We say this all the time, but Y11 really are doing us both proud! We had some wonderful praise postcards yet again as part of this week’s community meeting, and it’s lovely to see some different names this week.
Well done Y11 – keep working hard, getting smart and being kind. We’re really impressed!
Miss Cocliff & Mrs Parker x
Some absolutely wonderful praises were shared in our year group community meeting this week. Reading these out has to be the highlight of our week! Y11 are working so hard 🙂
Mrs Parker and Miss Cocliff
Just a quick update on some key information and upcoming dates for our Y11 students (including those all important GCSE dates!)
Firstly, we’d like to massively appreciate those students who are attending in-school and after-school revision sessions, including D6 on Saturday. There is no doubt that this level of commitment to their learning will be reflected in their final grades. Our current revision session timetable is here, but is being updated with more sessions which we’ll publish once finalised.
Although these are optional at the moment, we are targeting specific students to attend and we ask that parents support this. Teachers will be in touch with students and their parents with details of when they need to attend extra revision sessions.
In addition to focussed revision sessions, we are pleased to announce that Extended Study is back up and running for Y11 students Monday-Thursdays, 3.15-4.30. This means that students can stay for an extra hour after school to complete any extended study that’s been set or work on revision tasks with support from staff, away from any potential distractions at home. Please note that this is just for our Y11 students at the moment, but we’re hoping to offer to other year groups soon.
Here’s a quick look at some key upcoming dates – further information about each of these events will be published in separate blog posts:
| 1st Feb – 11th Feb | Student led conferences |
| 3rd February | GCSE revision information evening for Y11 parents |
| 21st Feb – 4th March | Mock exams 2 |
| 16th May – 24th June | GCSEs (full timetable will be published at a later date!) |
| w/b 27th June (tbc) | Final Word and celebrating Crew |
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us:
Angella Parker (Y11 Phase Lead XP. East): [email protected]
Mel Cocliff (Y11 Phase Lead, XP): [email protected]
With thanks, as ever, for your continued support.
Over the past couple of weeks E26 have been tasked with a secret mission. Their mission was to collect information on a member of their class (pioneer or explorer) and to produce a positive statement about them which would remain anonymous. The aim of this was to reboot crew after the Christmas holidays.
Here is what the secret spies observed…
‘Logan has worked really hard throughout the week in all sessions. Mainly quietly getting on with his work, showing respect, and occasionally helping people who are stuck on the work, showing compassion. In Art especially, he shows Craftsmanship and Quality in all areas of the work and his book.’
‘Lydia worked well in HUMS lessons on Wednesday, she always gets on with her work and is good at partner work. Even though she may be quiet she is always ready if anyone else needs help.’
‘Lily worked hard in all sessions this week. During the week, she has had an excellent work ethic and worked hard. She got most, if not all, work done and to a high degree. I believe this is a great start to the term and the year of 2022.’
‘Harvey has shown respect to everyone and he is not scared to tell you if you did something wrong he is always there to help people. For example, today he helped clean the classroom after doing art and he always has got time to play a game of chess with anyone during break and sometimes lunch.’
‘Ben has worked incredibly hard during these couple of weeks, without particularly being noticed for it. In HUMs, Ben created some beautiful work regarding annotating texts. During active lunch, Ben worked very hard in Dodge-ball, and did very well. And of course, Ben always works hard and always creates great work!’
‘Thomas has worked very hard in maths this week. He has also been very attentive in lessons such as Spanish and HUMS. In Maths, Thomas has shown compassion as he was helping others once he had finished his own work.’
‘Shawn has worked hard in all lessons this week. In class, Shawn answers a lot of questions, which shows courage. In Maths, he has worked hard and completed the work to get onto and finish the pushing for 4 and above worksheets. In HUMs, he produces a good quality of work, all the time, and is very compassionate as he helps others with their work in lessons such as Spanish where others get confused. Others around him are always laughing, which shows that he is a great person to be around.’
‘Cerrina has been helpful in Crew. She always has my back and tries to help me. She participates in most sessions and is kind.’
‘Charlotte has knuckled down in passage and has been asking older years to help her with it. In maths I feel she has also been working really hard with our new teacher Mr Hamilton, she’s working really hard with getting on with her GCSE work.’
‘Rhys has been trying harder in lessons to get the work done as every time i look up he has been having his head down. I haven’t heard anything negative about Rhys’ behaviour in sessions which is amazing and an outstanding improvement.’
‘Faith has worked really hard by writing a lot of notes down when told to .She has also been really respectful in most sessions by always listening to the person who is speaking. Faith has shown craftsmanship and quality by keeping her book neat.’
‘Layton worked really hard in HUMs this week. We were learning about diseases in the past and he ‘got smart’ by asking questions and talking to his partner, Robert. In art, Layton showed craftsmanship and quality by keeping his art book and work tidy. In PE, Layton showed respect by listening and following instructions.’
It has been great to see all of the positive comments for each person.
I also wanted to congratulate Faith and Harvey on successfully gaining places on the Doncaster Youth Council where they will be representing XP and XPE. I am very proud that 3 out of the 5 candidates were from our crew, they all did a great job!
Mrs Barnes and Miss Johnson
Crew Finch, along with other Y11 Crews, have been giving back to the school community by offering their help and expertise to their “buddy” Crews.
This has involved running Crew sessions for Y7 and Y8 focussing on Crew team building and character traits. For example, Dakota and MacKenzie led activities in the sportshall for Mr Currie’s Crew:
Meanwhile, Noah, Ali and Callie have been helping Y9 Crew Mercury prepare for their upcoming Passage Presentations.
Here’s Noah’s explanation of how they have supported in these sessions, by drawing on their own experiences of Passage:
“These sessions have consisted of individual peer critique and how it could be improved. Whilst others may have seen a fishbowl activity, where somebody would read out a piece of work for everyone to hear, which would then be critiqued by ourselves and others in the crew. This ultimately prepares them the best they can so that they have the best key points to make and that they have already built up the confidence to speak in front of an audience.”
Moving on – we will be focussing on how we can give back to our wider community. Crew Finch have already done some amazing fundraising for Firefly and collected items for our local foodbank, so we are looking forward to being able to make more positive impacts throughout the rest of our time together.
Today we launched our Learn2Earn Revision Rewards scheme to Y11 as a way of recognising the hard work and commitment of those students who are attending our lunchtime and after-school GCSE revision sessions (and perhaps encourage some of our other students to attend, too!)
So, what is Learn2Earn?
All completed cards will be entered into a ‘big CREW reward’ prize draw – so the more crew participate in sessions, the more chance their crew have of winning the bigger prize at the end of Y11!
Here is our current revision timetable. Please note this is currently under review and we’ll be adding more sessions soon:
Don’t forget that Y11 – and Y10 – students can also attend D6 on a Saturday morning, from 9am – 12:30pm, which is back up and running this weekend (15th January). D6 provides students with a relaxed and informal study space working alongside our expert Student Coaches. We are expecting these to get busier as GCSEs get closer (16th May – 24th June.)
We hope you have had a lovely Christmas and New Year.
You may remember that as a crew we were fundraising to support the local charity, Big C Little Warriors and that Rhys had offered to cut his hair as a way of raising money.
We originally thought that this was going to take place 18th December but Rhys gave us all a huge shock when he came to crew on 17th December and pulled down his hood to reveal his new do!
We will hopefully be able to share more about this soon!
Mrs Barnes and Miss Johnson
As a way of giving back to others in our community Crew Rowling have chosen to raise money for a local charity called ‘Big C Little Warrior’.
Big C Little Warrior was founded in 2019 and specialises in boosting the self esteem and confidence for individuals going through treatment for cancer by offering beauty and grooming treatments. After speaking with Big C Little Warrior they informed us of a new venture that we could support with. This is to raise money towards vouchers that individuals undergoing treatment who have lost their hair, can use towards handmade hats and headbands with hair pieces. Every £50 raised will help go towards one voucher per person.
We brainstormed ideas on how we could raise money and one of our amazingly kind and thoughtful crew members, Rhys has offered to cut his thick shoulder length hair, going for a short back and sides! This is something he felt fitted well with the charity and what the money raised was being used for.
As a crew we feel it is important to give back and support others in out community. The character values and traits that we strive to maintain at XP East are extremely important to us and we hope you will agree this is for an amazing cause!
Crew Rowling would really appreciate a small donation to help our charity and for Rhys’ courage in having his hair cut short.
The proposed date is 18th December for Rhys to have his hair cut so there will be updates to follow this 🙂
We are already doing so well in such a short amount of time but here is the link to donate.
We want to thank everyone in advance for supporting Big C Little Warrior and Crew Rowling.
Kirsty and Natalie
It’s the most wonderful time of the year and Crew Finch have created a ‘reverse’ advent calendar where, instead of us getting the chocolate, we give a little treat to the Year 11 team (don’t worry; there will be a few chocolatey treats in it for Crew, too!)
Our advent is very much based around on doing good things for others and making an extra effort to be kind and thoughtful on the run up to our Christmas break, which tends to be when staff and students feel a little bit more frazzled than usual!
We’ve also pledged to do other little acts of kindness over the next couple of weeks, which will hopefully bring a little bit of happiness to someone else’s day.
I really can’t believe that this will be Crew Finch’s Last Christmas* together but I’m happy that we will be spending it spreading a little bit of joy to our wider school Crew 🙂
(warning: don’t click that link if you’re taking part in Whamageddon! like us… too late? oops!)
C24 can breath a huge sigh of relief as the first set of Y11 mocks are almost over (they still have the Spanish Speaking and Art mocks to look forward to!)
However, it’s really important that students keep the momentum going with their revision all through the year, and not just before the next set of mocks (which are scheduled for March).
Click here to view our current enrichment timetable, which includes details of all the all the lunchtime and after school revision sessions available.
We are also encouraging all Y11s to attend D6 on a Saturday morning from 9am-12.30pm each week to access additional support, or just to have a relaxed space for a bit of focussed self-study away from any potential distractions at home.
For those of you who don’t know, D6 is our voluntary sixth day of school which will take place each Saturday during term time. D6 is led by ex-students of XP who are returning to provide our current students with peer to peer academic study support. There will be additional support from our school learning coaches and members of the Leadership Team. Refreshments will also be provided.
We’re really looking forward to seeing our Y11s at D6 this Saturday!
(Please note that D6 is only open to Y11s at the moment).
