Recently, Crew Young joined students in C24 in a series of activities designed to prepare them for formal interview and potential employee assessment. Managers and staff from a well-known national retailer of DIY merchandise used the same group activities, “what if?” scenarios, and interviews with Crew Young that they use to identify suitable employees from a field of applicants. Needless to say that the feedback and debrief session that followed was perhaps the most valuable aspect of their experience. A huge appreciation goes to Mrs Burns for arranging this event!
Yesterday we received the exam board guidance on what the “major focus” will be in each of the exam papers in Combined Science. The exam board has made it clear that the students may be examined on other content in “low tariff and linked content” questions. It is also worth noting that the Physics exams use around 20% multiple choice questions, and therefore a broad knowledge base is useful in determining wrong options. Students are still expected to apply their knowledge in unfamiliar contexts.
Our guidance is that our students should revise as broadly as they can, whilst ensuring that they have deep knowledge of the content highlighted by the exam board. This is highlighted in the table below for each paper. Please note that the content may be different for foundation and higher levels.
There is a LOT of Lost property at the moment at both XP School and XP East. Please have a look through the following photos and ask students to collect ASAP if you spot any of their items. The following items are at XP East:
We say this all the time, but Y11 really are doing us both proud! We had some wonderful praise postcards yet again as part of this week’s community meeting, and it’s lovely to see some different names this week.
Well done Y11 – keep working hard, getting smart and being kind. We’re really impressed!
As a crew phase we decided to do an activity which would bring positivity to our week. We came up with the idea of XPionage. This is where we covertly watched others in our crew looking out for positive things they were achieving. We were given a post-it note with the name of the person we would be commenting on, we added these comments to a Google for which was anonymous.
Below is a selection of some of the amazing things we discovered about each other during the week.
Stayed on focus during all lessons and made sure he completed everything to the best of his abilities
Olivia worked really hard in Hums this week. We was learning GCSE content. She also contributed quite alot and understood the content.
Oliver has focused in class quite a lot and has interacted with other students in helpful and mindfull ways. During reading time/work he is always focused on doing his work first. He ussualy puts his hand up in lessons to.
He shows respect by listening all the time
Did good work and good craftsmanship and quality
He works hard in most lessons and helps others in maths/science. He shows respect to teachers and is getting smart in Spanish
Mackenzie has been working hard in lessons such as art and maths. He has been contributing and focusing in sessions.
She has been working hard and focusing in class and hasn’t been chatting.
It was nice for people to notice the good we were doing.
Over recent months I have been working with Crew Young in Y11 every Tuesday morning to explore revision techniques that I have successfully employed in my teaching over the years.
We’ve learned about techniques such as flash cards and the theory behind them, effective revision learning environments, the use of past exam papers and mark schemes, how to boost levels of motivation, the Cornell note taking method and digital revision applications like Seneca and Quizlet.
I often use the analogy of the forgetting curve to explain to students that we often forget knowledge over time, and without constant repetition and the revisiting of knowledge, it fades away over time. The following videos like the one below are great for helping students to understand the rationale behind such techniques. They help to reinforce the fact that there are no short cuts for beating the forgetting curve, and that with hard work and attention to the strategies that we have covered so far, we can indeed beat it.
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Last week’s session on using Quizlet to recap knowledge was awesome.
Next step – extend these strategies to all Y11 students in XP and XP East in order to beat the forgetting curve together!
