E28’s Pioneer had an outstanding session in Spanish on Today, they started off by going through ‘things they could do’ at the weekend and how to say this in Spanish along with where they would do these. Such as, Voy al cine. Voy a ver una película’ (‘I am going to the cinema. I am going to watch a film’).
Students then made their way outside of the classroom to conduct their surveys of what their peers were doing over the weekend, in Spanish of course!
During this task the students were impeccable in the way that they conducted themselves.
From their surveys they were then asked to write a paragraph of what they had found out about their peers’ weekend plans. This encouraged students to use the guidance provided to push to ‘excellence’ on the rubric given to allow them to assess where they are at.
Throughout the session, Pioneer’s HOWLs and character traits were fantastic, they showed courage, integrity, compassion, showed craftsmanship and quality, worked hard, got smart and were all kind to others.
Students in E28/Year 8 will be visiting Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield.
This will form part of their immersion for their first expedition of Year 8.
Students will be visiting on Tuesday – 6th September 2022.
We will be travelling by coach, departing at around 9:15 AM and returning at approximately 15:00 PM.
Students will need to bring a packed lunch unless they access free school meals, in which case school will provide one for them.
This is an outdoor site so students will be required to take a waterproof jacket/coat in case of wet weather, and wear suitable footwear (old trainers).
Usual school rules will apply in terms of mobile phones and these should not be used by students on the bus. Students may wish to take devices such as iPads to take any photographs or to make notes.
If your child needs to take any medication, please inform their Crew Leader so that any necessary arrangements can be made.
All medication should be labelled with their name, and passed to a member of staff.
If you have any questions about the day, feel free to contact [email protected].
Students in E28/Year 8 will be visiting Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield.
This will form part of their immersion for their first expedition of Year 8.
Students will be visiting on Tuesday – 6th September 2022.
We will be travelling by coach, departing at around 9:15 AM and returning at approximately 15:00 PM.
Students will need to bring a packed lunch unless they access free school meals, in which case school will provide one for them.
This is an outdoor site so students will be required to take a waterproof jacket/coat in case of wet weather, and wear suitable footwear (old trainers).
Usual school rules will apply in terms of mobile phones and these should not be used by students on the bus. Students may wish to take devices such as iPads to take any photographs or to make notes.
If your child needs to take any medication, please inform their Crew Leader so that any necessary arrangements can be made.
All medication should be labelled with their name, and passed to a member of staff.
If you have any questions about the day, feel free to contact [email protected].
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 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!
By Katie Haughey24th June 2021
We’ve waved goodbye to Crew Turing’s 15th member, Miss Narey, the fantastic trainee teacher who has been supporting as well as leading crew sessions the past few months. To celebrate her successes in passing her training year, we had a slightly early afternoon tea with scones. We wish her the best at Armthorpe and look forward to hearing from her through friends of my crew who attend the school.
Thanks to the girls in my crew for cracking a smile for the selfie!
Torran’s student led crew session
During half term, I received an email highlighting the incredible work Torran undertook during the break, supporting his family and local football team by supporting the coaching of the under 12s. I was inspired by his leadership and wanted to try and reboot something with my crew that we’ve not done in a long time!
I’ve got a big appreciation for Torran for hosting our first student led crew of the year. I’ve asked all of my crew to think up an activity that we can do in the remaining weeks, considering the purpose of what we do and how we can build our character doing these activities, as well as develop their leadership skills. Torran requested to lead a football skills and game crew session to help our sports day efforts. I’ve also challenged the rest of crew to come up with a session to run with us.
I’ve also added some footage of our crew stewardship duties to the video below, we spent a Friday afternoon litter picking and managed to fill two bin bags.
Pride
Miss Jones shared a really comprehensive set of resources on why we celebrate Pride, we have spent some crew sessions this month celebrating and learning about the month. Our crew is named after Alan Turing, who was persecuted for being gay which ultimately led to his suicide. We created a water painting mural to decorate our crew wall with, every crew member getting to add background rainbow colours to the image.
Here’s our final product!
Crew mile
This week, we have teamed up with other schools in the trust to run a mile to support Ray Mathews who has worked a lot with Norton Junior/ infant school raising money for charities through running. Ray is 80 this year and he would like the school to run 80 miles to help support the charity Age UK.
We did our 4 laps round both schools on Thursday this week and it was glorious! I am going to donate the money we raised to Age UK.
Just 4 weeks to go until we break up for summer, we’ve got some exciting work in the pipeline that will be ready for sports day that I look forward to sharing with you!
Crew Turing have loved being outside during Monday’s crew sessions to do check in, catching 45 minutes of sun before we go back to session. Now that lockdown restrictions are lifting slightly the check-ins are far more interesting. Everyone seems cheerier now they’re able to see friends and family, and carry on with the sports they’re involved in.
We’ve also managed to get booked into the sports hall during crew a couple of weeks back, we enjoyed a rather competitive game of dodgeball. We mixed crew to random teams, and even Miss Narey and I played.
As mentioned in my previous post, as a crew we’ve been self-assessing HoWLs leading up to the actual data drop, which finally got released last week. We spent the crew session adding our updated HoWLs to our crew narrative, gains were made across the board. We then compared the new data with our previous crew targets that were made in November 2020. Those targets were:
– Improve extended study record as a crew, aiming for 95%+: we greened this target as this has massively improved thanks to daily reminders in crew and students working together to support each other on any work they’re unsure about
– Improve HoWLs in art and HUMAN, aiming for at least secure in all HoWLs grades: this is partially completed, as HoWLs in these subjects have gone up across the board, however we’ve not 100% met the ‘secure’ section of the rubric or above in these subjects. I’ve got to appreciate Dylan, Callum, Torran, Mollie and Sami for smashing these targets, some of whom even received HoWLs in the excellence category!
In the coming weeks, we’ll be looking at where we can be making improvements using Crew Turing’s HoWL improvement project. Every student in my crew has identified a subject in which their HoWLs could do with some work. I then asked students to write a rationale explaining why they’d chosen that particular subject and a SMART target that another member of our crew could peer-asses them on.
I then gave each student someone to peer assess on a mini HoWL tracker. Every student gave at least a secure on the peer assessment, and knowing that someone was tracking engagement, meant that members of my crew really pushed themselves in those sessions to contribute and ask clarifying questions. I’m going to try this again in a few weeks to get snapshots of what is going on in sessions.
To celebrate our successes, Dylan treated us to homemade sponge cake with custard and Torran bought in a chocolate birthday cake. Not only this, Miss Narey who has been with us over the past few months prepared a quiz for us to enjoy! Big appreciations to those who made Friday’s crew session so fun, and congratulations to Mollie, Charlotte, Dylan, Callum, Sami and Jess for winning the quiz.
I’ve been left speechless by the outstanding passage presentations we’ve had this week. The quality of reflections from the students in Crew on their character and academic growth since year 7 has been eye opening. They have spoken with such maturity and integrity that has made myself (and their families of course) so proud. I’ve been pleased to have been able to mark so many of the students as exceeding the standard – all the hard work has paid off!
It’s not happened by accident though, the students have been busy preparing, redrafting and rehearsing for months. Here’s Florence practising her passage in Crew this morning – all students so far have been very professional in their presenting skills and are way beyond their years in their ability to speak to adults and a guest panelist they have never met before, it takes some real courage and I’m sure there’s not many 13/14 year olds out there who could do this.
For students in year 9 to be able to so confidently identify and present their strengths, weaknesses and how they overcome challenges to improve, not only academically but personally as well, is exceptional – and all in a national lockdown! I can’t praise them enough for the strength they have shown. I am so proud of them and I hope they all realise how brilliant they are – I’m excited to see the rest of Crew’s passage presentations next week!
Crew Parkinson have had a wonderful return to school despite it being an online return rather than in person. The last time we were all together we were celebrating Christmas with each other, opening secret Santa gifts, listening to music and having a laugh as you can see below – it all seems so long ago now. I don’t think any of us thought that we’d be returning to school under lockdown number 3 and facing the next term online, but we’re making the most of it.
In terms of how they’ve been getting on – they’ve been absolute angels! Despite the challenges of online learning we’ve had nearly 100% attendance for every crew session and lesson for the last 3 weeks! Students are doing so well tackling their new expeditions online – I got an email through with this lovely praise for Ava from Miss Haughey, it’s great to see she’s smashing it in maths.
We’ve also been busy preparing for Passage over the last few weeks in crew, continuing the hard work students put in when we were at school. We’ve had to adapt a lot over the last weeks and Passage is included in this but I’m so proud of the quality reflections students have made on their time at XP East so far and how they have grown and changed since year 7. I’m sure they will be able to explain really articulately during their Passage presentation why they are ready to start their GCSEs – watch this space for updates over the coming weeks!
