Year 8 | XP East

E25 (Year 8) STEAM Presentation of Learning

By Katie Haughey29th November 2019

The Year 8 STEAM presentation of learnings will be held on:

Pioneer: Wednesday 18th December, 5-6PM at XP East
Explorer: Thursday 19th December 5-6PM at XP East

The students look forward to sharing the work they’ve been studying in the STEAM expedition, where they have been working towards the guiding question “What is the state of the nation’s health and what should we do about it?”

We welcome you to invite family and friends to the event, sign in will begin at 4:45PM on both nights. We also ask that students remain in school from 3:15PM until the event, if there’s an issue with this don’t hesitate to drop me an email: [email protected]

Take a sneak peek at E25’s final product!

By Natalie Johnson27th November 2019

Students in E25 were joined by visitors from the Conversation Club on Tuesday morning where they hosted ‘Minute to Win It’ games.

As part of our expedition ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ we are answering the guiding question, ‘Why Should We Care About Migration?’, which means we have spent lots of time meeting and interviewing asylum seekers from our local community, finding out what it is like to move from one country to another and what the difficulties are.

During the morning we moved away from interview questions and instead focused on building a sense of community. Students really enjoyed teaming up with friends from the Conversation Club in order to compete against each other, whilst having fun- with a few surprises along the way!

We would like to appreciate those that took time out of their day to join us, with a special thanks to Nic for his extra games providing us with lots of laughs! See why here:

I am very proud of all of the students in E25 for the compassion they have shown throughout the expedition, it was heart warming to see the smiles on everyones faces this afternoon!

Marginal gains in Crew Turing

By Katie Haughey24th November 2019

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Mrs Green for coming in and doing a session on careers with my crew! I can’t wait to build on the work she did helping my crew come up with careers they might be interested in or suited to based on the questionnaires they filled in. This week we’ll look further into some options and what they will need to do in terms of qualifications or work experience to enter certain industries or careers.

This week, my crew have been focusing on our position on the crew dashboards comparatively with other crews in E25. I’m delighted that we have almost no entries to the negative conduct form and that on the whole, extended study is handed in on time and equipment is organised amongst my crew.

There were two aspects of the dashboard that we acknowledged needed working on: praise form entries and our attendance. There were lots of bugs being passed about last term, even I ended up really poorly at one point! However, we’ve made an agreement that this term we focus on making marginal gains in terms of our attendance percentage as every day at school mattered.

We even did the maths, since our average attendance last term was just 90%, as a collective crew we’d miss out on over 100 days of school if we carried on like this! I’m already seeing a great improvement this week.

The issue of our praise form entries was something that we also needed to intervene in as a crew. We discussed how we could improve our number of entries on the praise form, and we decided to set a challenge. Daily, each member of my crew were to record how many times another crew member put their hand up and answered a question or posed a question to a teacher to help clarify their understanding. Here’s how they got on:

I’d like to massively appreciate Torran for his improvement from no entries on day 1 to 5 by day 3 and Dylan for increasing his to 13 on one day! Most of my crew really rose to the challenge and I, amongst others, noticed a real difference in sesion. We even went from the bottom scorers on the praise entries, to the 3rd crew in the year, making gains of +4.0 in our entry average. I’m going to carry this on next week until we reign supreme at the top of the crew dashboard, I’m determined that each marginal gain will have a huge impact on our comparative scores across the crews.

Another focus we’ll be looking towards as a crew this week is the general election and taking a wider look at the world around us. I’ve got us a subscription to National Geographic magazine which I’m going to make the focus of this week’s accelerated reader crew, I can’t wait to delve into important issues in our global community!

Start the day with gratitude

By A Brown8th November 2019

So this week in Crew we’ve been focusing on gratitude and appreciation. How can we be more grateful for the things we take for granted? How can we remind ourselves of all the positivity around us when there are so many negative images forced upon us each day? How can we use gratitude to shift our feelings from negative to positive?

We started with some appreciations, then looked at this meme and discussed what resonated with each of us in Crew?

It was really interesting that our discussion took us into a way of realising that actually even in really difficult, sad, troubling or depressing situations, gratitude and spending a moment to think about either the positives in an apparently negative situation, or even looking for the things we are grateful for can help to lift us into better spirits: more contentment and happiness.

We explored the language of “cultivating a shift” – how can we take control of our emotions and feelings, to not ignore them (it’s ok to be sad, feel down, have a tough day!) – but we can choose whether we let those emotions control our mind, or whether we want to try and shift our minds into a more positive state.

We can dwell on situations out of our control. For instance, Fin showed courage and talked about his bad knee, and how it prevents him from doing activities and being as physical as he’d like to be, but he realises there is little he can do about the situation.

We discussed how this could be really frustrating or depressing. But with a shift in thinking about what good has come out of his injury – what he has to be grateful about – he could see that his friends really step up and look after him when he’s in pain, rallying around him; his friendships are strengthened by his injury!

We ended the session by writing down as many things as possible on a post-it note that we are grateful for.

Try it at home? What are you grateful for today? Can you acknowledge the things that make us depressed or sad or down, and “cultivate a shift” towards using out emotional energy to be grateful and feel positive about what we DO have?

Crew Turing’s 2019 Challenge

By Katie Haughey23rd September 2019

This year started on such a positive for Crew Turing after ending the year on a high. We are seeking to further our self improvement this coming year as my crew recognise they are no longer the youngest in the school and will be stepping up to the plate as role models for E26.

One student who had fantastic news to share with crew who I’d really like to spotlight in this post is our very own Lexi, who has made impressive amounts of progress in her gymnastics training since starting at XP East a year ago. She has continuously moved up into more advanced classes and is competing regularly. Check out her skills:

I love it when members of crew bring in items to crew for us to celebrate! Another member of crew whose achievements we’ve loved hearing about is Torran, who is currently top of his football league and who has scored in the past few games.

One item we really reflected on rebooting was reading now we’re all back from summer. It was heartening to hear that so many of my crew had enjoyed books over the holidays – Jessie deserves a special mention for reading 8+ during the break! We know there is a correlation between grades and reading, but more importantly, it’s so important to invest time in reading for your wellbeing.

My crew stated that they want to up the stakes for the reading challenge this year. I hoped all 13 of us would read 100 books be December 2019 – I personally have read 16 so far! They suggested various ideas for prizes or competitions for those who were reading. I have taken their ideas into account and have ordered these badges. Anyone in my crew, or beyond for that matter, who reads 8 books between now and Christmas break will earn themselves a Lifetime Book Lovers Club Member enamel pin. I will also take the book length into consideration, but I’d love to hand a few of these out come December time.

To track our progress some members of my crew have created goodreads accounts, where they can review books they have read, track their reading progress, and set themselves targets. This website is also fantastic for book recommendations, lots of students were able to find curated lists of books they’d like based on genres they enjoyed.

I’ve ordered 5 badges for now, let’s see how many I’ll be handing out!

Can the news make us happier?

By J Townson16th September 2019

Inspired by an activity run by Mrs Parker and Crew Finch last year, in Crew this week we spent some time talking about whether reading and watching the right sort of news can make us happier and trying to find examples of ‘happy news’ articles.

What characterised ‘happy news’?

Was it something which made you smile or laugh?
Was it about someone showing kindness towards others?
Was it about enjoying others’ successes?

It could be all of these things and more. Here are some articles which brightened up our day; hopefully they will brighten yours too!

Trash man builds free library out of 20,000 books found in bins

Millionaire helps boy studying under a street lamp

Giant inflatable sculpture unveiled in former Leeds church

The community hub made from salvaged wood

Jonas Brothers surprise fan in hospital who missed concert for chemo treatment

Homeless man reunited with family after 24 years of separation

Hiking, abseiling and presenting our reflections to a wider audience – and that’s only our first 4 days back at XP East!

By J Townson2nd September 2019

Smiling and ready to go!

Our 8 mile hike on Wednesday of this week took us through a beautiful area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, where we tested our map reading skills and had the opportunity to catch up more from the summer holidays. We stopped in the middle for a picnic lunch and were fortunate to have dry weather until the last hour of the day. Well done Crew Ali and E25 as a whole – we all made it and kept one another going right to the end.

Thursday was a change of pace, including abseiling off an 80ft high bridge on the Monsal Trail in Derbyshire and orienteering using clues generated by the outdoor adventure team. I’m so proud of all of our Crew members for encouraging one another through the abseil process; several of us were understandably nervous and for many this was the first time stepping over the side of something so high with only a couple of ropes to hold on to! That’s what makes us Crew – doing it together, cheering from the bottom of the ravine, coaching from the top of the bridge and having the courage to traverse the space in between. Many thanks to Crew Shackleton in particular for also supporting us during these activities, we aren’t just Crews, we are all members of XP East. Mr Brown made a great video which can be viewed on Crew Shackleton’s blog here.

And it wouldn’t be XP East if the week didn’t culminate in a Presentation of Learning, to which parents and carers were invited. We love sharing our reflections with a wider audience and the Guiding Question for the week had been ‘How Crew Are You?’ Crew Ali decided to focus their reflections on:

Our strengths as a Crew
Challenges we have faced
Challenges to overcome

We know we are not the ‘finished article’; in fact, every piece of beautiful work we do is created through drafting and redrafting, and we apply this principle to our own character development. We have achieved much as a Crew, but we have so much more we can do to be the best version of ourselves. We are going to rise to that challenge.

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life” Muhammad Ali

E25’s first day back

By Katie Haughey28th August 2019

While students up and down the country will be returning back to classes next week, XP East’s E25 returned on Tuesday to embark on a week long expedition, allowing them to re-immerse themselves in our school’s culture. Mr Brown kicked off the day with a community meeting centred on the incredible achievements of X21’s GCSE results. The underlying theme we noticed in the reasons for their success was crew, so we moved on to our guiding question for the week:

How crew are you?

Five weeks is a long time off, we had a lot of catching up to do in morning check in. Spending the first day back is fundamental, it allows time for us to familiarise ourselves with the support network we have built last year. We reviewed what had worked so well in the first year, and what we were going to do this year moving forward.

In session 2, we got stuck in with a crew challenge, where we had to build a tower from straws and other materials that would stand unassisted for a whole minute. Sadly, no crew managed it (it is very tricky to execute!) but the conversations that were had afterwards were reflective and really allowed students to unpack their role in the activity.

We often use the phrase ‘no pilots, no passengers’ to ensure that every person in crew is guaranteed a role. Listening to my crew analyse points where they may have taken over too much or when they were passive shows how much they’ve grown since year 7. We took the reflections from the tower session into the inter-crew competitions.

We spent the afternoon in the sports hall completing mini challenges as crews. I noticed a real difference in how well my crew cooperated in this session from the tower session. Students were giving others pointers and tips. I saw students encouraging others, sharing water, offering help with degunge. This afternoon, while it was fun, was also really valuable in reestablishing what crew is all about.

Some admitted to feeling nervous or worried about what challenges might lie ahead in year 8, with them no longer being the youngest in the school. We’ll tackle them together this year as crew. What was pretty lovely about that first day though, is that during check out, every member of crew said they had a really great first day back. Can’t wait to hear their reflections on ‘how crew’ they are on Friday!

Shackleton Crew Day 1: Egg Drop Challenge

By A Brown28th August 2019

What a fantastic start to the academic year for Crew Shackleton today. It was great to be back and see everyone again, and most of all see how keen (if not a little tired) everyone was to be back at school again.

Guiding question for the week:

How Crew are you?

Yesterday, as our Crew Challenge to help us consider the guiding question, we split up into random groups of 3, and undertook the challenge of protecting an egg as it was dropped from the top balcony of the school. All the groups had was:

3 marshmallows
10 cocktail sticks
a small piece of pipe foam insulator
3m of tissue paper
sticky tape
a plastic bag

Highlights below…

A really successful activity that allowed us to start to get back into working as a Crew and work towards answering out guiding question by the end of the week. We made some excellent observations and reflections on how well we managed to work together, or not so well in some cases, and promised to revisit the challenge later in the term with fewer materials and a harder set of rules for the challenge. To not only complete the challenge more successfully, but work better as Crew to do it.

First day back and Crew Ali have hit the ground running!

By J Townson27th August 2019

The first day back has been a whirlwind, but I’m happy to say that Crew Ali have taken it in their stride and ‘hit the ground running’ as we like to say at XP East. We began our week as we always do, with a check-in to see how everyone was feeling after the summer holiday. It was an opportunity to share stories and experiences, but also to discuss how we had built our character and challenged ourselves during the time away from school.

We did a kit check to make sure we are ready for our hike and activity days later in the week, as Craftsmanship and Quality in preparation is really important; unfortunately not all of our Crew were fully prepared for the check, but this is definitely a learning point for next time, particularly as we begin the Duke of Edinburgh Award next year.

Today’s activities included building a VERY wobbly Tower of Power (build the tallest tower you can in 30 mins using only paper, string and sellotape! It didn’t stay standing but our debrief really helped us unpack what went well and what we could do better next time. Our ability to reflect is a strength of what we do at XP East and it is a skill we continually practice. The enthusiasm from the Crew in our afternoon’s inter-Crew Minute To Win It activities really set a great tone for the week.

Check out Miss Haughey’s video here: