What can I do this week to be kind to my future self?

By Katie Haughey17th February 2019

Last week, Crew Turing’s guiding question was ‘What can I do this week to be kind to my future self?’

We often reference acts that support other members of our school’s community when we discuss my personal favourite of all the HOWLs, ‘being kind’, but this week we flipped it on its head a little and thought about being kind to ourselves. This week has been strange in that many of Crew Turing’s siblings and friends have been gearing up for half term, but as others are winding down for a week off, we’ll be winding up! I thought that it was important that we focused on wellbeing and making sure we ended this term on a high, after such a brilliant start to the new year.

When introduced to the guiding question, we popcorned some ideas of how we can be kind to ourselves. Keeping on top of organisation, such as extended study and school work was a recurring theme.

Sami was able to lead the way with this as he had spent the weekend creating this incredible model of the Finch household from To Kill a Mockingbird, that wasn’t due until the following Friday. Sami shared that he’d got this done in a timely manner so he had more time in the evenings that week. Others shared they would be doing similar by going to extended study after school to get their work out the way earlier in the week so they felt prepared by the end of the week. I’m delighted to share that we had another week of 100% homework hand-ins!

On Tuesday we had a socratic-style crew, where we debated whether all schools in the UK should provide healthy snacks for their students, inspired by current events of the previous week in the news. The debate was extremely fruitful (sorry, I couldn’t resist), there were even policy suggestions put forward by members of Crew Turing. Dylan and Callum devised a suggestion where rewards were given to those who opted for healthy snacks that week. At the end of the discussion, we reflected back on ‘being kind to ourselves’ and how our eating habits and hydration levels affected our mood and performance in school.

On Thursday, we split crew in two and circled up for a basketball competition! It definitely got our blood pumping and woke us up a little. Reece and others commented in debrief that it was a really nice way to start the day because he felt that he was able to burn off some of the excited energy that can be distracting later in the day. We circled up to reflect on how well both teams had done due to their familiarity with one another, and how this had improved communication during the games.

Finally, on both Tuesday and Friday, we did some AR and spoke a lot about progress with our books and even made an addition to our crew wall. We now have a reading chart up, with 100 spaces waiting to be filled by Crew Turing’s book recommendations. Our goal was to read 100 books by summer time, and also aim to read for half an hour before bed to wind down for a good night’s rest – another act of kindness that we have discussed. Tomorrow we’ll be starting to populate the chart with our reviews during crew time. I look forward to curating something that other members of XP East who pass through my classroom might feel inspired by!

Dylan Takes Crew Parkinson to Mount Olympus!

By H Hickson17th February 2019

This week, Dylan ran a crew session on the Greek Gods, he wanted to share his passion with the rest of the Crew and I love hearing about crew’s interests! He explained to Crew about the Greek Gods and Mount Olympus, giving each crew member a God/Goddess to be. Once Crew had understood their character there was an activity where each Crew member had to design a palace for their god/goddess based on the qualities of the character. A game of pictionary was then played, where crew had to guess which god/goddess the palace belonged to based on the features of the drawing.

Dylan articulated his information about the Greek gods very well and he clearly put in a huge amount of effort in preparing for this session. He built upon his already existing communication, organisation and leadership skills to create a fantastic crew session enjoyed by all – a massive appreciation to Dylan!

Whole Lotta Love for Crew Finch!

By A Parker15th February 2019

In a nod to Valentine’s Day, we have spent the week sharing some love!

On Monday, we had a “speed dating session” to find out more about each other.  Crew were set the challenge to find out more about each other in 45 second intervals, including what their favourite book was, what they were most proud of, and what advice they would give to someone to make them feel happier, reporting back to us all at the end of the session.

On Tuesday, we had a bit of a “self love” session, so we all had to think about what made us unique and special.  We’ve created a lovely display of peacocks, and I hope Crew will refer back to these when they feel like they need a bit of a confidence boost.

Thursday was all about sharing the love, so we made these little appreciation cards to hand out to friends or family.  I was particularly touched to receive my own little Valentine’s Day gift and message from Crew – they know the way to my heart is *always* through chocolate!

What a lovely way to spend the week, but we need to remember that showing appreciation to others and being kind to other people (and ourselves!) is not just for Valentine’s Day – it’s for life!

Much love from Crew Finch x

Crew Young lead learning!

By J Smith14th February 2019

This week crew Young visited Crew Mandela to deliver a session on the method of loci. The method of loci (loci being Latin for “places”) is a method of memory enhancement which uses visualisations with the use of spatial memory, familiar information about one’s environment, to quickly and efficiently recall information. The method of loci is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, or mind palace technique. Crew Mandela found the method extremely useful and all students improved their memory of a single list of words!

 

Developing communication using scrabble and sign language

By J Townson13th February 2019

Crew Ali have been expressing themselves in sign language recently, when Cerys taught us the British Sign Language alphabet in Student-Led Crew.  We learnt how to sign each letter, practiced and practiced again, then took it in turns to spell out names of Crew members and had to guess who was being named.  Taylor, Caiden and Marshall all successfully signed the names of some of their fellow Crew members before we moved on to learning numbers and practiced telling the Crew our ages (including Mrs Townson’s age – we share a lot in Crew!)

A Friday session involved using scrabble letters to create words which would stretch us and add to our vocabularies.  We worked in mixed teams and swapped over after each round to ensure we worked with different people.  In each round we had a time limit to create the longest words we could with the limited letters available on our table.  Each team had to check their spellings and really think about how they could extend their words as far as possible.

I – N – D – E – P – E – N – D – E – N – T – L – Y was a clear winner but I have to say well done to the team who came up with T – O – W – N – S – O – N !

Shackleton Balloon Tower Challenge

By A Brown12th February 2019

What a fantastic session in Crew Shackleton this morning! With a focus on team working skills, teams of 3-4 were pitted against each other with a challenge to create the tallest unsupported balloon tower. No hands. No walls. No chairs.

The winners (aided by the collapse of taller towers) were Nikodem, Jacob and Zach’s tower.

A fantastic session with lots to unpack – so many strengths, and plenty of things to work on to become a stronger crew and more effective team members.

Well done Crew! Watch the video for a glimpse of the session.

Some wonderful ingenuity from Woody, furiously rubbing the balloons on his head to create extra static to hold them together.

Thank you to Mrs Parker for popping my balloons for me! That’s a challenge I’m not yet prepared to overcome.

The method of loci in Crew Young

10th February 2019D Pearson

This week Crew Young have grappled with the concept of Memory Palaces and employed the method of loci to facilitate the retention and recall of lists of seemingly unrelated words. Beginning with watching the iconic, but already outdated “Shift Happens“, we considered the exponential global increase in data and information, and what we might reasonably be expected to remember at school, before sharing techniques that we already use, e.g. mnemonics, to recall academic concepts.

The method of loci (plural of locus = Latin for place) centres around the idea of visiting a special or significant memorable place in your mind, and “pinning” ideas or words to these locations, that are then subsequently “visited” in your mind to extract the information.

Later last week we experimented by applying the method of loci technique to improve our memory skills within the context of the XP East School site. We were given a series of twelve random words to remember, and on average we were able to recall around half of them. We then heard a story that included each of the twelve words found in school in a very creative and abstract manner, and on average we remembered around 90% of them.

The story will be familiar to our members of staff, especially to Mr Said (the author) as it featured on our last Staff Planning Day, and Crew Young will be working to introduce this technique (and the wacky story!) to other Crew groups shortly.

 

 

Crew Parkinson Yoga!

By H Hickson9th February 2019

Crew Parkinson had a yoga activity crew session this week. We discussed how it is important to create time for yourself which is not just sat in front of a device screen! We followed a yoga sequence, piecing together positions which focus on balance and strength.

Some members of the crew found certain positions challenging and at first the session was met with apprehension by some – however it is brilliant that all crew members got stuck in and had a go.

We completed a whiparound after, where each student said how they felt – there were lots of comments about legs feeling tired, feeling well stretched and feeling like their bodies have been woken up! A great way of getting your muscles ready and awake to start the day.

Well Done Crew!

How Crew have you been this week?

By A Parker8th February 2019

We have ended the week by asking each other the question: “How ‘Crew’ have you been this week?”

This gave us chance to reflect on our behaviours and learning, and reinforce the notion that, as Crew, we have a collective responsibility towards achieving our HOWLs and character values.

Thomas and Noah reported that they had been crew by continuing to work hard in sessions, and completing their homework on time.  I have to say, I am extremely impressed with both these boys at the moment, who are not only work extremely hard in class, but consistently show respect and compassion to their fellow students.  Keep it up!

Others admitted that they hadn’t been 100% crew this week, and felt that they could do more next week, particularly around getting smarter.  Aden pledged to do his homework after a disappointing week, with the rest of the Crew offering to support him with this – now that’s Crew!

Crew Shackleton – Now That’s Crew!

By A Brown8th February 2019

This week in Crew we’ve spent a lot of time supporting each other in a range of areas: we’ve looked closely at issues arising from extended study; evidence of great HOWLs in and around lessons; and offered the day-to-day support that we all need from time to time.

So I asked some of the Crew to share what it means to them.

 

Lilly

Crew Shackleton has helped me a lot. This is because whenever I’m with my crew I feel like I can say anything and that they all have my back. It has helped me become a lot more confident in myself because whenever you say something, you know that you won’t be judged. We all work as a crew to help each other out. For example, if people need help in their academic studies, we can help them out and give them ways to be more organised.

 

 

 

 

 

Faith

Crew Shackleton has helped me because when I’m in crew I feel safe and they helped me get my confidence up onto higher levels. Since crew, I have been able to speak in a year community meeting and even in a whole school community meeting. Crew has also helped me with my confidence because I know I won’t be judged. Also when I have been with crew on a Monday we do a weekend check in, on Tuesday we do an extended study crew, on Wednesday we do a crew session where we could have a crew member leading our session, Thursday we normally do accelerated reader and finally, on Friday we do a community meeting crew and we discuss stands, appreciations and apologies. We have the best most caring crew and I am thankful that I am in this crew.

 

James

My crew (Crew Shackleton) has helped me from the beginning at XP East. For instance, at the start of the year I was struggling with my maths homework and crew gave me advice on how I could make progress and improve. We are all taking responsibility of each others’ actions and show courage in everything we do together. 

 

 

 

 

 

Jacob

My crew have helped me out a lot with my academic studies such as getting my homework done I have now got 100% homework record. They have also helped with my growth mindset and how I work and speak. Our crew all help each other and all support and trust each other.