Reading makes you smarter. It has unbelievable benefits for academic achievement.
-It expands your vocabulary.
-It improves your communication skills.
-It develops your analytical skills.
-It is an effective memory booster.
Our crew have had a major focus on our accelerated reading sessions and books. We have focused on note catching and focusing on increasing our reading scores when re-testing. Students who have achieved a higher colour this week include Frida, Raven and Lewis.
Over the last couple of weeks, members of Crew KPO have suffered with different ailments and illnesses and students have needed time off school to recover.
Today, however, we are delighted that we are all back together and everyone is in good health.
So… we’re now back in the running for 100% attendance – watch out other Crews!
Monday 29th Jan- School was closed to students for a staff planning day. Staff reviewed learning targets and refined the assessment of our students’ work. We also visited our new school building to check on progress……things are really taking shape over there!
Tuesday 30th Jan – We checked in, by sharing with each other what we had been up to over the weekend. Our Crew Leader shared photos taken of the interior of our school building (currently under construction).
Wednesday 31st Jan- We completed our check-in and spent the rest of our Crew session reading and/or revising for our Spanish assessment.
Thursday 1st Feb – We “piggy-backed” an idea raised by crew members in Mr Smith’s Crew, and wrote out a short, medium and long term pledge. Here are just a few:
“I pledge to try and get better attendance”.
“I pledge to complete my homework at home”.
“I pledge to try not to go off topic during sessions”.
“I pledge to try to be an even better person in the new school”.
“I pledge not to get into people’s personal talks”.
Our Crew committed to supporting each other to meet the pledges, but also to hold each other to account to ensure they are met. We intend that any new pledges will be more closely aligned to our character traits and HOWLs, and how we can help others as well as ourselves.
Friday 2nd Feb – Our whole school Community Meeting provides a weekly opportunity to give apologies and pledges, share appreciations and make stands for things that we feel strongly about. XP East usually holds a further school-specific Community Meeting in the afternoon.
Monday 22nd Jan- We checked in, by sharing with each other what we had been up to over the weekend and also our initial thoughts and reflections on the learning that occurred last week.
Tuesday 23rd Jan- We dedicated our session to improving our levels of literacy on the Accelerated Reader programme.
Wednesday 24th Jan- We explored the notion of pledges. Our Crew Leader also reminded us in this session that our most recent punctuality and attendance records had slipped a little from their previous 100% perfect results. We need to return to our previous place on the league table!
Thursday 25th Jan – Due to the staff planning day tomorrow, we held an XP East School community meeting. This provided an opportunity to give apologies and pledges, share appreciations and make stands for things that we feel strongly about.
Friday 26th Jan – Staff planning day.
The crew have taken over the planning this year. Our first crew led session was led Charlie and Corey in a great physical activity lesson, with a focus on capture the flag. They both used protocols extremely well during the whole session and showed great leadership!
Our second crew led session was planned and run by Frida and Holly. This was focused on integrity and craftsmanship and quality. The girls created an ingenious pledge board, made from McDonalds chip boxes. Each study then cut out card to represent chips and to document their own pledge.
Our final crew led session of the year was run by Chloe and Callie. Again, they put a tremendous amount of planning into the session and created a ‘make a stand’ board. Each student had an envelope pre-made with their favourite colour to hold and document future stands.
The quality of the planning, delivery and fantastic HOWLS of those students who participated is testament to the character growth happening in crew JSM.
In today’s crew we discussed friendships, and specifically how to deal with conflict within our friendship circles, and considered how our behaviour and words impact on others.
We used our character traits as a reference point for appropriate behaviour (see – they’re also relevant for our lives outside of school!) and we were able to start to resolve an issue between some of our crew members. We kept on coming back to the notion of ‘crew are family’, and discussed how upsetting it was to us a whole unit when people fall out. One thing we all strongly agreed on is that any issues which occur outside of school or at break times should be ‘left at the door’ and not impact on lesson time.
Building and maintaining good friendships is always tricky no matter how old you are. We’re in the unique situation of starting at a new school with new people to get to know. There are bound to be a few squabbles along the way. But we are also crew, and crew sort things out together.
…that the three smallest bones in the body are found in the ear.
They are called the anvil, stirrup and hammer.
And …that the cells in your eye come in different shapes.
Rod-shaped cells allow you to see shapes, and cone-shaped cells allow you to see colour.
We found this out during our Crew sessions while we were discussing illnesses and accidents we have had at some point. Different Crew members shared different things that had happened to them. Some stories were a bit gruesome!
What do you know about the ear and the eye?
Monday 15th Jan- We checked in, by sharing with each other what we had been up to over the weekend and also our initial thoughts and reflections on the learning that occurred during Immersion Week.
Tuesday 16th Jan- Our Crew Leader explained the style and format of XP East Grade Cards. We learnt that for learning targets in boxes that are shaded grey there is no concern, whereas work that needs our attention in order to be improved, or fixed, is shaded in yellow. We then spent the last 20 minutes identifying examples of when we had witnessed crew members exhibiting the HOWLs last week. We were delighted that everyone was mentioned!
Wednesday 17th Jan- We dedicated our session to improving our levels of literacy on the Accelerated Reader programme.
Thursday 18th Jan – Our entire Crew session was devoted to reviewing and checking work in our portfolios. Our Crew Leader signed off some work from five portfolios and highlighted the small amount of work still needed.
Friday 19th Jan – Our whole school Community Meeting provides a weekly opportunity to give apologies and pledges, share appreciations and make stands for things that we feel strongly about. XP East held a further school-specific Community Meeting in the afternoon.
I’m absolutely delighted to report that Crew APA not only managed 100% attendance this week, but also did so with no lates!
This is a big deal for us, as we’ve been working very hard on our timekeeping and attendance over the last few weeks, and the Crew support has been amazing!
A huge ‘Well Done’ to everyone for making the effort to come in every day, and on time. We now need to make sure that we keep it up!
😊
Wednesday’s are Crew Take Over Days, where two of our crew are responsible for planning and delivering our morning crew session.
This week Brendan and Aden led a session on character traits. This was a mind mapping exercise and crew members were instructed to think about what each character trait meant to them, and add their thoughts to each poster.
This was a great session as it’s always good to spend some time revisiting and reflecting on our character traits. Well done, Brendan and Aden!
