XP & XP East are proud to announce our Post 16 Evening and would like to extend the invitation to parents/carers and students in years 10 & 11 at both schools. FXP have kindly offered to support so refreshments will be available on the night and all funds raised will support our students across both schools. As you will be aware opportunities to attend potential provisions have been difficult to arrange so at XP we decided to invite providers to come and meet our students.
6th form providers have been invited to give a short presentation and will be available with stalls for the rest of the evening to answer any question you may have about their Post 16 provision. We are delighted with the response so far from providers and are looking forward to supporting our students in making informed choices as they come to the end of their XP journey. Please complete the form in the link below if you will be attending.
The Fight the Power final product is being officially launched on Friday 3rd December at 2PM, at Sir Nigel Gresley Square (just outside of CAST).
We’d like to say a massive thank you to parents, carers, and our community for supporting the crowdfunder, and we look forward to launching it with students and those involved with the expedition.
If your son/daughter is in C26 (Year 9) and you would like to attend the event to celebrate its launch with us, please join us – feel free to email [email protected] if you have any questions about the grand reveal.
It’s been a wonderful lunch time today spent with Y11 (and other years!) at Embrace in the library at XPE. Some Y11s were revising in study groups ready for this afternoon’s maths exam, but the highlight for me was seeing Tom, Hollymay, Frida, Mia, Ruby and Eleanor play Twister with students from Y7! [I’m not sure how Mia managed to stand back up, though!!] What a fantastic example of Crew – and a good laugh, too!
After returning from half term we have been busy in Crew, alongside our additional Common Mission and Duke of Edinburgh sessions, which are new for this year and it is great to see.
Before breaking up for the half term, Year 9 were introduced to ‘Passage’. This is something we will be working on in our Crew sessions and Common Mission sessions in order to demonstrate why each individual is GCSE ready. As part of this we began to think about careers and what our hopes and dreams for the future were. This led to a fantastic afternoon of Crew researching careers, and job roles they may be interested in.
Last Wednesday was the first session working on our Passage presentation scripts and I have to say that we were blown away with how hard each person worked and how seriously they took the task.
Since starting the Duke of Edinburgh bronze award Crew have been learning the skill of First Aid and have worked on specific topics each week which have included, practical skills, completing a workbook, posters and diagrams. It has been great to see how the Crew have helped and supported each other in these sessions when completing tasks and produced some beautiful work.
We also don’t want you to think we have forgotten about our charity we selected to help at the end of Year 8, as this certainly is not the case. As a Crew we emailed ‘Big C Little Warrior’ at the start of last term asking how we could best help them. They were so grateful we had selected them as our charity and were keen for us to be able to help. They had a team meeting where our offer of help was discussed and they came back to us asking if we could raise money, as this would be used towards the cost of making hair accessories for those undergoing cancer treatment. How we can raise money is something we are currently looking into and organising in Crew.
As we have moved Crew rooms this year this meant that we were able to redesign the Crew wall. This is something Crew Rowling pride themselves on and take very seriously. Our plan is to continue to add to this throughout this year’s journey and move it with us if we relocate again next year. Just like the photos from the Year 7 Outward Bound week have!
We have already begun thinking of how we can decorate the Crew room at Christmas!
We can’t wait to show you more beautiful work and keep you up to date on all things Crew Rowling.
Due to the fantastic efforts of our incredible staff, we are delighted to be able to offer so many extra curricular opportunities to our wonderful students!
Please see attached an updated version of our enrichment timetable. On here, you’ll find sports clubs/fixtures, Arts clubs (including our new Vocaleles!) and KS4 Revision sessions with staff. We would encourage our students to attend as many of these sessions as possible to secure their GCSE grades and achieve their potential!
I can also share with you that D6 will begin again this coming Saturday, November 13th. D6 is our Saturday provision where students are able to come and work with coaches in school from 9am – 12:30pm. For the time being, D6 is open to year 11 only.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the staff running any extra-curricular activities, or myself at [email protected].
Thank you for your continued support – we look forward to seeing many of our students in these sessions!
Mel Cocliff XP Y11 Phase Lead Crew Macmillan Crew Leader
I’ve been popping in and out of sessions all week and have been blown away by the hard work and focus of every single student, in every single lesson as they prepare for their upcoming mocks. One of the highlights of my week was seeing Aden give himself a little victory fist pump after successfully working through a particularly tricky maths question!
I’d like to give a massive appreciation to all staff for going above and beyond to support students this week, especially to Miss Poncia and Mrs Desborough for putting on extra revision sessions during lunchtimes this week. This was reiterated during student appreciations at our year group community meeting. As Louie said, these revision sessions have been “amazing.”
The Y11 team are putting together a timetable of subject specific ‘learning labs’ which will run during lunchtimes and after school – full details will be posted here very soon.
D6 is also restarting on Saturday 13th November, 9am-12.30pm. This is open to all Y11 students with Student Coaches on hand to help them with their studies and exam prep.
As I said, all students have been working extra hard this week, but a special mention has to go to Lewis D and Tom D for working exceptionally hard in lessons at school, revising at home and for actively seeking out extra support and advice from subject teachers – this is what getting smart is all about.
We’re in for an intense couple of weeks so I’d just like to end by saying that even though it’s important to stick to revision timetables, it is just as important to schedule in some downtime to focus on your own wellbeing. Go for a walk, watch a film, read a book, check in with family and friends, eat well and get plenty of sleep!
The fantastic E28s have been set an expedition ‘bucket list’ related to their Food, glorious food expedition. They have until the Christmas break to get as many tasks uploaded to the padlet as possible.
Year 11 will be sitting mock exams over a 2 week period, starting on Monday 8th November:
Please note that Wednesday 10th November may be subject to change due to the school nurses being in to administer Covid Vaccines.
Students have been given revision resources to help them prepare for these mocks, as well as having access to Seneca (science), Hegarty (maths) and all their previous session slides on google classrooms.
Last week Crew Anoa’i, with the help of some of our friends from Crew Ali, took on the task of degunging our school. We had a week of cleaning up, making sure our school was clear of rubbish and ready for session time.
On Monday morning, we took our turn to litter pick around the school grounds. We quickly gathered the equipment from reception and headed out to the back field. The grass was wet and there was a chill in the air. The whole crew took turns to use the pickers and collect as much rubbish as possible. We moved with great pace and found many different things on our journey around the field, including a large tub of ice cream!
Throughout the week, we ensured our crew room was spotless for others to use. We tucked the chairs under after using them and we sanitised the tables. We also cleared the room of any lost property and bits of rubbish left from the previous day.
On Friday morning, we went into ‘degunge mode’. This included us carrying out our weekly class pack check. Everyone in our crew has a ‘degunge’ duty, where they count and check all of the equipment in our crew’s class pack.
Once this was complete, we then moved onto tidying up our library. A handful of our crew took charge with this task, ensuring all of the portfolio folders were stacked appropriately in neat rows. They finished this task in record time and joined the rest of us in our crew room, to help sort the lost property.
Sorting the lost property included us taking all of the lost items out of the box, taking a photograph of the items and then folding them back up to be placed in the box once again. As there were a lot of lost items this past week, all hands were on deck. We even had a system in place to speed up the process. We had Jacob, Woody, James, Fin and Denim on unpacking duty. Then Nikodem, April and Thea on photograph duty. Moving onto the next step, we had Zach H, Faith, Lucie-Mae and Zach M on folding duty. To finish the process, we had our friends from Crew Ali (Ruby, Ruben, Charlie and Caiden) on packing duty. With this amazing team, we managed to complete all of our degunge duties in just 15 minutes! That’s a record for Crew Anao’i.
The last step of our degunge process was to sanitise the tables and put the chairs up on to the tables. This then allowed Miss Mitchell to hoover the room after we had gone home. Then our crew room was truly spotless!
We have thoroughly enjoyed the degunge process and wish to continue this next term.
Don’t forget to check the latest Lost Property post on our website to see all of the lost items. Remember to claim your lost belongings before Friday 5th November.
It was Crew Obama’s turn this week to take on some Monday morning litter picking duties. The weather was rather dull and overcast but at least we weren’t rained on! Pupils found a surprising amount of rubbish which may have blown onto the school site from elsewhere such as KFC chip cartons, but there were no complaints about clearing up after others. I was really impressed by the tenacity and determination of some Crew members to collect old items which had likely been hidden in the hedges until the leaves dropped.
Please check the school’s homepage to see the lost property for this week. Remember to claim what belongs to you!
