This week we were fortunate to see some of the artwork Junia has been doing at home, as drawing is a passion of hers. She uses a range of styles and particularly enjoys drawing and painting her favourite anime characters. We discussed the craftsmanship and quality in her work and invited her to to lead a Crew session on drawing skills with Lacey, who is also a keen artist. It also takes courage to share your work with others; well done Junia!
A huge thank you to Faith and Lilly today for the student-led crew session. It was an excellent session, enjoyed by every one of us!
Read on below to find out what we did…
We were asked to think of a song that portrays how we feel, with an explanation if possible, to share to the rest of the group. “Happy” by Pharrell Williams was a popular choice, but there was an eclectic range within the crew.
Everyone then took a piece of paper and some coloured pencils. Faith and Lilly had carefully selected a range of different styles of music, from classical to club classics, and played them to the crew. The objective: draw on your page whatever you feel inspired to draw from the different types of music.
Finally, we were invited to to circle up around everyone’s artwork and do a Notice Wonder protocol. Lots of originality, including drawing images inspired by the music, such as a beach hut when listening to more tropical music; to a collection of shapes and squiggles that represented the feel and mood of the music.
It’s brilliant to the see the character growth of the students still in year 7 that have grown in confidence to be able to lead their own session and come up with such an excellent idea. Well done, Faith and Lilly.
All students showing courage! Courage is defined as ‘the ability to do something that frightens one; bravery’
Outstanding explanations from the previous expedition came from Raven and Corey who showed a great depth of knowledge when presenting past work.
As a crew we discussed the skill of presenting information and we debated the truth behind the famous Mark Twain quote:
‘ There are two types of public speakers in the world,
those who get nervous, and liars’
It was great to see all crew members contribute, and show our visitors from Denmark what XP East courage is all about!
This week in Crew Turing, we have been building on the data analysis that we completed last week during crew. I asked that each member of my crew come up with 2 specific action points to work on between now and the next data drop, so we can work on our weaknesses and improve our standing in the crew league tables.
I have loved how well considered these targets have been. Each member of my crew have really honed in on what aspects of their school life they need to work on, be it through their grades or their HoWLs. Here are a few examples:
My actions points are keeping up productivity in lesson and keeping my extended study organised, I can use my fries post-it notes to remind me what deadlines or if I need to remember my kit the following day. I also need to remember to bring a ruler and pencil to class, because I always forget these 2 pieces of equipment.
My action points are to let people talk in crew and don’t talk over them because in my data drop 2 my be kind in crew is a 2.8 and a 3.8 in the previous one.
My other action points is working hard in science because in November it was a 4.0, but now it is a 3.6 and I think I could use the explore further section of the website to push for excellence.
My science grade went down by 0.5 and that could be because my homework wasn’t in on time and I wasn’t paying enough attention because I drift of a lot, so my target is to stay on task and be tuned in. I will do this by trying to contribute at least twice, by either asking a question or answering one.
In maths my action points are to work harder on be kind as my grade decreased. I will do this by working well in collaborative groups and staying focussed. I will also try to be more active in leston and try not to drift off. I will also work harder on my WH average and GS average as they stayed the same I will improve these by:
My HUMs grade has gone up 0.7 but i’m slightly off my MEG by 0.1 To improve my grade in HUMs to achieve my MEG I will be more productive in lessons and use the expedition website more often to further my understanding of the topics we study.
I will be doing fortnightly check-ins with crew to make sure they are showing integrity and working hard to achieve the targets I have set them. I hope that as a group, we can all maintain that level of crew accountability and make each other proud by fine tuning and ironing out those targets.
During another crew session we were inspired by the words of Greta Thunberg, and her impassioned TED talk on climate change. I felt this was a really good example of a WAGOLL of their HUMAN final product and also was an issue that my crew are really passionate about.
It moved us on to a really interesting discussion about why nothing (or not enough) was being done about climate change?
In previous weeks in the news, Lexi pointed out that billions had been raised in the space of a week for Notre Dame Cathedral, yet the destruction of our planet was not attracting any attention despite calls from climate scientists and experts on the issue. Dylan built on this, pointing out how many of the victims of Grenfell are still homeless, where are the millions being raised for them and other victims of tragedy? We’re going to follow the climate stories over the next few weeks and also address what we might be able to do as a crew to contribute our bit, however small, to protecting our planet.
These last two weeks have also seen the birthdays of three members of Crew Turing: Lexi, Alice and Torran! We ended the week on a fully deserved high – eating cake!
What a fantastic joint crew session this morning with Crew Shackleton and Crew Ali, trying out a bit of yoga in the morning to flex and focus the mind and the body.
A huge thanks to both crews for keeping an open mind and giving it their all, especially those who stepped outside of their comfort zone and set themselves a new challenge.
“Change begins at the end of your comfort zone.” – Roy T. Bennett
We believe at XP East that it’s important to keep setting ourselves new goals and new challenges, however big or small it might seem.
For many students today, this was a new experience; for some, an opportunity to practise what they already do. And it’s fair to say each student will take something different from the experience.
But the world is full of many experiences, and if we’re up for it, we can make any one of them a new challenge and part of building the best version of ourselves we can.
And of course a big thank you to Mrs Townson for leading the session.
Well done all!
Crew Ali have had a busy couple of weeks, trying to get lots done around our days off for Easter. We have checked in as a Crew this week by sharing what we have been up to over the holiday.
The data drop results have of course been at the forefront of our minds, as we analysed our HOWLs grades first of all and this is discussed in a previous blog post. This week and last we have been focussing on individual subject grades, taking into account progress against MEGs in English, History, Geography, Science, Maths and Spanish. Each Crew member has completed their own data record which we can use as a supporting document in our Student Led Conferences in June. We have used colour coding to help us see what progress we are making against MEGs.
It is really important to mention that we look at progress very much on an individual basis; two Crew members may have the same grade, but it is their Minimum Expected Grade which we measure against, rather than one another. We’re very open about grades and it’s important we can celebrate and further challenge those that have met or even exceeded their MEGs and support those who are working towards theirs. A student’s MEG will rarely change, but the content will become increasingly more difficult as they go through school, so even if you meet your MEG now, be prepared to keep working even harder to maintain that grade!
Each Crew member is also working on an individual pledge which they will focus on in the next three weeks leading up to our May holiday.
Zak: I pledge to achieve my MEG in at least one more subject.
Billy: I will maintain my Work Hard grades and increase some of them to at least a 4.0 by arriving on time and participating fully and mindfully in class.
Charlie: I pledge to keep trying my hardest in maths and stay focused on what is going on in the lesson. I will try to get more work done and do it to the best of my ability at all times.
We also saw a new side to one another when we did a ‘show and tell’ activity on Tuesday morning, including visits from Ruby’s budgie, Blue, and Caiden’s stick insect, Woody; a taster of one of Zak’s favourite albums by Billie Eilish; a photo of Charlie’s top of the league football team; Lacey’s new business venture making hair bands; Cerys’ family holiday album from a visit to Rome, as well as many more.
I have been immensely impressed with my crew’s contribution to our school’s community during the week running up to the Easter bank holiday, considering lots of their friends and family are off! Here’s a snapshot of what’s gone on in crew over that period:
Abi brought in a phenomenal model of our solar system in to show us, that links in really nicely with the STEAM expedition, Escape Earth. Her craftsmanship and quality really blew me away, it’s great to see her going above and beyond to set an example of what a 4.0+ (in the excellence category) looks like! As part of our academic crew session and assessment prep for maths, we did a Kahoot competition, where quickfire questions were presented to crew as a race against the clock. They clearly knew their stuff, and I’d like to congratulate Jess for coming first in both rounds! On Thursday, we enjoyed a table tennis tournament with Crew Mandela. It was lovely to get appreciations from members of their crew at the end of the session on how respectful Crew Turing had been throughout.
I was also treated to many a culinary delights from numerous members of my crew, with Torran and Junia’s blueberry pancakes being very memorable.
The final activity we participated in as a crew before breaking up for almost a week off was an individual breakdown of their personal data. We spent a lot of time last week looking at our stats as a crew, but I thought it would be more meaningful if we assessed our progress against our HOWLs data from November to see if there had been gains or losses, and explore why that might be:
I gave them the following criteria for them to colour code their HOWLs, on whether they had gone up/down.
HOWL Progress Colour Codes:
These codes match the criteria of how we colour code our spreadsheets and the charts we keep up across the school, to make it meaningful to my crew. We did this as a silent solo activity, some students noticed patterns and were able to decipher why their ‘work hard’ might have gone down ever so slightly, be it, they were contributing less in class, or maybe hadn’t been as diligent with their homework. There was also a lot of positives to take away from their stats too, such as Dylan’s, who had made huge progress in HUMAN after improving his productivity and concentration in session!
Each member of my crew annotated their thoughts on why they had been awarded the HoWLs they had received, while I floated around to discuss their progress individually. I was amazed to hear their thoughts about their learning and character development, and thought that we should seize this opportunity to set some further targets based on our findings.
I’ve left them with the task of over these next three days we have in crew, to set individualised targets which I will publish with next week’s blog post based on their data. Not only were they left with that to think about for extended study, they have also been sent home with these gorgeous easter bunnies that were kindly given to each member of crew by Torran, which he had handmade – what a great way to end the week!
That is Crew.
A huge thank you to Denim and Thea who brought Easter eggs and chocolate for everyone today, unprompted and out of the goodness of their own hearts.
I was particularly blown away by their decision to reward Lucie and Zach for the hard work, progress towards their individual targets, and work around their HOWLs. Complete with signed mug!
We continue to face our challenges, our ups and downs, our need for some positive reinforcement of expectations, some motivation to get going, encouragement – that’s life!
But life is better when there is Crew.
Students in C24 have their end of case study assessment on Wednesday 17/04/19 this week. This will be an exam of 1-6 mark questions and a combination of the work we have been doing on:
For revision students will be able to use the Case Study 2 resources on the expedition website and the explore further page on the website also.
Expedition Website High Voltage
C24 have linked in the immersion week of capital punishment via electric chair and their knowledge of how electricity works. We investigated how electricity can result in death and how this occurs. We found that water can make the skin 100x less resistant to electrical current, which is why they use a wet sponge when sending people to the electric chair!
The habits of work and learning in C24 Explorer have been outstanding this week and this in an example of the craftsmanship and quality that has been produced from Lewis Dawson.
Well done Explorer!
