STEAM homework week beginning 18.12.17

By D Pearson19th December 2017

C24 Year 7 Pioneer students have been asked to complete their STEAM Learning Target write-up, following the structure and adhering to the content list that they were issued with last week. This work is required by Friday 12th January 2018 , so that students can include it in their portfolio of work on our current Society, Steam and Speed Learning Expedition. If any students take their STEAM exercise book home to help with this homework, then they must bring their book back into school on this date too. The original list shared with students last week can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10EydsUIs4ScUmj5IUYbm6E_ru6HkynHC3L2taBwB1-Q/edit

Product launch

By C Duffield6th December 2017

 

On Thursday 30th November all of our students came together for the product launch session. During the session students were introduced to the final stage of the expedition and the groups they will working in to produce the final product, then they looked at a final product that has been produced by students from XP.

Students worked in pairs making notices and wonders about sections of the book and then feeding back to the rest of the school. Mr Smith then encouraged students to make suggestions for our product and how we can make it unique to us. The aim of this protocol was to ensure our product is produced to a high standard and reaches the levels of craftsmanship and quality expected of XP East students. By using the XP product as a model students were able to visualise what is achievable as a whole school community when working collaboratively.

 

 

C24 describing teachers and subjects

By D Pearson6th December 2017

Hola. This week our C24 Explorer group played “feel-the-food”, with their audience asking and stating the snacks they eat with drinks in Spanish, whilst two blindfolded students raced each other to locate the items heard. We used this to help check learning and progress. ibuen trabajo!

Our C24 Pioneer group practised expressing and justifying positive and negative opinions of school subjects. Those who were able to link their reasons to work covered last session on describing teachers’ personalities were evidencing the excellence standard. Particular mention to Aden who was outstanding in his spoken responses. iFenomena!

Grappling with our Learning Targets in Spanish..

By D Pearson17th November 2017

Our C24 students continue to use their Spanish skills for routine transactions in the classroom, such as understanding instructions or making requests in their Modern Foreign Language.

Here our Explorers are grappling with this week’s Learning Targets – classifying positive and negative classroom behaviours, defining verbs, identifying cognates and engaging their cognitive skills to complete this task.

This session built on the work that we covered last week on school subjects, and challenged our students to link their learning. It was clear from their own self-assessment against the rubric that for most students their finishing point had moved on significantly from their starting point.

 

C24 Extended Study – Spanish Homework

By D Pearson15th November 2017

Our C24 Y7 students have been asked to complete a worksheet on school subjects. This will help them to begin to build the 2500 word vocabulary that they will need to acquire by the time they sit their GCSE Spanish exams.

For both our Pioneer and Explorer groups, this homework was set today and is due in for marking next Wednesday 22nd November.

As always, if any student needs extra help to complete this work then they may attend an Extended Study session after school.

I help to supervise this session on Thursdays.

C24 Maths Extended Study MyMaths

By J Smith10th November 2017

Students have 6 exercises to complete in MyMaths. These are additional practice questions on:

Highest common factor, lowest common multiples, fractions, decimals and percentages

At this stage students should not worry about whether they are too easy or too hard, as this will give us data about level of understanding of lesson content in addition to the marked grapple in Maths.

The username is:

xpschool

The password is:

rectangle137

Students then use the details I shared with them in class to get into myportal.

 

The deadline is Tuesday at 8pm for Explorer  and Wednesday 8pm for Pioneer

 

La nueva tecnología en la clase de español…

22nd October 2017D Pearson

¡Hola!

We’re pleased that the devices ordered through Freedom Tech to aid teaching and learning in and beyond the classroom have now arrived. For those students and parents who have taken delivery of a device – and find themselves with time on their hands in the next two weeks – you may wish to visit the following websites that use emerging technologies to teach Spanish:

FREE BBC Languages site

FREE Spanish lessons online

Learn Spanish for FREE

FREE Spanish resources

https://www.memrise.com

http://rosettastone.co.uk

www.fluentu.com

There are many more out there, some are free, and some have Apps for language learning on the go…..

 

 

Encouraging the active learner in MFL lessons

By D Pearson22nd October 2017

7X and 7P students are beginning to use transactional Spanish in their MFL lessons to make requests and ask for permission.  This week they have started building core vocabulary towards the 2000 – 2500 words that they will need to know as they reach GCSE standards.

On Wednesday they learnt 14 items of stationary that might be found in their pencil case and/or school bag. After half term – on the rare occasion that someone fails to bring basic equipment – it will only be issued to them if they can ask for it in Spanish. We used the random Wheeldecide roulette wheel to generate the focus for our learning check, and the Tarsia puzzle generator to create a grapple so that students could consolidate their knowledge.

The free Tarsia puzzle generator software can be downloaded onto Windows OS devices from the Hermitech Laboratories website. It is user-definable and extremely versatile, offering geometric tesselating puzzles that can be quickly and easily differentiated within the parameters established by the user.

X-Block Art – Extended Study homework

By D Pearson3rd October 2017

Following the huge success of their last piece of art homework, C24 students in X-Block groups E1, E2 and E3 will be asked to produce a sketch drawing, done at home or in supervised Extended Study, on one of the following themes chosen by their group:

  • An object commonly worn or carried on oneself (e.g. a wallet, an umbrella, a comb, spectacles, set of keys)
  • Flora or fauna (e.g. houseplants, wild flowers, cactus, nettles)
  • An object found in my house
  • A vase or similar cylindrical object
  • An object found in my garden

The remit is deliberately vague and abstract as we are interested not only in the reason(s) behind our students’ choice, but also in the manner in which they choose to represent their three dimensional object. This homework is due for submission as follows:

E1 – homework set on 03.10.17 and due in on 10.10.17; E2 – homework set on 04.10.17 and due in on 11.10.17 and E3 – homework will be set on 12.10.17 and due in on 19.10.17. Thanks.