On Thursday, all our Year 7 students had a hangout with their first art expert.
Their expert was called Derek Robertson who was speaking to our pupils about his ‘Migrations‘ exhibition.
These pieces of artwork that Derek created fitted in perfectly with Y7’s current expedition called ‘Wherever I lay my hat’ where they are answering the guiding question of ‘Is migration worth the risk?’
Our expert was able to give our students information about his experiences when visiting refugee camps around the world and insights into the lives of the people he met.
Mr. Wilmot made loads of notes!
Mrs. Marshall was on fire with the anchor charts.
Miss Hickson was busy making notes on the board.
Manveer and Maisie shared the notes that they wrote during the hangout.
Keegan even recorded the whole hangout as a voice note on his iPad and sent it to me!
I was so impressed with our Year 7’s. They were respectful and inquisitive. They asked some fantastic questions and wrote brilliant notes.
E27 have really impressed me in their art sessions. They have been learning about line drawing using a range of media including pencil, fine liner, biro and sharpies.
We have looked at how we can use different types of lines to create a range of effects and also grappled with creating a continuous line drawing of a shell (which a lot of pupils found really challenging).
They have listened to my instructions really well and grappled with some new techniques.
All Y7 pupils have also been set homework to create a line drawing of their house, which I am really looking forward to seeing.
Here are some lovely examples of the work E27 Explorer and Pioneer have created in their art sessions.
PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE OF DATE FOR THIS EVENT (now on Tuesday 17th December, not Thursday 19th as previously stated)
E26 (Year 7) will be holding the Presentation of Learning for their current expedition ‘Over the Top!’ on Tuesday 17th December, 5.30-6:30pm at XP East.
Students have been working extremely hard throughout their expedition and have been working on answering the guiding question: ‘Does war unite or divide?’
This will be their first formal opportunity at XP East to share their learning with parents, carers and visitors and we very much look forward to seeing you there.
Yesterday during community meeting Mrs Poncia asked X25 about their highlight of the week, and I amongst other members of my crew struggled to pick! We have just six weeks left of this academic year, it is wild to think how quickly my crew’s first year at high school has passed and how much we’ve crammed into 2018-2019.
Both staff and students are winding up to the grand finale of the STEAM and Human expeditions, where they will be working on final products and preparing to share their learning in a presentation of learning. In STEAM, they are continuing on with ‘Escape Earth’ and yesterday their new Human expedition was announced.
On Tuesday X25 visited the Jodrell Bank Space Observatory, which is home to the UK’s largest radio telescope and the 3rd largest in Europe! Each student was immersed in workshops and classes that allowed them to discover elements of our universe, experience Newton’s Laws, and watch real accounts of the astronauts that visit the Space Station. I’ve uploaded the video file above, check out the incredible resources and facilities that we had access to!
We will be taking the lessons we learned from the specialists back into school to help answer the expeditions guiding question:
“Should humans leave Earth?”
With growing reports of the danger that climate change poses, and the scientific advancements in the technology that could allow us to potentially re-locate our species to another planet, X25 will be concluding what they think the future for our species and our home will be. I can’t wait to hear their responses.
I chose the backing track for the video from an album I really love by a band called Public Service Broadcasting, I was struck by this line that was originally part of a JFK speech from 1962:
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things
Not because they are easy, but because they are hard”
I’m taking this particular message back to crew this week. We will be encountering difficulty over the next six weeks with deadlines. We will be setting up Student Led Conferences over the coming weeks, to reflect on and review this years work. We will be finalising products and developing our presentations of learning. It may be the last few weeks, but as per every other day we spend at XP East, I hope that each of my 12 crew members recognises that despite this work being hard, it is also extremely important, and that working hard, getting smart and being kind is fundamental if we are to achieve.
Since January, Year 7 have been learning about the human body in their Human Machine STEAM expedition. They have been studying cells at the ‘microscopic machine’ level as well as the organs of the digestive and respiratory systems at the ‘macroscopic machine’ level, in order to answer the guiding question “Why is my body like a machine?”
They are now ready to share their findings with you, and would like to invite you to join in with a series of activities to present their learning on the following dates:
7 Explorer: Wednesday 27th March, 5:30-6:30pm
7 Pioneer: Thursday 28th March, 5:30-6:30pm
For a taster of what we have been studying, visit our expedition website.
We look forward to seeing you and thank you for your continued support.
All E25 students have been sent an email reminding them to revise their Case Study 2 content of the Human Machine expedition. We will use some of our class time after the holiday to revise Case Study 1, but they are free to work on this on their own over the holiday too.
We will have a written assessment on this (as well as Case Study 1) on Friday 22nd March.
There are many resources to support them in their revision, including the expedition website, which itself contains many helpful links, videos, learning target rubrics, quizlets and lesson resources. Some students chose to take their class books home with them and all students were given a paper copy of the revision grid for Case Study 2 to start them off.
Please continue to encourage your child to talk about their learning at home and to share their revision progress with you.
E25 have an Extended Study Task which has been emailed to them, posted on the Expedition Google Site and on Google Classroom. This is due on Wednesday 13th February in our Science lesson.
If they are unable to access it due to permissions on the doc, they should try logging in through their Google account on the XP East website first.
E25 have been working hard creating original choreography to accompany a piece of poetry for their Presentation of Learning next week. The poem is called ‘Let’s Unite’ and was originally written in Pashto, although we are using a translation from the Poetry Translation Centre.
Here is a taster of the first few lines of the poem for you – written in the original language of course – we can’t ruin the surprise!
راځئ چې یو شو
په دی ښایسته دنیا کې
په دی یوه دنیا کې
مونږه جدا جدا یو
مونږه تنها تنها یو
لکه د لاس د ګوتو
لکه د لمر د وړانګو
زمونږه پښو نه لاندې
Students considered the imagery in the poem, identified the patterns of repetition that we could build on and used Kind, Specific and Helpful critique to hone their ideas into movements which enhance the spoken text. Last week we even had an extra special guest in the Civic Mayor of Doncaster, Councillor Majid Khan, who witnessed rehearsals during a tour of XP East.
I can’t wait to see the finished product when all three X Block groups bring their work together. The students have taken the lead in idea generation and directing, using the skills and techniques we have been studying in Drama since the beginning of term. I’m really proud of what they have achieved so far, well done E25!
This week, C25 have been exploring local data of the soldiers that fell in their postcode in the First World War. They have been using the following source from the Imperial War Museum, an interactive map (A Street Near You), which presents fact files about the soldiers, their death, their rank, and any other records that are on file.
The year 7 classes have then been populating their own personal data set with information on the soldiers in their area, which we will be using this week to calculate averages, create frequency graphs and bar charts.
There were some really fruitful discussions about why some streets did not have any records, and some students noticed that they may have found brothers, or soldiers who had died just days apart. Seeing the map made us all reflect on how devastating the war must have been on our community.
Florence even found one of her ancestors at an address near her current one. We also found records for Arthur and Ernest Hickson, Miss Hickson is going to do a little research to find out if she is related to them.
I’d just like to appreciate C25 for being so respectful and working hard on this, and I’d like to remind Explorer to have it completed by our next lesson on Tuesday so we can start our research.
