The latest from Crew 7DP

By D Pearson30th November 2017

Monday 27th Nov- Teachers and Staff had a training day where they had different activities to do with planning our new expedition.

Tuesday 28th Nov- We had an Accelerated Reader session in Crew, whilst Mr Pearson shared individual attendance data with us, and reminded us of the clear link between excellent attendance and academic achievement.

Wednesday 29th Nov- We had a community meeting, discussing people’s homework and hand-in rate between classes.

Thursday 30th Nov- We shared a song which sums up or means something special in our lives, to create a soundtrack of all our lives in XP East. Dominic chose a song by Westlife that is significant to him, and we felt that the lyrics: “You raise me up to more than I can be” summarise the power of the peer support possible through belonging to Crew.

Friday 1st Dec – 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.

Thanks to Alesha Malik for authoring our blog this week, and to all our Crew members for the courage, respect, craftsmanship and quality they showed throughout their Student-Led Conferences.

Week Beginning 20/11/17

By J Smith28th November 2017

This week was a busy week for crew JSM.

We are unfortunately the lowest attending crew in the whole of the XP Trust. This was very disappointing to both me as a crew leader and the crew as a whole. After discussion with out crew we have established a number of strategies to support those students with less than 95% attendance as a crew. We have a long way to go to get to the top of the attendance league table, but we are confident as a crew we will get there.

We have only one crew blog entry this week due to community meetings and staff days.

 

Wednesday 22nd (Written by Corey A.)

Today we talked about our new conduct sheet. This is the sheet that students who do not meet expectations are recorded on and reviewed inside crew. After that everyone went outside to do clean up service but then Mr Pearson’s crew had already taken the equipment. A few minutes later crew JSM went back up to crew to talk about what we wanted to be when we are older and leave school, for example; Lewis Hutton stated that ‘I want to be an F1 driver.’ After we discussed in a whip around what we needed to get to achieve these goals everyone turned to  accelerated reading or taking a test for accelerated reading.

            

Clean-up crew

By A Parker28th November 2017

Today we donned our finest hi-vis jackets (as modelled by Tom D, Mackenzie C and Thomas H), grabbed our litter pickers, a few bin bags and headed outside to clean up our school grounds.

The concept of “leave no trace” and respect for our environment is really important to us at XP. East.  The fact that we are all responsible for keeping our learning space clean and tidy – both inside and outside – reinforces the sense of pride we have in our school.

Good work, Crew!

(Big thanks to Mr Smith’s Crew for helping out, too!)

 

 

Well done!

By A Parker25th November 2017

A big well done to Dakota, Thomas, Mackenzie, Aden, Bryn, Tom, Megan and Nicole. You  absolutely smashed your SLCs this week!

You all made your parents – and me – very proud!

Looking forward to hearing what Alanis, Brendan, Libby and Noah have to say about their learning and progress next week.

Update from Crew 7DP

By D Pearson23rd November 2017

Monday 20th Nov – We began this week with a quick whip-round of single words that we would use to describe our feelings about the SLCs: “calm”, “anxious”, “secure”, “worried”, “ready”, “agitated”, “ecstatic”, “disturbed” and “confident”.

Tuesday 21st Nov -Today in Crew we held a community meeting where we considered the importance of maintaining excellent attendance to school, and the impact of learning time lost when ours does not meet minimum expectations. We were also introduced to a monitoring tool, designed to both challenge and support us to meet our school’s Habits of Work and Learning (HoWLS).

Wednesday 22nd Nov – Our Crew completed their share of service to our learning community, by donning “day-glows” and borrowing litter-pickers, to retrieve, bag and bin items of litter that were found on the school site. “Clean-Up Crew” had a job to do!

Thursday 23rd – Due to the Staff Days tomorrow and next Monday we used Crew time to check-in and review the week. During this session we explored the concept of “proportional participation” and Lewis calculated the amount of time each Crew member spoke as a percentage of the total.

SLC prep

By A Parker18th November 2017

We’ve spent most of our Crew time busy preparing for our Student Led Conferences (SLCs), which begin on Monday.  Students have really had to think hard about the work they want to present to parents.  As well as showcasing the work they’re most proud of (and there’s lots of it!), they’ll also be discussing where they feel they need to improve, and what their targets moving forward into the next expedition.

We’ve spoken a lot about MEGS during our prep, and I’ve been struck by how all my Crew are determined to work hard to improve their initial grades.  As Tom D said, “None of us know what the future will hold for us. We all know that this first score isn’t all that important, but what is important is the score we leave school with.”

So, good luck to all my Crew over the next two weeks – I personally cannot wait to celebrate all your academic achievements!

 

What’s new in our Crew?

By D Pearson17th November 2017

Monday 13th Nov – On Monday, we had a shared community meeting for all XP East students. In this community meeting, we discussed who we were proud of for numerous different reasons, such as people persevering through HOWLs (Habits Of Work and Learning) over our half term break. (by Alesha).

Tuesday 14th Nov -Today in Crew, we started by reading a short slideshow, about who you can talk to if you have got a problem. Then the majority of people still had to do the email for our Student Led Conference ,but then some people – the ones that had finished – were asked to do a blog post (by Isabel).

Wednesday 15th Nov – We used the Apple Macs or our own devices in our Crew Room to complete and send off personalised e-mails to invite our parents to the SLCs. (by Mr Pearson).

Thursday 16th Nov – We watched a video-clip of several Y10 students’ Student-Led Conferences, so that we know what to expect for ours. We then divided into two groups – some students paired up and practised delivering their presentations to each other, giving and receiving kind, specific and helpful critique, whilst others word-processed their notes on the Apple Macs (by Mr Pearson).

Friday 17th Nov – 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 (by Mr Pearson).

SLC Preparation

By K Poncia17th November 2017

This week our Crew has been working hard preparing for our first SLCs which begin next Monday.  We’ve decided on which pieces of work we want to share and talk about, made notes to help guide and support our discussions and, today, we have practised and critiqued our presentations with others.

We’re now feeling excited about sharing our academic achievements and progress with our parents.  

Alyssa said, “I can’t wait to talk about my learning from the heart”.

 

Crew JSM SLC Prep

By J Smith17th November 2017

Crew JSM this week have been preparing for their student led conference (SLC). After our final session this week, all students are prepared, ready and confident. Crew JSM have all parents booked in and ready to attended. An outstanding comment of the week from Frida C in our last checkin is was ‘I am really confident and just excited to show my parents how hard I have worked’. All the folders are full and ready to be shown, bring on next week!

Crew JSM first week back!

By J Smith9th November 2017

Crew JSM have kicked off the second half term with a series of sessions focused on preparation for their student led conference (SLC). The crew have taken control of blogging their own sessions to let you know a little more about what is going on in crew. 

 

Written by Holly N.

On Monday in crew we did a check-in, with the question ‘what did we enjoy most about our two week holidays and what we did on halloween and bonfire night’. After that, we each got a post-it-note and wrote one of our character traits or howls that we need to focus on this term and identify for our SLC. Then we talked in partners and shared what we had written and discussed strategies of how to improve as a crew.

 
Written by Callie S.

On Tuesday in Crew we have been practising and preparing for our SLC’s (student lead conference). Before the half term break we practised greetings and now we’ve moved onto watching an example of past SLCs. In the video there are people doing the conference and talking to their parents about their work and how to improve and what they’ve done especially well in their portfolio.

 

Written by Chloe T.

On Wednesday in crew we had a check in question of ‘how do we feel about our student led conference’. Some of the crew said they felt excited about the chance to show work, some feel nervous about the challenge. We then worked on our portfolios and jumped on learning targets for improve our work. We focused on bringing all our pieces of work up to the highest standards our craftsmanship and quality.