jess for coming first in both rounds! On Thursday, we enjoyed a table tennis tournament with Crew Mandela. It was lovely to get appreciations from members of their crew at the end of the session on how respectful Crew Turing had been throughout.

I was also treated to many a culinary delights from numerous members of my crew, with Torran and Junia’s blueberry pancakes being very memorable.

The final activity we participated in as a crew before breaking up for almost a week off was an individual breakdown of their personal data. We spent a lot of time last week looking at our stats as a crew, but I thought it would be more meaningful if we assessed our progress against our HOWLs data from November to see if there had been gains or losses, and explore why that might be:

I gave them the following criteria for them to colour code their HOWLs, on whether they had gone up/down.

HOWL Progress Colour Codes:

  • – 1.0 or more = red
  • – 0.9 to – 0.5 = orange
  • – 0.4 to – 0.1 = yellow
  • stayed the same = no colour
  • + 0.1 to 0.4 = green
  • + 0.5 to 0.9 = blue
  • + 1.0 or above = purple

These codes match the criteria of how we colour code our spreadsheets and the charts we keep up across the school, to make it meaningful to my crew. We did this as a silent solo activity, some students noticed patterns and were able to decipher why their ‘work hard’ might have gone down ever so slightly, be it, they were contributing less in class, or maybe hadn’t been as diligent with their homework. There was also a lot of positives to take away from their stats too, such as Dylan’s, who had made huge progress in HUMAN after improving his productivity and concentration in session!

Each member of my crew annotated their thoughts on why they had been awarded the HoWLs they had received, while I floated around to discuss their progress individually. I was amazed to hear their thoughts about their learning and character development, and thought that we should seize this opportunity to set some further targets based on our findings.

I’ve left them with the task of over these next three days we have in crew, to set individualised targets which I will publish with next week’s blog post based on their data. Not only were they left with that to think about for extended study, they have also been sent home with these gorgeous easter bunnies that were kindly given to each member of crew by Torran, which he had handmade – what a great way to end the week!

Ella’s student-led Crew session – mindfulness

By D Pearson18th April 2019

Despite the very short week due to the Easter Bank Holidays, Crew Young still found time to engage in some creative artwork yesterday, in a morning session led by Ella on the theme of mindfulness. Crew members were invited to select a piece of music of personal significance to them, and this played in the background whilst the artwork was being produced.

Ella’s session followed other student-led sessions on table tennis and baking. Thanks Ella!

What is Crew?

By A Brown17th April 2019

I could comment on the excellent work we’ve done around tracking HOWLs recently; or as a Crew nominating three students who have made excellent progress towards their pledges; or how we’ve recently resolved conflict through the power of circling up and discussing issues maturely and sensitively.

But when two students make an effort to give everyone an Easter egg and a bag of chocolates, followed by two special presentations to students who they think have worked particularly hard to overcome challenges, you know something is going right.

That is Crew.

A huge thank you to Denim and Thea who brought Easter eggs and chocolate for everyone today, unprompted and out of the goodness of their own hearts.

I was particularly blown away by their decision to reward Lucie and Zach for the hard work, progress towards their individual targets, and work around their HOWLs. Complete with signed mug!

We continue to face our challenges, our ups and downs, our need for some positive reinforcement of expectations, some motivation to get going, encouragement – that’s life!

But life is better when there is Crew.

Crew Mandela update!

By J Smith12th April 2019

Crew Mandela have had a great week in terms of HOWLS. The whole crew have made huge improvements with working towards 4.0 in work hard. We had a weekly crew focus to ensure that all students get their hand up in sessions as much as possible! We then had a session with a focus on how messages can be misinterpreted by others, even when students are trying their hardest to pass on the correct information. Watch the video below to get a feel of the topic of discussion had.

Passing on the Message!

 

In addition we also had a joint crew session with crew Turing who were fantastic with taking part in a crew led table tennis tournament.

 

Thanks to crew Turing for showing so much sportsmanship!

 

Pledging and Baking!

By A Parker10th April 2019

After absolutely storming up the HOWLs league tables this term, we have taken some time to reflect on our grades and discuss how we achieved them (‘what worked well’) and what we could’ve done to improve even more (‘even better ifs.’)  As ever, there has been some real insightful, honest and mature reflections from Crew.  For example, Noah stated that although he was very proud of Crew HOWLs and his attendance/homework hand-in rate, he realised that he could do more to raise his academic HOWLS by sharing his learning more in class.

We also discussed how we need to up our game even more this term!  Crew have set their own targets for this term, both in terms of the HOWLS they want to achieve and improvements to their learning behaviours.  We will check-in on these during our academic crew sessions, and hopefully – with the support of Crew – everyone will reach, or exceed, their personal targets.

In other news, Ali kindly offered to lead a Crew baking session last week, but with a bit of a twist: each team would be judged Bake-Off style by myself, Miss Haughey and Mr Smith!

We judged the cupcakes on appearance, taste and decoration.  There was some questionable use of food colouring, but Team Mountain Climbers (Megan, Aden and Bryn) presented us with a chocolate delight and were crowned Star Bakers.

Massive appreciations to Ali for organising, for Crew for working so well together in the kitchen, especially during the cleaning-up process (trust me; it was messy!), and to my fellow judges (it’s a tough job, and all that…)

The Problem with Communication – Crew Shackleton

By A Brown10th April 2019

After watching a viral video about how simple messages can quickly become distorted over time, we decided to give it a go ourselves. Take a look at our video below.

I particularly like Fin’s ability to dig like a dog, despite the fact he was supposed to be getting some eggs out of a cupboard!

We had a lot of fun doing this, but Shackleton picked out some really important messages that we learnt from this activity:

  1. Even simple messages can change in a very short space of time;
  2. The quality of the message can be affected by people’s ability and skill in communicating;
  3. As soon as we began to lose focus, the message changed and became unclear;
  4. Perception of the original message is vital – your viewpoint can change how you receive and deliver the message;
  5. Even unintentional mistakes cause significant changes.

This was particularly powerful as we’ve been discussing a lot about rumours in school recently. I think we got an important message from this: rumours are spread easily and change easily each time it gets passed on.

We found the best way to stop rumours is to stop talking about them.

Well done, Crew Shackleton. A fun activity with an important message, executed maturely.

Crew Young Balloon Tower Challenge

9th April 2019D Pearson

What do 20 balloons, a roll of sellotape and a length of string have to do with being Crew? This week Crew Young grappled with producing a free-standing balloon tower in just 20 minutes from start to finish. Over-exuberance with blowing up (to bursting) some balloons cost one group valuable centimetres over their opponents, as they had fewer balloons with which to create their tower.

Watch how we did it below…..

 

High Voltage: Academic Check-in

By K Poncia9th April 2019

Today in crew, we have been sharing work from our current STEAM expedition, ‘High Voltage!’Image result for high voltage

We talked about different pieces of work which we felt showed mastery of our learning so far.

Ben read out a piece of writing which showed an excellent understanding of the national grid.  He said it showed excellence because he had taken into account the advantages and disadvantages of different types of cables.

Adam explained about how he had worked with Denzil, playing a memory game to remember the names and roles of electrical symbols / components.  Adam graded his understanding secure as he achieved 100% on his test.  Well done, Adam!

Theone showed her answers to different ‘Charge Problems’ which were challenging questions about the positive and negative charges of protons.  The questions got progressively harder.  Theone achieved 13 out of 14.  Excellent!

Alyssa and Ruby shared their written responses for one of the immersion activities – Capital Punishment.  They were both proud of their work and the arguments they had written to show whether they were for or against it.

So, Crew Churchill are certainly powering on with their STEAM work.  Well done!

HOW are Crew Ali doing in their HOWLs?

By J Townson6th April 2019

At XP East, not only are students given grades by their teachers which indicate how they are progressing relative to their Minimum Expected Grade (MEG), they are also graded on their Habits of Work and Learning (HOWLs).  Mr Portman has shared the league tables with us this week and students spent time in Community Meeting dissecting the data, drawing conclusions as to how much and why each Crew may have improved in their average HOWLs.

I’m proud to say Crew Ali are doing exceptionally well and are consistently high in the league tables, just as earlier in the year.  Since the last data drop we have made improvements overall and part of this is due to an increased awareness and working knowledge of how we can develop these Habits in and out of school.

This week Crew Ali have been digging into the data to consider how our HOWLs might have had an impact on our grades.  The table below gives you a flavour of where we are as a Crew.  Each column represents Work Hard, Get Smart or Be Kind in each of HUMAN (WHH, GSH, BKH), Maths (WHM, GSM, BKM) and Science (WHS, GSS, BKS):

The Crew data above has been sorted according to the total HOWLs average for each student, with our lowest average of 3.0 still within the ‘secure’ range expected of all students – well done Crew Ali!  We noticed that although we have some HOWLs which are below expectations, in the orange range, these are only slightly below and those students are determined to pull them up as we go forward, identifying what they need to do to improve.  Another Crew member compared this with the huge number of green or ‘excellent’ HOWL grades which have contributed to those students meeting or even significantly exceeding their MEGs.  Those who are struggling with their Work Hard, Get Smart of Be Kind HOWLs grades are being supported and we really do encourage dialogue between all members of the Crew as to how we can improve, regardless of where we are in our HOWLs learning journey.

Well done Crew Ali – I’m looking forward to more discussion and analysis in next week’s Academic Crew session!

#Winning!

By Katie Haughey5th April 2019

I’ve really struggled deciding what makes the cut in terms of our crew blog after a week of highlights during crew and in session. After all the banter between Callum and Torran, I’d be doing them a disservice not to congratulate Torran and his team for winning the league! I was also delighted to hear that Lexi had achieved her goal of performing her back flip during her floor routine! I love starting the week celebrating our crew’s successes, and luckily for me, there have been many causes for celebration this week!

A definite highlight was the wonderful presentation of learning from C25’s STEAM expedition. I was blown away by my crew member’s hard work, and how they articulated their learning to me as I passed through the lab. It is wonderful to see them stepping up to the challenge, answering tricky questions and doing so in a really mature and professional manner.

This week, we have been analyzing the data of our subject grades and HOWLs. I was worried that the last data set for my crew had been so high we would struggle to top it, but it seems that we haven’t lost momentum. We are top of the leaderboard across all year groups for the be kind and work hard HOWLS, which is wonderful news. For get smart however, we’re in 3rd place (bearing in mind that we have had to compare digits in the hundredths in order for us to calculate the year 7 average)! It really got me thinking about how we can support one another in getting smarter.

Those three criteria have been the focus for our learning, and will be until the next data drop. I decided to set a little extra extended study last weekend, to get my crew to go above and beyond, and do some ‘explore further’ work that was related to their expedition but not something they had necessarily learned about in lesson, as a way of my crew taking responsibility for their learning. I encouraged them to use their expedition sites that have been set up by their teachers to support them with this. They were then asked to feedback to us in the form of a mini masterclass. Here’s some of their findings:

Lexi, Charlotte, Abi, Callum and Sami did some research into slavery in America, looking into Harriet Jacob’s account of her experience as a slave in the 1800s and famous slave traders. It was fascinating to hear her account and how she’d escaped the deep south and wrote a book detailing her mistreatment. Alice expanded our spanish vocabulary with some mythical creatures she had been researching that weekend – I am determined to somehow drop ‘unicorn/llama’ into conversation on my next trip to Spain!

Reece took us through the specialised cells in the body, and ran an activity where each pair had to identify and act as those cells in accordance to their roles. Lewis and Dylan had prepared fantastic slides on the anatomy of the digestive system and the role various organs had to play in processing food. Torran did a brilliant interactive maths recap of conversion, which included mini-whiteboard questions, and Dylan even printed a questionnaire for us to complete at the end of his session!

I’m sending my crew home with another small and optional piece of extended learning tonight, to try a little digital detoxing this weekend. I want them to try and spend a little bit of additional time that they may spend on devices doing some reading, some ‘explore further’ work, cooking or getting out now the weather is nicer! We’re going to debrief on Monday to see how it goes, myself included!