Last week Crew Turing have had their first student-led crew session, courtesy of Alice and Abi. The girls led a yoga demo, where they released muscle tension and practiced relaxation and enjoyed the scent of tea tree oil. Afterward, we circled up and discussed how we felt before and after doing a bit of yoga. Most people were feeling calmer and more ready for the day which was good to hear! We’re going to try and make it a monthly crew activity, because while it’s important to push yourself in school, it’s also equally important that we have those chances to wind down every once in a while. Particularly when we’d had a couple of difficult conversations regarding conduct, allowing ourselves the time for clarity and reflection was really helpful moving forward into this week.

Another crew activity that has been cherished from crew members is our quiet AR comfy reading sessions. Each member of crew has a habit of finding a little nook in my classroom to get engrossed in their books. As mentioned before, this is a great way to get smart, but it’s also chance to get a lost in a good book! I’ve set a 100 book challenge by summer, that we have to reach collectively – myself included. I want to hear less about fortnite during check-in and more about how much my crew enjoyed something they read at the weekend!

This week, we’ve got a session planned out by Torran, he’s putting on an Active Crew where we’ll be getting a badminton masterclass. C25 have a spanish assessment coming up on Friday too, so we’ll also be putting on a Crew Español to support their preparation for that. I’ve also had requests for art-based crew sessions, a competitive crew session against another crew, so watch this space!

Crew Turing have focused this week on one particular HOWL- getting smart. We agreed that this was the most difficult HOWL to discuss, because some crew members saw this as a product of working hard. We thought about how we could go above and beyond as a crew to work on this, here are some of our ideas:

One focus that we’ve touched on quite a bit as a crew is how reading can positively impact our lives, making us smarter in the process. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s studies on the impact of education and reading shows that teenagers with a reading habit are more likely to get the top grades in GCSE exams. It has shown to improve vocabulary, spelling, and increase creativity in students. We spent a whole crew session recently making book recommendations, discussing our favourite books, and it was lovely to see how passionate everyone got about literature!

What really struck me was a genuine love for reading from each member of my crew. Mr Ryder covered my crew session on Tuesday during their accelerated reader session and he even felt that they were worthy of an entry on the praise form for being so engrossed in their books! While the research on reading and grades is a legitimate reason for me to promote it in crew, I’d hate to think that was the only reason we bothered reading. It does make us smart, but it is able to do so much more than that! A good book is a window into another world, it allows us to empathise and understand experiences that are beyond our own. I think the Harper Lee quote above summarises how transformational reading can be in terms of developing free thought. I can’t wait to do our next accelerated reader crew.

Another feature we’ve been looking at in crew to help us get smarter is having a bit of a handle on what’s going on in the news. This week has been monumental in our country’s history and whenever Brexit has been brought up in crew, there have been some really interesting insights on the matter. I left them with the following question, which again, Mr Ryder led on as I was out on training:

I was delighted to hear my crew had spent a whole 40 minutes deeply discussing issues such as the voting age, Brexit, what they thought about our leaders, and who deserved to have a say in such matters. Apparently there is consensus that the voting age needs lowering so that their voices can be heard. We’ll definitely be taking another look at major news stories next week and how they may affect us!

It has been a busy couple of weeks since returning from half term for Crew Turing! We’ve returned rested, and ready to prepare for our student led conferences which will commence on Tuesday 27th November.

During our time off, Alan Turing hit the headlines – there has been speculation that he is likely to be the new face of the polymer £50 note! As a crew, we discussed why we believed he was the most worthy candidate, and we each took turns to vote for him on the Bank of England’s survey. You can vote too, here’s the link: https://app.keysurvey.co.uk/f/1348443/10fc/

I was delighted to hear of the many fantastic achievements from numerous members of Crew Turing over the past weeks. I’d like to congratulate Lexi for placing 4th in a national gymnastics competition and Jess for her horse riding achievements. Not only this, I was genuinely moved by the beautiful remembrance service that C25 held last week. Seeing you all develop and grow as people, standing up in front of a packed out audience and showing the courage you did was inspiring.

If your service was anything to go by, then the SLCs are going to be amazing! Judging from all the positive news I recieve from members of staff about my crew, having looked through their portfolios, and hearing the lovely appreciations that are made in community meetings, there is certainly lots to be discussed in terms of their progress in the first 10 weeks at XP East. The link to sign up is below if you have not done already:

https://m.signupgenius.com/#!/showSignUp/70a0b4ca9ac2ba4ff2-student

We discuss our struggles or goals frequently in Crew, we acknowledge that here at XP East there is always room for development and improvement in our academic work, but also through thethe charac traits and HOWLs. In the upcoming two weeks, we’ll be populating our crew notice wall with personal targets which we will set in our SLCs. We will then hold each other to account once a week, during academic crew, where we will evidence the steps we are taking in order to achieve these targets.

Watch this space!