Crew Shackleton – Now That’s Crew!

By A Brown8th February 2019

This week in Crew we’ve spent a lot of time supporting each other in a range of areas: we’ve looked closely at issues arising from extended study; evidence of great HOWLs in and around lessons; and offered the day-to-day support that we all need from time to time.

So I asked some of the Crew to share what it means to them.

Lilly

Crew Shackleton has helped me a lot. This is because whenever I’m with my crew I feel like I can say anything and that they all have my back. It has helped me become a lot more confident in myself because whenever you say something, you know that you won’t be judged. We all work as a crew to help each other out. For example, if people need help in their academic studies, we can help them out and give them ways to be more organised.

Faith

Crew Shackleton has helped me because when I’m in crew I feel safe and they helped me get my confidence up onto higher levels. Since crew, I have been able to speak in a year community meeting and even in a whole school community meeting. Crew has also helped me with my confidence because I know I won’t be judged. Also when I have been with crew on a Monday we do a weekend check in, on Tuesday we do an extended study crew, on Wednesday we do a crew session where we could have a crew member leading our session, Thursday we normally do accelerated reader and finally, on Friday we do a community meeting crew and we discuss stands, appreciations and apologies. We have the best most caring crew and I am thankful that I am in this crew.

James

My crew (Crew Shackleton) has helped me from the beginning at XP East. For instance, at the start of the year I was struggling with my maths homework and crew gave me advice on how I could make progress and improve. We are all taking responsibility of each others’ actions and show courage in everything we do together.

Jacob

My crew have helped me out a lot with my academic studies such as getting my homework done I have now got 100% homework record. They have also helped with my growth mindset and how I work and speak. Our crew all help each other and all support and trust each other.

Crew Turing have caught the baking bug!

By Katie Haughey7th February 2019

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.

Crew Ali had a ‘ball’ in the Sports Hall with Crew Parkinson

By J Townson6th February 2019

Crew Ali and Crew Parkinson had a great time competing against one another in a game of bench netball and I’m proud to say that Crew Ali won. In the debrief after our game, we considered what went well and what could be even better: the team spirit of both Crews meant they kept pushing to the end and cheering one another on; this was definitely a friendly match! Crew Ali had arrived first in the Sports Hall and had a bit of a warm up, so perhaps we could do this together next time, as well as perhaps mixing the teams up.

We have promised ourselves there will be a rematch soon!

Say Hello to Jeff!

By J Smith6th February 2019

This is Jeff! Jeff was the creation of Alfie and Adam in Pioneer STEAM expedition ‘Why Me?’

Jeff was the product of genetic inheritance. Pioneer found that some characteristics are controlled by a single gene, such as fur in animals and red-green colour blindness in humans. Each gene might have different forms, and these are called alleles. The monster Jeff shows the dominant and recessive genes in shown in the Phenotypes! Great work Pioneer!

Pioneer Are So Socratic!

By A Brown31st January 2019

What an afternoon with year 8 Pioneer! We headed over to use the seminar tables in the music room and had a full session of discussion using the Socratic Seminar protocol. Amazing contributions from the whole class – focussed, attentive, respectful.

And the session was so successful because of the hard work they’ve been putting in leading up to it, and being persistent when challenging themselves to investigate and understand Shakespeare’s language.

We explored 3 questions:

Was Macbeth’s imaginary dagger an invitation or a warning?
Was Macbeth free to choose whether to kill Duncan?
Was the murder of Duncan Macbeth’s peripeteia?

Take a look at a brief moment from this afternoon.

Year 8 HUMS Home Learning

By A Brown30th January 2019

Task

LT: I can analyse Shakespeare’s use of language to present Macbeth’s state of mind

Complete at least 2 paragraphs of analysis answering the following question:

To what extent is Macbeth’s vision of the dagger an invitation for him to kill the king?

You must include:

evidence from the text;
an explanation of the language used;
focus on at least 1 key word and its effect;
A comment about historical context.

Due date:

Wednesday 6th February

WAGOLL:

Immediately before Macbeth murders Duncan, he begins to hallucinate and sees a dagger floating in front of him. Macbeth is confused by this and immediately begins to question whether it is an invitation to kill Duncan, or a warning to follow his conscience and “proceed no further in this business”. At the beginning of his soliloquy he notices “Is this a dagger I see before me, the handle towards my hand? Come, let me clutch thee” This insinuates that Macbeth feels the dagger is encouraging him to hold the handle as it points towards him so that he might hold the handle and follow it to his victim, led by a power greater than himself. The verb “come” also implies that Macbeth wants to hold the dagger because he is driven by his insatiable greed for power and murder Duncan, as if his ambition is too strong for him to hold back, despite the severe consequences for his actions.

However, Macbeth shows that he is immediately confused and sees that the dagger could in fact be a warning, created by his guilty conscience. For instance, he refers to the hallucination as a “fatal vision”, implying that Macbeth thinks it will bring his own death and tragic demise for his sinful actions against both the king and God himself, as in the Jacobean era people believed in the Divine Right of Kings. He perhaps realises that this vision “cannot be good” Alternatively, Macbeth perhaps could infer that the vision foreshadows the death of Duncan and is simply showing him his fate, as the witches have already told him at the beginning of the play.

Support:

Use your notes from your lesson to help you explore this extract.

Click here to find the READING SKILLS LADDER to help you structure your paragraphs.

Challenge:

Try to cover a range of quotations from across Macbeth’s soliloquy, embedding your evidence as you analyse. Remember, you won’t necessarily fully explore every quotation you come across, but when you use one that is loaded with interesting language connotations, make sure you explore them!

A great week for getting smart

By A Brown30th January 2019

We’ve talked a lot about the GET SMART element of our HOWLs in the last week: what it means, why we do it, and more importantly, where we are seeing it around school in our lessons too.

And I’m glad to report, Crew Shackleton are definitely getting smart!

One name that continued to pop up in crew (not to mention 8 appreciations by peers in the community meeting) was Denim. She’s made an amazing effort to go above and beyond since coming back after Christmas, extending her learning at home, and even making models of blood cells to share with her class. Voluntarily. Amazing!

Here she is taking Crew Shackleton through a presentation she’d prepared at home about the Great Depression, providing a bit of extra context to To Kill A Mockingbird:

Miss Hickson commented:

“In her own time, Denim has researched and created a powerpoint on the Great Depression. The work she has produced is of great quality and shows she cares about her learning and is taking responsibility for it. A very mature approach to improving her HOWLs and her understanding of the expedition. Fantastic!”

And it’s not just been Denim. A few students got a mention on the praise sheet for a variety of things:

Miss Haughey said, “Thea hit the ground running today, she’s been on fire in maths despite not being in this week. She was a pleasure to teach, she was more alert than others and was following my instruction really closely. Great stuff!”

Miss Haughey also commented on April’s work recently: “ALWAYS being kind to other members of her table. [She] provides great support in steering collaborative activities and makes sure everyone is involved. She is a mature voice when there is disagreement. She’s doing fab!”

A really positive week, and an amazing vibe about the work going on in and around lessons.

Keep it up Crew Shackleton!

Crew Ali sharing work they’re proud of

By J Townson29th January 2019

Working Hard and Getting Smart results in beautiful work we can be proud of. Crew Ali spent a morning Crew session sharing examples of their favourite pieces, using rubrics to explain how they have achieved each grade and comparing their efforts with work they produced earlier in the year.

Charlie was particularly pleased with his HUMS task as his JOLT improvements had helped him to smash his MEG!

Leoni was proud of her Craftsmanship and Quality in Maths.

Lacey had worked really hard on her extended writing in HUMS and wanted to share with her Crew what Working Hard looked like for her.

Everyone in Crew Ali had something to share and the critique which came out of it was also helpful in suggesting areas where each of us could progress even further, in our classwork and HOWLs in general

I’m a very proud Crew Leader!

Yogi Crew

By Katie Haughey28th January 2019

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!

Year 8 HUMS Home Learning – Due 30.01.19

By A Brown26th January 2019

TASK:

Complete a QUOTATION EXPLOSION as we have previously practiced in class on the following quotation from act 1 scene 5″

“Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under’t” – Lady Macbeth

You have creative freedom on this – do it in your books, on a device, use free mind-mapping online.

DUE DATE:

Wednesday 30th January

WAGOLL:

Does yours look like this? If it does, then you’re probably working at 3.0+ for WORK HARD.

SUPPORT:

Click here to watch a video guide to help.

CHALLENGE:

Want to go above and beyond and EXTEND YOUR LEARNING FURTHER? You could turn your notes into a paragraph of analysis about how Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth’s manipulation of Macbeth.