Crew Ali relaxing and creating together

By J Townson21st March 2019

It’s all too easy when we come back from a couple of weeks’ holiday to get swept up in the busy school days.  We talk about hitting the ground running, but it is just as important to set aside quality time to relax together.

Crew Ali have been focussing on a bit of ‘time out’ in Crew this week, in two sessions where we let our creative juices flow and painted with watercolour paints.  We played calming piano music in the background for one session and our Crew playlist for the second session.  Both sessions were an opportunity become immersed in creating, without the pressure of a critique of our products.  Some of us painted recognisable images, others experimented with colour and water techniques.  There were even some potential Mother’s Day paintings in the pipeline!

Crew Finch are HOWL-ing!

By A Parker21st March 2019

You may remember that Crew Finch pledged to work cooperatively to improve their HOWL grades, after the last data drop saw them at the bottom of the school league table (more in this blog post.) . Well, it’s data drop time again and I look forward to seeing how my Crew have done with their academic HOWLs, which are set by their subject teachers.

As Crew Leader, I have the job of assessing them on their Crew HOWLs and – as we’re all in this together – I wanted to see if Crew agreed with my gradings.  I gave Crew the opportunity to give their opinions on what each person should be graded, based on what they specifically bring to Crew, including:

  • Do they participate fully and mindfully in all Crew activities and discussions?
  • Do they arrive to Crew on time, with all the right equipment for the day?
  • Do they show empathy and compassion to their fellow Crew members?

I was quite reassured to hear that the grades they would award to one another more or less matched the ones I had already given them.  It was lovely to hear them talk about how they thought individual Crew members had improved, and advise on how they could continue to do so.

Whatever results we get, we will continue to focus on both academic improvement and personal growth, because this is what Crew does best: we encourage each other to become better versions of ourselves 🙂

Shackleton Lost At Sea

By A Brown5th March 2019

It’s been a brilliant half term for Crew Shackleton, but I think it’s fair to say, if you’re lost at sea with anyone from this crew, you’re in trouble.

Considering we’re named after a famous ocean explorer, we’ve got a bit of work to do.

That is according to the Lost at Sea activity we did this week where each person was given a list of 15 items they were able to salvage from a sinking ship. Items were ordered 1-15 in terms of their importance.

Once this was done individually, we worked in groups of 3-4 to decide on the best order using teamwork skills, communication and problem solving, with clear expectations about what this mean before the session started.

Our results were then compared to a panel of survival experts’ rankings to reveal how likely we were to survive.

Thankfully, most students would have survive. But only just.

And as for April and Faith…I think they’re still bobbing around in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere!

The point, however, was working as a group to solve a problem. Some of our strengths were:

  • encouraging each other to contribute asking questions;
  • being respectful with each others’ ideas;
  • having some controlled fun;
  • Excellent time-keeping – everyone finished on-time.

Well done Crew Shackleton. A really enjoyable activity.

A big shout out to Faith and Lilly who circulated to help people with their maths when calculating their scores, and Nikodem who took it upon himself to help another crew member correct their mistakes.

And, Crew Shackleton, I agree. I don’t care whether it’s top of the list or not, Shark repellent is coming with me!

Crew Finch become Yogis!

By A Parker1st March 2019

During this last week of term, Year 8 students have been busy preparing for and delivering their STEAM Presentation of Learning, as well as going on fieldwork to Leeds University where they attended seminars and presented to medical students there.  We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: we don’t wind down at the end of term, we wind up!

However, we took the opportunity in Crew to explore ways in which we could ‘wind down’ a little bit by having a yoga session.  We began with a discussion about why yoga is beneficial.  We are quite a sporty crew – we are a mix of runners, dancers, footballers, MMA fighters, rugby and basketball players! – so we all appreciate the physical benefits of stretching, strengthening and improving our flexibility. However, yoga also helps us to improve our focus and to persevere, as well as encouraging us to practice compassion to others and to ourselves.

We worked through a simple Sun Salutation flow (with a cheeky Warrior pose thrown in for those who wanted a bit more of a challenge!) ending with a 5 minute guided relaxation. We then circled up and discussed how yoga had made us feel.  The boys especially enjoyed it, with Thomas and Mackenzie both commenting that yoga was actually a lot harder than they thought it would be (the grunts and moans I heard from them whilst getting into poses confirmed this!) Aden particularly enjoyed the relaxation at the end, saying that he loved the bit where he was instructed to breathe in peace and relaxation, and breathe out anything that was bothering him. He felt “hypnotised” by the end of it.

We will be doing more yoga and mindfulness activities next term, and I’ve already had a request to do a Warrior sequence – seems to be a favourite pose!

 

When do you stop being XP?

28th February 2019D Pearson

When do you stop being XP?  In our Community Meeting last week our students volunteered several answers, but the consensus was that our character traits are considered as being for life. We certainly do not stop being XP at the end of term, nor after school on Fridays in the Mountain Biking Club…..

Our “regular riders” loan bikes built with craftsmanship and quality, they show courage when riding more technical trails, they exhibit compassion and integrity towards each other and they respect other road and trail users.

We use GPS tracking technology to monitor our cumulative miles ridden, and – coached by our professional cycling instructor Chris Green – we ride cycle paths, quiet roads and local woodland. No two rides are exactly the same, but sample routes are below…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go, Crew Churchill!

By K Poncia28th February 2019

It’s been a great week in Crew Churchill!

After our weekend and HoWLs check-in on Monday morning and an excellent day at Leeds University on Wednesday for fieldwork, we have had two excellent crew sessions led by us!

On Tuesday, Tyler and Alyssa led a session based on our HoWL ‘Work Hard’ and encouraged everyone to participate and take part in a game of dodgeball. Before playing, we circled up and they led a crew discussion about how working hard as a team can help everyone succeed.

Take a look at our dodgeball skills!

Today, our crew session was led by Theone, Aran and Ruby and they had planned their session around another of our HoWLs, ‘Be Kind’. Working in pairs, we had to work our way across an obstacle course. To make things even more tricky, the crew member who was moving across the course had to be blindfolded!

We had to work with each other, taking note of our partner’s instructions as they guided us along. It was great fun, particularly hoolahooping wearing a blindfold!

Student-Led Sporting Crew

By J Townson28th February 2019

Crew Ali just love being in the Sports Hall and having a go at a few teamwork activities.  This week Tom took the lead, with some team games to challenge our speed and accuracy in jumping and running, as well as developing our throwing and catching skills.

In the latter part of the session we did a short mid-game debrief, in which we discussed the biggest challenge: some Crew members had become frustrated over different interpretations of the rules.  We all acknowledge that sometimes we come across difficult moments in Crew and we got through it – with some clarification of Tom’s rules and an agreement to draw a line under it and move on, we got back to our game.  Finally we finished with a good old game of football.

It’s always good to start the day with some physical activity – it definitely woke us all up!

Crew Parkinson’s Academic Crew

By H Hickson23rd February 2019

This week we had an academic check in during Crew. The focus was to self reflect on the Habits of Work and Learning (HOWLs) which are Work Hard, Get Smart and Be Kind.

We discussed the behaviour and conduct that needs to be shown in order to meet the HOWLs to a high level. Each student graded themselves on how well they think they meet the HOWLs using a rubric. We discussed the importance of being able to self evaluate and reflect on your own conduct in order to identify strengths and areas to improve on. Each crew member then shared with crew what their reflections were and identified the HOWL that they most need to work on and set themselves a target for this – we’ll check in on this next week!

Visit by Crew Young to learn the Method of Loci

By J Townson19th February 2019

Crew Young visited Crew Ali this week to teach them about the Method of Loci: a technique which could help us to recall lists or key facts in a particular sequence.  Find out more about their preparation and practice here on the Crew Young blog.

Our Crew were engaged throughout and it was interesting to see how many of the words from the list we were able to recall after doing the exercise.  Many thanks Crew Young for taking the time to work with us!

E25 students have also been using this method, also known as the Memory Palace, in STEAM sessions, to help them understand the sequence of organs in the digestive system.

A mixed bag for Crew Young……

18th February 2019D Pearson

During the week when Professor Dame Sally Davies, the UK Government’s Chief Medical Officer, issued advice on screen usage time, Crew Young decided to keep an audit for 7 days to record their own use of technology. We started with a silent conversation protocol to consider: “what devices do I access?” and “my use of screen time? and next week we’ll blog the results.

Later during the week Crew Young visited Mr Smith’s Y8 Crew and Mrs Townson’s Y7 Crew to deliver a workshop on “The method of loci”. Feedback from staff and students was extremely positive!