Crew Turing have caught the baking bug!

By Katie Haughey7th February 2019

This past week has been really crucial in Crew Turing’s academic development. Each member of my crew was really determined to do well in their upcoming assessments, particularly the spanish writing task that they all had to complete.

We decided to dedicate a couple of crew sessions to revision and preparation. We followed normal crew protocols, doing count up, sorting lunches, greeting each other, but with a slight twist. We did almost the entire check-in in spanish! Crew members then paired up to work on their revision or practice together, which was really well focused and so helpful that we decided to dedicate another crew session to this.

Another highlight of our crew sessions has been all the baked delights my crew members have bought in. Over the week, more and more members of my crew have surprised us with their delicious cookies, cakes and sweet treats – Alice’s chocolate orange cake was to die for! I put on an after school session where we did a bit of a crew bake-off so that we could maximise donations to Cery’s charity bake sale. I set them the challenge of going away, pairing up, picking a recipe and organising ingredients without my input. I’d like to thank parents again for supplying ingredients for that and allowing them to stay, we had a blast, and amazingly, were baked and de-gunged in just 1 hour!

This week, I’m hoping to capture the same crew spirit of bake-off in some reflections of how this week’s assessments have gone. While it’s great to give to charities and bake, it would be great to refocus on how we can make a more optimum use of our time outside of school in preparing for assessments. We had conversations about this on Tuesday, where most crew members admitted that they had not done quite as much extended study as they would have liked to feel confident in their performance. I’ve seen some magnificent ‘Explore Further’ work from other crews, and I’d love to see members of Crew Turing engaging with some of the great stuff that is on offer on their expedition sites. With three weeks to go until half term, this is the perfect time to look at how we can ‘wind-up’ as we put it here at XP East.

Crews Finch and Mandela make eachothers day!

By A Parker7th February 2019

Crew Finch joined Crew Mandela today, where they were asked to consider the question:

What is the one compliment you have received in your life that you have never forgot?

They also discussed the importance of compliments – and why humans feel the need to give them – before moving on to write out compliment cards for their Crew.

Feedback at the end included lots of comments about how good both the giver and receiver of the compliment felt, although Brendan did admit that the task felt a bit “awkward and forced.”  So, my challenge to Crew is to give more compliments so they feel less awkward, and to accept them graciously.  After all, “a compliment is verbal sunshine!”

Just look how happy Christian is with his compliment cards!

Extended Study: 100%

By K Poncia7th February 2019

Crew Churchill have been celebrating today as we have achieved 100% hand in rate for our extended study so far this week.

As a crew, we have been working extremely hard to ensure that all students are being held accountable for completing their extended study on time but, at the same time, supporting each other to do this.

Keep it up, Crew Churchill!

Crew Ali had a ‘ball’ in the Sports Hall with Crew Parkinson

By J Townson6th February 2019

Crew Ali and Crew Parkinson had a great time competing against one another in a game of bench netball and I’m proud to say that Crew Ali won.  In the debrief after our game, we considered what went well and what could be even better: the team spirit of both Crews meant they kept pushing to the end and cheering one another on; this was definitely a friendly match!  Crew Ali had arrived first in the Sports Hall and had a bit of a warm up, so perhaps we could do this together next time, as well as perhaps mixing the teams up.

We have promised ourselves there will be a rematch soon!

Say Hello to Jeff!

By J Smith6th February 2019

This is Jeff! Jeff was the creation of Alfie and Adam in Pioneer STEAM expedition ‘Why Me?’

Jeff was the product of genetic inheritance. Pioneer found that some characteristics are controlled by a single gene, such as fur in animals and red-green colour blindness in humans. Each gene might have different forms, and these are called alleles. The monster Jeff shows the dominant and recessive genes in shown in the Phenotypes! Great work Pioneer!

What Does Crew Mean To You? – Crew Parkinson

By Florence Roberts4th February 2019

In Crew on Wednesday 23rd of January students were asked to go across to Mrs Parker’s crew room and take part in a Digi Crew. In the Digi Crew a handful of students were taught how to post blogs on the XP East website. At the end of the Digi Crew we were all asked to work in pairs or threes and post a blog about what crew means to us from our point of view, instead of the teachers. In Crew Parkinson, 3 students joined the Digi Crew ( Florence, Rosie and Dylan), we have worked together to create a blog post on what crew means to our whole crew.

We had our Friday afternoon Crew session dedicated to ‘ what crew means to you’ . This meant that we shared our favourite moments and what crew means to us, here are some quotes that Crew Parkinson shared:

 

Crew boosts my confidence and inspires me to do what I  can.  – Ava

 

I love crew because I trust people and talk to them about any problems I have   – Marcus

 

Crew brings a smile to my face every morning’ – Lacey 

 

‘I’d be lost without crew because they help keep me on the right path in both my academic studies and my social life and behaviour.’  – Shanna

 

‘Crew is my second family.’ – Kristian

 

These are all quotes made by members of Crew Parkinson. What crew means to you is different for every person in each different crew because we are all unique. All of these quotes maybe different but in a way it all means the same thing.

And finally here are some pictures of our amazing experiences :

 

 

Crew Young – profiling perfectly presentable portfolios…

By D Pearson30th January 2019

Alliteration is one of many literary devices that can be found in HUMS work archived in expedition portfolios. This week in academic crew, Crew Young have been reviewing their learning, and collating work stored in this very valuable document.

Expedition portfolios provide documentary evidence of progress over time, of our students’ ability to draft and re-draft their work following constructive feedback from staff and students that is kind, specific and helpful. They are readily available to external visitors and fundamental to our Student-Led Conferences as they provide the basis upon which our students are empowered to articulate their learning, progress and academic attainment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Complemented by digital portfolios, our students’ expedition portfolios will become increasingly important as Crew Young approach the beginning of Year 9 and face the challenges of “passage”. As Ron Berger observes in his book “Leaders of their Own Learning”:

“Creating a portfolio and sharing it with a caring but critical audience is a powerful rite of passage for students. It expands the impact of common school passage traditions…to include ones that celebrate academic growth and achievement, putting scholarship for every student at the centre. Passage presentations with portfolios give students the opportunity to demonstrate their achievement and growth and underscore the link among assessment, learning and student engagement”.

 

A great week for getting smart

By A Brown30th January 2019

We’ve talked a lot about the GET SMART element of our HOWLs in the last week: what it means, why we do it, and more importantly, where we are seeing it around school in our lessons too.

And I’m glad to report, Crew Shackleton are definitely getting smart!

One name that continued to pop up in crew (not to mention 8 appreciations by peers in the community meeting) was Denim. She’s made an amazing effort to go above and beyond since coming back after Christmas, extending her learning at home, and even making models of blood cells to share with her class. Voluntarily. Amazing!

Here she is taking Crew Shackleton through a presentation she’d prepared at home about the Great Depression, providing a bit of extra context to To Kill A Mockingbird:

Miss Hickson commented:

“In her own time, Denim has researched and created a powerpoint on the Great Depression. The work she has produced is of great quality and shows she cares about her learning and is taking responsibility for it. A very mature approach to improving her HOWLs and her understanding of the expedition. Fantastic!”

And it’s not just been Denim. A few students got a mention on the praise sheet for a variety of things:

Miss Haughey said, “Thea hit the ground running today, she’s been on fire in maths despite not being in this week. She was a pleasure to teach, she was more alert than others and was following my instruction really closely. Great stuff!”

Miss Haughey also commented on April’s work recently: “ALWAYS being kind to other members of her table. [She] provides great support in steering collaborative activities and makes sure everyone is involved. She is a mature voice when there is disagreement. She’s doing fab!”

A really positive week, and an amazing vibe about the work going on in and around lessons.

Keep it up Crew Shackleton!

 

Crew Ali sharing work they’re proud of

By J Townson29th January 2019

Working Hard and Getting Smart results in beautiful work we can be proud of.  Crew Ali spent a morning Crew session sharing examples of their favourite pieces, using rubrics to explain how they have achieved each grade and comparing their efforts with work they produced earlier in the year.

Charlie was particularly pleased with his HUMS task as his JOLT improvements had helped him to smash his MEG!

Leoni was proud of her Craftsmanship and Quality in Maths.

Lacey had worked really hard on her extended writing in HUMS and wanted to share with her Crew what Working Hard looked like for her.

Everyone in Crew Ali had something to share and the critique which came out of it was also helpful in suggesting areas where each of us could progress even further, in our classwork and HOWLs in general

I’m a very proud Crew Leader!

Academic Crew

By A Parker29th January 2019

Crew decided to buddy-up today to work on their extended study together.  I love how keen they are to continue learning outside of formal lesson time, and how they’re all supporting each other to work hard and get smart!

We focussed on the Quotation Explosion task set by Mr Brown – a big appreciation to him for producing a really helpful video guide which we watched and discussed, too!

Just take a look at Noah’s beautiful work: