This past week has been really crucial in Crew Turing’s academic development. Each member of my crew was really determined to do well in their upcoming assessments, particularly the spanish writing task that they all had to complete.

We decided to dedicate a couple of crew sessions to revision and preparation. We followed normal crew protocols, doing count up, sorting lunches, greeting each other, but with a slight twist. We did almost the entire check-in in spanish! Crew members then paired up to work on their revision or practice together, which was really well focused and so helpful that we decided to dedicate another crew session to this.

Another highlight of our crew sessions has been all the baked delights my crew members have bought in. Over the week, more and more members of my crew have surprised us with their delicious cookies, cakes and sweet treats – Alice’s chocolate orange cake was to die for! I put on an after school session where we did a bit of a crew bake-off so that we could maximise donations to Cery’s charity bake sale. I set them the challenge of going away, pairing up, picking a recipe and organising ingredients without my input. I’d like to thank parents again for supplying ingredients for that and allowing them to stay, we had a blast, and amazingly, were baked and de-gunged in just 1 hour!

This week, I’m hoping to capture the same crew spirit of bake-off in some reflections of how this week’s assessments have gone. While it’s great to give to charities and bake, it would be great to refocus on how we can make a more optimum use of our time outside of school in preparing for assessments. We had conversations about this on Tuesday, where most crew members admitted that they had not done quite as much extended study as they would have liked to feel confident in their performance. I’ve seen some magnificent ‘Explore Further’ work from other crews, and I’d love to see members of Crew Turing engaging with some of the great stuff that is on offer on their expedition sites. With three weeks to go until half term, this is the perfect time to look at how we can ‘wind-up’ as we put it here at XP East.

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!