Year 9 (E27) Explorer working hard in art

I wanted to share some of the beautiful work that 9 Explorer has been producing in their art sessions.

I am so impressed with the craftmanship and quality.

Year 9’s first expedition of the year is called ‘Another Brick in the wall’ which has the guiding question ‘How are our lives affected by structures?’

They have created their own expedition title pages:

They have been looking at the street artist Phlegm and reproducing their own work in his style as well as an artist research page.

As you can see – it’s looking great!

E24/Y10 Mock Exams

Year 10 will begin their first set of GCSE mock exams from the week commencing 10th of May over the following two weeks. This first round of mocks will be over two weeks to all the students.

 

The following exams will be taken by students in E24/Y10:

AQA citizenship (Cit students only)

AQA Spanish Writing (GCSE Spanish students only) 

AQA Spanish Speaking (GCSE Spanish students only) 

OCR B SHP History The People’s Health / Living under Nazi Rule 

AQA Geography Paper 2 (Common Mission students only) 

Eduqas English Language Component 1

Eduqas English Literature XP made paper from a combination of Comp1 and 2 

AQA Business Paper 1 (Common Mission students only)

AQA Maths Paper 1 Non Calculator

AQA Maths Paper 2 Calculator

AQA Science Paper 1 – Communicable and non Communicable diseases

AQA Science Paper 2 – Mag/electro mag/Hydrocarbons/alternative sources energy

 

All exams will take place during a normal school day, and will take place in the sports hall with appropriate CV-19 safety adjustments in school. 

E24 Community Meeting- Week 6

 

We are entering into the 7th week of online learning at XPE- with seemingly, no end in sight, and so our community meeting was focused around strategies to beat the screen fatigue, and a challenge to to get us all out of the house this weekend!

We started off with a brilliant check in of superhero names, based on dates of birth- some absolute, moving then onto apologies, appreciation and stands. Some fantastic work going on- as shown by the appreciation from staff and students within crew Churchill, for the work around student led crew sessions.

See all E24 apologies, appreciations and Stands made below on the Padlet

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Community meeting Photography Challenge

To encourage us as staff and students to get time away from the screen, a challenge was set for students to over the weekend take photos whilst out on walks out of the house, to be entered in the following categories, entries must be original, and be taken over the weekend whilst out of the house- see some of the entries posted on the challenge by students in E24-
Voting for category winners will take place in week 7 community meeting.

The categories…

1) Architecture

2) Near and Far

3) Nature

4) Food

5) Frozen

6) Technology

 

E24 Original photos, submitted by Alfie C, Chloe T, Summer, Keisha 

SLC Sign Up Link

SLCs are nearly upon us,

Just a reminder for parents to sign up using this link to choose a 30 min time slot starting from the 1st of February.

Crew Mandela have invested lots of time this week putting together reflections and progress reports ready to be shared during the Student Led Conference! I am really looking forward to hearing students share their own work online with parents!

Hi all,

Here is a rundown of some of the beautiful artwork that has been produced by our wonderful XP and XPE students during lockdown 3.0.

As a team, we have been blown away by the effort and resilience that our pupils are showing.

I hope you enjoy having a flick through their work as much as we have.

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SLC’s are Moving Online!

SLC Preparation:

The last two weeks in crew Mandela have been focused on moving the SLC process online. All crew members have been making the most of the home learning by going through the past 3 weeks online learning to find the very best pieces of work to include into their student led conference.

We have had some fantastic examples in crew Mandela, as shown by the example of the work below. Chloe T has gone above and beyond with her SLC presentation, not just in the preparation phase, but in the overall process of extremely impressive HOWL’s

Check out the quality of the online work collected into Chloe’s presentation

 

 

Student Led Online Crew

Massive appreciation to Raven O and Corey A for planning some fantastic online fun games for crew- examples of these are below, and it just goes to show that we don’t need to be in the building together to have fun as a crew.

 

The best activity was the game Scribble (online version of Pictionary) that really highlighted some highly creative ways of drawing some really difficult concepts!.

I’ve got a massive appreciation for a really impressive first couple of weeks of remote lessons, for the most part, attendance has been excellent. I have really enjoyed checking in with them in the morning, despite people not being up to much. Every single crew member made it to almost every session this week (X meaning ‘attended online’). I’ve loved to hear stories of crew members phoning each other with reminders to get up!

Crew News:

This week, on Tranquil Tuesday, rather than doing accelerated reader, I tasked my crew members to go on BBC News, or another reputable media outlet, and find a news story that interested them. After giving them some time to read the article, I then asked them to share a jist of the article they had been reading.

Callum shared an article that sparked his interest after checking he was allowed to read about football, the West Ham loss last week. He explained that to crew that this meant that they’d be playing Doncaster, and while he wasn’t so hopeful about celebrating a win, he was still excited to see the two teams play. Jess shared a really excellent article in relation to the Capitol riots this week, which highlighted the work of a Police Officer that had been trying to keep protestors out of the US Congress building. We had some other lovely stories, ranging from a Star Wars spin off from Lewis, to a heartwarming story from Alice about a group who had been helping locate missing dogs.

Thoughtful Thursday – an eye for an eye?

On Thoughtful Thursday, we looked into a story that had dominated the news this week, the story of Lisa Montgomery – the only female inmate on federal death row in the US who was executed on the 13th.

I asked my crew after we read the article together, whether they felt that Lisa deserved to be executed. Having looked into her background together, it was a difficult decision to make, and most felt that the case was far too complicated. There was a general consensus that she definitely deserved a life sentence, but that the death penalty was cruel considering her upbringing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On a lighter note, we finalised the information on our Crew Narrative this week, which consolidates our crew’s data for the term. Each crew member has a pledge for their HoWLs, and their academic progress for the next term. It was really positive on the whole, we even came joint first in terms of our ‘Be Kind’ HoWL with Crew Ali. We’re definitely working on pushing more of our data in to the great/awesome categories though.

I felt that because of the fantastic work done in the first two weeks, as well as a really positive data sheet, we ended the final crew session of the week on a game of Among Us. It was lovely to hear everyone having a laugh to end the week on a high note, before a appreciation-filled community meeting.

 

Unfortunately, due to X25 having to self-isolate over the last month, we are having to postpone the presentation of learning that was scheduled to go live tonight until the new year.

We’ll be sharing a new calendar event over the break to reschedule the online stream in January, we look forward to presenting the work that the Y9s have produced. Thank you for your continued support!

C25: Out here in the fields

Our year 9 students were lucky enough to get out on fieldwork on the final week of term to complete work relating to their ‘Welcome to the machine’ expedition. Over the next seven weeks of the winter term, they will be working on their answer to the guiding question:

‘Do the benefits of industrialisation outweigh the costs?’

For their first STEAM case studies, students have been looking at conservation data, learning about how data can be collected and displayed using multiple representations. They have also been learning about specialisation and ecosystem management.

They visited The Hatfield Moors, our local nature reserve, to examine the extent of the fire damage from earlier this year. Students have been learning about the protected species that can be found at the site, particularly the adder, and how Natural England and the fire service prioritised safeguarding these species during the clear up operation.

While at the site, students conducted a series of sampling techniques, as well as collecting data on the wildlife. Sadly, due to slight delays in being able to visit the site, we weren’t able to spot any adders as they have likely gone into hibernation for the winter, however, students were still able to find other species key to maintaining and supporting the ecosystem at the wetland.

Students also conducted a number of tests on the site, in accordance with their two daily learning targets for the day:

1. I can estimate the population density of a species using random sampling techniques.

Students engaged in data collection of various parts of the site, using quadrats to provide increasingly accurate estimations of species numbers in the areas we sampled. We created a set of axes, used a random number generator to find coordinates to sample, and collected the data from those coordinates.

After collecting data in teams of three, we used all the data collected to calculate the predicted species number, based on scaling up the measurements to accommodate the size of the field. In debrief, due to a large range in answers, we went on to calculate the mean for those estimations, to create a more accurate estimation. We also discussed why using the random number generator was fundamental in keeping our research free from bias.

2. I can investigate the effects of abiotic factors using systematic sampling techniques.

Students then went on to conduct a series of pH tests on the wetlands, again using their quadrats placed along a transect, to link changes in species to abiotic factors of the wetlands. In debrief, we examined the data, looking for patterns relating to the abundance of the plant species and the abiotic factor recorded.

I’d also like to thank our very own Marshall Jones, for taking his time on the day and spare time to create this amazing vlog documenting the day:

I feel incredibly fortunate that we were able to make it out to the site given the current circumstances, and I really look forward to hear how the work the students have done on this series of case studies will inform their guiding question answers over the coming weeks.