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!
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;
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!
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!
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.
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!
This week crew Young visited Crew Mandela to deliver a session on the method of loci. The method of loci (loci being Latin for “places”) is a method of memory enhancement which uses visualisations with the use of spatial memory, familiar information about one’s environment, to quickly and efficiently recall information. The method of loci is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, or mind palace technique. Crew Mandela found the method extremely useful and all students improved their memory of a single list of words!
Crew Ali have been expressing themselves in sign language recently, when Cerys taught us the British Sign Language alphabet in Student-Led Crew. We learnt how to sign each letter, practiced and practiced again, then took it in turns to spell out names of Crew members and had to guess who was being named. Taylor, Caiden and Marshall all successfully signed the names of some of their fellow Crew members before we moved on to learning numbers and practiced telling the Crew our ages (including Mrs Townson’s age – we share a lot in Crew!)
A Friday session involved using scrabble letters to create words which would stretch us and add to our vocabularies. We worked in mixed teams and swapped over after each round to ensure we worked with different people. In each round we had a time limit to create the longest words we could with the limited letters available on our table. Each team had to check their spellings and really think about how they could extend their words as far as possible.
I – N – D – E – P – E – N – D – E – N – T – L – Y was a clear winner but I have to say well done to the team who came up with T – O – W – N – S – O – N !
LT: I can identify the main events that lead to Hitler’s rise to power
Watch the video on the Case Study 2 page of the expedition website. Once you have watch the video at least twice, record your learning. Use the link on the page to complete the Google form.
This lesson will focus on your learning from this extended study task. Being unprepared means you will be unable to participate.
Challenge:
The video is from TedEd, a fantastic resource for learning and inspiration. Complete the ‘Think’, ‘Dig Deeper’ and ‘Discuss’ pages on the website to develop your knowledge further.
What a fantastic session in Crew Shackleton this morning! With a focus on team working skills, teams of 3-4 were pitted against each other with a challenge to create the tallest unsupported balloon tower. No hands. No walls. No chairs.
The winners (aided by the collapse of taller towers) were Nikodem, Jacob and Zach’s tower.
A fantastic session with lots to unpack – so many strengths, and plenty of things to work on to become a stronger crew and more effective team members.
Well done Crew! Watch the video for a glimpse of the session.
Some wonderful ingenuity from Woody, furiously rubbing the balloons on his head to create extra static to hold them together.
Thank you to Mrs Parker for popping my balloons for me! That’s a challenge I’m not yet prepared to overcome.