The Problem with Communication – Crew Shackleton

By A Brown10th April 2019

After watching a viral video about how simple messages can quickly become distorted over time, we decided to give it a go ourselves. Take a look at our video below.

I particularly like Fin’s ability to dig like a dog, despite the fact he was supposed to be getting some eggs out of a cupboard!

We had a lot of fun doing this, but Shackleton picked out some really important messages that we learnt from this activity:

  1. Even simple messages can change in a very short space of time;
  2. The quality of the message can be affected by people’s ability and skill in communicating;
  3. As soon as we began to lose focus, the message changed and became unclear;
  4. Perception of the original message is vital – your viewpoint can change how you receive and deliver the message;
  5. Even unintentional mistakes cause significant changes.

This was particularly powerful as we’ve been discussing a lot about rumours in school recently. I think we got an important message from this: rumours are spread easily and change easily each time it gets passed on.

We found the best way to stop rumours is to stop talking about them.

Well done, Crew Shackleton. A fun activity with an important message, executed maturely.

HOW are Crew Ali doing in their HOWLs?

By J Townson6th April 2019

At XP East, not only are students given grades by their teachers which indicate how they are progressing relative to their Minimum Expected Grade (MEG), they are also graded on their Habits of Work and Learning (HOWLs).  Mr Portman has shared the league tables with us this week and students spent time in Community Meeting dissecting the data, drawing conclusions as to how much and why each Crew may have improved in their average HOWLs.

I’m proud to say Crew Ali are doing exceptionally well and are consistently high in the league tables, just as earlier in the year.  Since the last data drop we have made improvements overall and part of this is due to an increased awareness and working knowledge of how we can develop these Habits in and out of school.

This week Crew Ali have been digging into the data to consider how our HOWLs might have had an impact on our grades.  The table below gives you a flavour of where we are as a Crew.  Each column represents Work Hard, Get Smart or Be Kind in each of HUMAN (WHH, GSH, BKH), Maths (WHM, GSM, BKM) and Science (WHS, GSS, BKS):

The Crew data above has been sorted according to the total HOWLs average for each student, with our lowest average of 3.0 still within the ‘secure’ range expected of all students – well done Crew Ali!  We noticed that although we have some HOWLs which are below expectations, in the orange range, these are only slightly below and those students are determined to pull them up as we go forward, identifying what they need to do to improve.  Another Crew member compared this with the huge number of green or ‘excellent’ HOWL grades which have contributed to those students meeting or even significantly exceeding their MEGs.  Those who are struggling with their Work Hard, Get Smart of Be Kind HOWLs grades are being supported and we really do encourage dialogue between all members of the Crew as to how we can improve, regardless of where we are in our HOWLs learning journey.

Well done Crew Ali – I’m looking forward to more discussion and analysis in next week’s Academic Crew session!

#Winning!

By Katie Haughey5th April 2019

I’ve really struggled deciding what makes the cut in terms of our crew blog after a week of highlights during crew and in session. After all the banter between Callum and Torran, I’d be doing them a disservice not to congratulate Torran and his team for winning the league! I was also delighted to hear that Lexi had achieved her goal of performing her back flip during her floor routine! I love starting the week celebrating our crew’s successes, and luckily for me, there have been many causes for celebration this week!

A definite highlight was the wonderful presentation of learning from C25’s STEAM expedition. I was blown away by my crew member’s hard work, and how they articulated their learning to me as I passed through the lab. It is wonderful to see them stepping up to the challenge, answering tricky questions and doing so in a really mature and professional manner.

This week, we have been analyzing the data of our subject grades and HOWLs. I was worried that the last data set for my crew had been so high we would struggle to top it, but it seems that we haven’t lost momentum. We are top of the leaderboard across all year groups for the be kind and work hard HOWLS, which is wonderful news. For get smart however, we’re in 3rd place (bearing in mind that we have had to compare digits in the hundredths in order for us to calculate the year 7 average)! It really got me thinking about how we can support one another in getting smarter.

Those three criteria have been the focus for our learning, and will be until the next data drop. I decided to set a little extra extended study last weekend, to get my crew to go above and beyond, and do some ‘explore further’ work that was related to their expedition but not something they had necessarily learned about in lesson, as a way of my crew taking responsibility for their learning. I encouraged them to use their expedition sites that have been set up by their teachers to support them with this. They were then asked to feedback to us in the form of a mini masterclass. Here’s some of their findings:

Lexi, Charlotte, Abi, Callum and Sami did some research into slavery in America, looking into Harriet Jacob’s account of her experience as a slave in the 1800s and famous slave traders. It was fascinating to hear her account and how she’d escaped the deep south and wrote a book detailing her mistreatment. Alice expanded our spanish vocabulary with some mythical creatures she had been researching that weekend – I am determined to somehow drop ‘unicorn/llama’ into conversation on my next trip to Spain!

Reece took us through the specialised cells in the body, and ran an activity where each pair had to identify and act as those cells in accordance to their roles. Lewis and Dylan had prepared fantastic slides on the anatomy of the digestive system and the role various organs had to play in processing food. Torran did a brilliant interactive maths recap of conversion, which included mini-whiteboard questions, and Dylan even printed a questionnaire for us to complete at the end of his session!

I’m sending my crew home with another small and optional piece of extended learning tonight, to try a little digital detoxing this weekend. I want them to try and spend a little bit of additional time that they may spend on devices doing some reading, some ‘explore further’ work, cooking or getting out now the weather is nicer! We’re going to debrief on Monday to see how it goes, myself included!

 

Shackleton #FlashbackFriday

By A Brown1st April 2019

As part of our push to try and reflect on our learning, we’ve been doing #FlashbackFriday for a few weeks now. It’s been great to really focus on what crew members have been learning and reflect purposefully on our learning each week.

I particularly liked how April focused on character growth and life skills in this week’s #FlashbackFriday; and Denim’s focus on really important social skills.

The task is simple: share one specific thing you have learnt (in or out of school) in the last week.

Yet, the purpose is much more powerful.

It’s important to ensure we focus on what we’ve learnt to identify our strengths and areas for improvement, but also to make sure we begin to move the things we’ve learnt into our long-term memory, from our short-term memory.

This week we added a self-critique of HOWLs to keep us focused on our own progress each week and reflect on HOW we learn.

Lots more to come on this! Keep reflecting Crew Shackleton!

How do we best learn?

By Katie Haughey25th March 2019

It’s safe to say that Crew Turing had all missed one another after enjoying a restful couple of weeks off! We started the week with pancakes, after I promised we’d make them on pancake day, having failed to realise we weren’t in school. As per usual, everyone pitched in with preparing and de-gungeing, and were ready to hit the ground running in session 1.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A significant deadline that we decided to dedicate time to last week was the STEAM assessment. We used Tuesday’s crew to revise some of the content that would appear on the assessment. I was delighted to see so many members of my crew had already made great progress with this, and they had been working at home and in extended study by using the expedition site and all the other amazing resources Mrs Townsend had provided. However, revision is one of those often difficult tasks to execute well, so I decided to direct my crew to look into how we learned. During the session on Tuesday, we examined the following:

Now, I am not suggesting this pyramid and the percentages it is suggesting are totally accurate, however, it was a great way of getting crew to think about how they learned best. We were particularly interested in being able to retain knowledge and be able to recall it. What we see above rang true to crew members, we are more likely to remember something if we have been participating in the learning, and if we can teach someone else, then we have definitely learned it!

It was fantastic to see Reece putting this into practice by drawing specialised cells on mini-whiteboards for others to identify during extended study on Wednesday night. I advised all my crew that as long as you remain on-task, revising with someone else can really improve retention.

I set my crew the challenge of going away and doing some ‘explore further’ work that they need to prepare and share with crew this week. The topic is chosen by them, and I’ve advised they use the expedition sites to help them decide if they are unsure on what they would like to research. They are to prepare a no more than 5 minute master class for crew on what they have learned, which should not be something they have already done in class, but related to what they have been doing. I’ve had some amazing suggestions for topics so far – Alice is building her spanish vocabulary and Callum and Charlotte are researching case studies of slave traders. I can’t wait to hear what they have to share!

Crew Ali relaxing and creating together

By J Townson21st March 2019

It’s all too easy when we come back from a couple of weeks’ holiday to get swept up in the busy school days.  We talk about hitting the ground running, but it is just as important to set aside quality time to relax together.

Crew Ali have been focussing on a bit of ‘time out’ in Crew this week, in two sessions where we let our creative juices flow and painted with watercolour paints.  We played calming piano music in the background for one session and our Crew playlist for the second session.  Both sessions were an opportunity become immersed in creating, without the pressure of a critique of our products.  Some of us painted recognisable images, others experimented with colour and water techniques.  There were even some potential Mother’s Day paintings in the pipeline!

Shackleton Lost At Sea

By A Brown5th March 2019

It’s been a brilliant half term for Crew Shackleton, but I think it’s fair to say, if you’re lost at sea with anyone from this crew, you’re in trouble.

Considering we’re named after a famous ocean explorer, we’ve got a bit of work to do.

That is according to the Lost at Sea activity we did this week where each person was given a list of 15 items they were able to salvage from a sinking ship. Items were ordered 1-15 in terms of their importance.

Once this was done individually, we worked in groups of 3-4 to decide on the best order using teamwork skills, communication and problem solving, with clear expectations about what this mean before the session started.

Our results were then compared to a panel of survival experts’ rankings to reveal how likely we were to survive.

Thankfully, most students would have survive. But only just.

And as for April and Faith…I think they’re still bobbing around in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere!

The point, however, was working as a group to solve a problem. Some of our strengths were:

  • encouraging each other to contribute asking questions;
  • being respectful with each others’ ideas;
  • having some controlled fun;
  • Excellent time-keeping – everyone finished on-time.

Well done Crew Shackleton. A really enjoyable activity.

A big shout out to Faith and Lilly who circulated to help people with their maths when calculating their scores, and Nikodem who took it upon himself to help another crew member correct their mistakes.

And, Crew Shackleton, I agree. I don’t care whether it’s top of the list or not, Shark repellent is coming with me!

Student-Led Sporting Crew

By J Townson28th February 2019

Crew Ali just love being in the Sports Hall and having a go at a few teamwork activities.  This week Tom took the lead, with some team games to challenge our speed and accuracy in jumping and running, as well as developing our throwing and catching skills.

In the latter part of the session we did a short mid-game debrief, in which we discussed the biggest challenge: some Crew members had become frustrated over different interpretations of the rules.  We all acknowledge that sometimes we come across difficult moments in Crew and we got through it – with some clarification of Tom’s rules and an agreement to draw a line under it and move on, we got back to our game.  Finally we finished with a good old game of football.

It’s always good to start the day with some physical activity – it definitely woke us all up!

Visit by Crew Young to learn the Method of Loci

By J Townson19th February 2019

Crew Young visited Crew Ali this week to teach them about the Method of Loci: a technique which could help us to recall lists or key facts in a particular sequence.  Find out more about their preparation and practice here on the Crew Young blog.

Our Crew were engaged throughout and it was interesting to see how many of the words from the list we were able to recall after doing the exercise.  Many thanks Crew Young for taking the time to work with us!

E25 students have also been using this method, also known as the Memory Palace, in STEAM sessions, to help them understand the sequence of organs in the digestive system.

What can I do this week to be kind to my future self?

By Katie Haughey17th February 2019

Last week, Crew Turing’s guiding question was ‘What can I do this week to be kind to my future self?’

We often reference acts that support other members of our school’s community when we discuss my personal favourite of all the HOWLs, ‘being kind’, but this week we flipped it on its head a little and thought about being kind to ourselves. This week has been strange in that many of Crew Turing’s siblings and friends have been gearing up for half term, but as others are winding down for a week off, we’ll be winding up! I thought that it was important that we focused on wellbeing and making sure we ended this term on a high, after such a brilliant start to the new year.

When introduced to the guiding question, we popcorned some ideas of how we can be kind to ourselves. Keeping on top of organisation, such as extended study and school work was a recurring theme.

Sami was able to lead the way with this as he had spent the weekend creating this incredible model of the Finch household from To Kill a Mockingbird, that wasn’t due until the following Friday. Sami shared that he’d got this done in a timely manner so he had more time in the evenings that week. Others shared they would be doing similar by going to extended study after school to get their work out the way earlier in the week so they felt prepared by the end of the week. I’m delighted to share that we had another week of 100% homework hand-ins!

On Tuesday we had a socratic-style crew, where we debated whether all schools in the UK should provide healthy snacks for their students, inspired by current events of the previous week in the news. The debate was extremely fruitful (sorry, I couldn’t resist), there were even policy suggestions put forward by members of Crew Turing. Dylan and Callum devised a suggestion where rewards were given to those who opted for healthy snacks that week. At the end of the discussion, we reflected back on ‘being kind to ourselves’ and how our eating habits and hydration levels affected our mood and performance in school.

On Thursday, we split crew in two and circled up for a basketball competition! It definitely got our blood pumping and woke us up a little. Reece and others commented in debrief that it was a really nice way to start the day because he felt that he was able to burn off some of the excited energy that can be distracting later in the day. We circled up to reflect on how well both teams had done due to their familiarity with one another, and how this had improved communication during the games.

Finally, on both Tuesday and Friday, we did some AR and spoke a lot about progress with our books and even made an addition to our crew wall. We now have a reading chart up, with 100 spaces waiting to be filled by Crew Turing’s book recommendations. Our goal was to read 100 books by summer time, and also aim to read for half an hour before bed to wind down for a good night’s rest – another act of kindness that we have discussed. Tomorrow we’ll be starting to populate the chart with our reviews during crew time. I look forward to curating something that other members of XP East who pass through my classroom might feel inspired by!