Preparing for SLCs – and the year ahead!

3rd October 2021A Parker

Crew Finch have spent the week preparing for the first Student Led Conferences of Y11. They will be reflecting on their Y10 mock exam results and sharing how they are preparing for the next round of mocks in November. Their presentations will also be focussing on the bigger picture of what they need to achieve in order to move onto the next stage of their learning journey, post-16 – and how they’re going to get there.

I’m really looking forward to welcoming Crew parents back into school for the first face-to-face SLCs in over a year. I sent out an email with the booking form link last week; if you’ve yet to book your slot please do so.

With the next round of mocks just a few weeks away, it is encouraging to hear that some students have already started revising. We will spend time in Crew looking at different revision techniques to find out what works best for everyone. Meanwhile, Crew have shared their revision tips with each other: the most popular method so far seems to be watching videos to reinforce learning.

I think that the time spent reflecting on their Y10 mock exam results along with last week’s taster day at New College has motivated Crew to really think more about how they are going to succeed, and this has been reflected in how they’ve been working in class. I’m pleased to see lots of praises for working hard and getting smart being put on the praise form from subject teachers for all Crew members.

It’s been a fantastic start to the year and our Y11 learning journey is right on track. Let’s hope it stays that way 🙂

Even MORE Beautiful Work from E25!

29th September 2021Web Blogger

This time, the beautiful work has come from E25 Explorer in Science!

Explorer have been working hard on understanding DNA – And these are just some examples of the Craftsmanship and Quality of learning taking place in Mr V’s classroom this morning.

This is an example of a quality diagram from Kris of a DNA Nucleotide – a building block of our DNA.

And some beautiful examples of the double helix that DNA molecules form, from Lucie, Billy, Faith, Lewis and Caiden !

Keep up the fantastic work!!

Miss Cocliff & Mr Voltaire 🙂

E24: Getting started: History Revision Guides

17th September 2021K Poncia

Students this week have been given their own copy of the revision guide for our History exam board OCR B SHP History. All students should have named their copy so that if they are misplaced they can be returned. Students are encouraged to annotate and highlight the guide as they carry out their revision. 

The revision guide has a number of different topics, however, students will need to focus on the following sections for revision: 

  • The Elizabethans 
  • The People’s Heath 
  • Living under Nazi Rule

The locations of these topics can be found in the contents page. We would recommend in general students start by revising The People’s Health as well as focusing on page 88 in order to prepare for the upcoming assessment in lessons.

If any student has been absent when these revision guides were handed out, they can see myself or Mrs Hannam directly and we will make sure they get their copy. 

A further revision guide focusing on the Viking Expansion will be issued to students in the coming weeks.

GCSE Psychology students are on it!

15th September 2021A Parker

Our GCSE Psychology group have had a brilliant start to the year. Mrs Pulham and I have been super impressed with how focussed everyone’s been and how hard they’ve all been working.

It’s hard to stay on task for 2 hours, especially when the emphasis is on being leaders of your own learning and undertaking a series of self-study tasks, but these lot are absolutely smashing it!

It’s fantastic to see our Y10 and Y11 students supporting each other in these sessions, demonstrating that the power of Crew is embedded into everything we do.

Mrs Parker & Mrs Pulham

Tranquil Tuesday

14th September 2021Web Blogger

Crew Obama spent Tranquil Tuesday updating their books, and catching up on some private reading. Reading is one of the most effective ways to raise performance in humanities, so AR time is highly valued here. We also worked in teams to apply our reading skills to a set of instructions to construct some new furniture for our crew room, which turned out to be trickier than expected!

New College Taster Day Monday 27th September

11th September 2021A Parker

Posted on behalf of Mrs Burns, Careers Lead: 
Today again Scott Faulkner from New College delivered a presentation to our year 10&11 cohort.  I can now confirm that there is an opportunity for all our C24 & C25 students from both schools to attend the NCD taster day on the 27th September.
Could all students complete the form below for the taster day at New College on Monday 27th September. They need to choose 3 options and then a 4th standby. This information needs to be completed by Monday and prospectuses have been shared. The links to the college for both taster day  options and the online prospectus are below.
Please encourage your students to choose sessions they think they will enjoy or are intrigued by rather than in friendship groups, this is an important opportunity to try out before they enrol. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to email me. Crew Leaders will also be able to support and advise.
On the day we will be picked up by a coach at XP schools and taken to New College, we need to ensure all students leave from XP. Lunch is provided by college which I am excited about. They will attend 3 sessions and return to school by the usual finish time.

C26 (Y9) Bronze DofE

10th September 2021A Parker

C26 (Y9) across both schools have made a the first steps toward achieving their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award!

Students, with the support and guidance of dedicated DofE Leaders and Crew Leaders, will spend time each week working on a programme of activities which include:

  • Skills: students will be undertaking a 3 month First Aid programme.
  • Volunteering: students will spend 6 months raising money for their Crew charities, becoming reading mentors to younger students and litter picking around our community.
  • Physical: 3 months of undertaking any sporting activity done as part of an organised club out of school, or by joining any of the after school clubs which will be launching soon!)
  • Expedition: planning for and undertaking 2 days/1 night hiking expedition (dependant on Covid restrictions at the time).

Find out more here!

By the end of the academic year students should have done enough to have achieved their Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award. Students are expected to achieve all sections of their Bronze award programme unless they have a valid reason not to.

The DofE programme forms a crucial part of the Trust’s Outdoor Curriculum, and we are extremely grateful to the FXP for their continued support and fundraising efforts to ensure that we are able to purchase the Bronze welcome packs and enrol every student onto the DofE award scheme.  The welcome packs will be delivered to your home addresses after students have registered on the eDofE app and include a handy discount card for outdoor specialist shops!

If you have any questions specifically about the Bronze award, please contact your child’s Crew Leader, or you can contact me (Angella Parker) direct: [email protected]

*Just a note to add we have plans in place for C24 and C25 to complete the expedition element of their DofE award later this year! 

Year 10, week 1&2

9th September 2021Katie Haughey

It doesn’t feel right typing that my crew are in year 10(!!!!), entering their fourth year at the school, and their final two years at XP. We spent the first week back working together in crew, where we asked ourselves ‘how can we prepare for the next climb?’

One of the activities we partook in an intercrew competition, discussing strategies and cheering each other on while we completed the minute to win it tasks. While the activities were a little daft, it was nice to see crews circling up to strategize and making sure everyone was included.

On the Friday of the week we spent in crew, we were fortunate enough to get to walk the Monsal Trail. It was quite a physically demanding route at times, but the compassion I saw from my lovely ‘care bears/photographers’; Jess and Charlotte, was phenomenal. I’d like to give them a special mention for carrying others bags, slowing their own pace to help others catch up, and their supportive words during the route.

I’d also like to give Sami a special mention, he had the opportunity to flex his GCSE Geography skills as our navigator, and I felt he did a great job!

The walk was a great practice for the Y10s Duke of Edinburgh award, that I’m hoping that most my crew will opt to do this year. I took a tonne of pictures and videos on the day which I’ve compiled below:

Back in our new Crew Room in week 2, we discussed what is required of us over the upcoming two years with GCSEs approaching. We looked at how we procrastinate, and how we can start drip feeding a little revision into our habits at home to start the following two years right. Also, we celebrated Callum’s 15th Birthday the only way we know how – with chocolate fudge cake and lemon drizzle cake for the quirkier members of my crew.

That’s us checked into Y10!

Year 10 Immersion Fieldwork to the Royal Armouries

8th September 2021S Mitchell

Students in Year 10 took part in a wonderful visit to the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds yesterday. The purpose of Immersion is exactly that; to immerse students into the subject content that they will be exploring throughout this expedition. Going on fieldwork is just one of the ways we build curiosity and give students a visceral experience to get them to begin making connections between different subjects and the real world.

In this visit we were given a guided tour of the WW2 ‘Firefight’ exhibition and a handling session based on the theme of choice where students were able to hold and explore different weapons and artefacts from both WW1 and WW2.

Our students conduct and attitude to learning was exemplary and they really did our school proud. Well done, Year 10. Let’s see what comes next…

Crew Parkinson: How can we, as a crew, prepare ourselves for our next climb? 

8th September 2021H Hickson

Written by Aaron, Ava, Lacey, Kris, Rosie, Dylan, Florence, Marcus, Harvey and Bob. 

It was a welcoming and fun start of the new school year. We settled back into the Crew talking to everyone as we had our Crew breakfast. This helped us to settle back in and get used to being in Crew again. Then we did Mandala drawings to put up on the Crew wall for everyone to see, we drew images and patterns to represent our identity. Near the end, we did Minute to Win It games with the year group… our crew came last in them, but spirits we still high. 

On Tuesday we played Sportshall games with the year group. During this we did multiple games to strengthen our team work and healthy competition between the Crews. Crew Parkinson and Crew Anoa’i managed to win one round with some amazing dives by the alliance piloted by Marcus.

We then had a Careers session to make a charity and research the careers and job roles needed to start the charity. We did this activity to understand the different roles and qualifications needed in different career paths, for example we needed advertisers, fundraisers, medical professionals and accountants. We talked about how one of the ‘climbs’ of this year will be starting our GCSEs and the future ahead and began thinking about the qualifications we might need for our careers.

The whole year group were given prompts in order to write a letter to our future selves. We did this as part of a ‘solo’. By writing these answers we would be reflecting on our current and past selves to see what we could improve and set ourselves future goals – we’ll see what the future holds! 

On our walk on Friday, we showed lots of character traits, which included: helping Miss Johnson up the steps when she couldn’t get up them, we regrouped on the steep hills, and we overcame the challenge of the two steep and tall hills. This demonstrates that we don’t just give up at the slightest challenge but persevere and support each other, we all hit the ground running, and if we get Crew right, we get everything right!