November 1st and 2nd mark the festival of Day of the Dead in Mexico, and Year 7 spent their Spanish session this week learning all about this festival, and attempting to create an important part of the festivities – papel picado – or paper cutting. In Mexico this is very intricate and time consuming. Our version was simpler but gave students an opportunity to experience this unique craft!
Students watched a video in Spanish showing how to create a simple papel picado design. Then they worked independently, watching the video again in their own time, trying to recreate the cutting done in the video. The results were absolutely fantastic! Buen trabajo Year 7.
I’ve been popping in and out of sessions all week and have been blown away by the hard work and focus of every single student, in every single lesson as they prepare for their upcoming mocks. One of the highlights of my week was seeing Aden give himself a little victory fist pump after successfully working through a particularly tricky maths question!
I’d like to give a massive appreciation to all staff for going above and beyond to support students this week, especially to Miss Poncia and Mrs Desborough for putting on extra revision sessions during lunchtimes this week. This was reiterated during student appreciations at our year group community meeting. As Louie said, these revision sessions have been “amazing.”
The Y11 team are putting together a timetable of subject specific ‘learning labs’ which will run during lunchtimes and after school – full details will be posted here very soon.
D6 is also restarting on Saturday 13th November, 9am-12.30pm. This is open to all Y11 students with Student Coaches on hand to help them with their studies and exam prep.
As I said, all students have been working extra hard this week, but a special mention has to go to Lewis D and Tom D for working exceptionally hard in lessons at school, revising at home and for actively seeking out extra support and advice from subject teachers – this is what getting smart is all about.
We’re in for an intense couple of weeks so I’d just like to end by saying that even though it’s important to stick to revision timetables, it is just as important to schedule in some downtime to focus on your own wellbeing. Go for a walk, watch a film, read a book, check in with family and friends, eat well and get plenty of sleep!
On Wednesday the 3rd of November teams from both XP and XP East year 7 took part in a Doncaster schools tag rugby festival at Doncaster Keepmoat. Both teams represented the school excellently and we are extremely proud of all the students. Both teams made the final 4 and XP got to the final game.
This was a fantastic evening and allowed us to showcase some amazing skills and techniques.
At XP Trust we are taking a number of measures to help prevent the spread of Coronavirus, including:
Encouraging all staff to test regularly, to minimise the risk of our teachers giving your child or other children Covid;
Ensuring our staff and children practice good hygiene;
Making sure our spaces are well ventilated; and;
Encouraging all members of our community to isolate and book a PCR test should they develop symptoms of the virus.
We are also asking all parents to encourage their children to test regularly and to report each result
Up to one in three people who have COVID-19 can spread the virus without knowing. This is because they have no symptoms. We are therefore asking all parents to test their children on a Sunday and Wednesday andhelp us to keep XP East School and XP School open.
The fantastic E28s have been set an expedition ‘bucket list’ related to their Food, glorious food expedition. They have until the Christmas break to get as many tasks uploaded to the padlet as possible.
Please see the updated extra curricular timetable below, it is going to be a busy half term for the school with badminton and football fixtures coming thick and fast and plenty of exciting clubs to choose from- a lot to look forward to for all students- Mr Stables
Year 11 will be sitting mock exams over a 2 week period, starting on Monday 8th November:
Please note that Wednesday 10th November may be subject to change due to the school nurses being in to administer Covid Vaccines.
Students have been given revision resources to help them prepare for these mocks, as well as having access to Seneca (science), Hegarty (maths) and all their previous session slides on google classrooms.
Last week Crew Anoa’i, with the help of some of our friends from Crew Ali, took on the task of degunging our school. We had a week of cleaning up, making sure our school was clear of rubbish and ready for session time.
On Monday morning, we took our turn to litter pick around the school grounds. We quickly gathered the equipment from reception and headed out to the back field. The grass was wet and there was a chill in the air. The whole crew took turns to use the pickers and collect as much rubbish as possible. We moved with great pace and found many different things on our journey around the field, including a large tub of ice cream!
Throughout the week, we ensured our crew room was spotless for others to use. We tucked the chairs under after using them and we sanitised the tables. We also cleared the room of any lost property and bits of rubbish left from the previous day.
On Friday morning, we went into ‘degunge mode’. This included us carrying out our weekly class pack check. Everyone in our crew has a ‘degunge’ duty, where they count and check all of the equipment in our crew’s class pack.
Once this was complete, we then moved onto tidying up our library. A handful of our crew took charge with this task, ensuring all of the portfolio folders were stacked appropriately in neat rows. They finished this task in record time and joined the rest of us in our crew room, to help sort the lost property.
Sorting the lost property included us taking all of the lost items out of the box, taking a photograph of the items and then folding them back up to be placed in the box once again. As there were a lot of lost items this past week, all hands were on deck. We even had a system in place to speed up the process. We had Jacob, Woody, James, Fin and Denim on unpacking duty. Then Nikodem, April and Thea on photograph duty. Moving onto the next step, we had Zach H, Faith, Lucie-Mae and Zach M on folding duty. To finish the process, we had our friends from Crew Ali (Ruby, Ruben, Charlie and Caiden) on packing duty. With this amazing team, we managed to complete all of our degunge duties in just 15 minutes! That’s a record for Crew Anao’i.
The last step of our degunge process was to sanitise the tables and put the chairs up on to the tables. This then allowed Miss Mitchell to hoover the room after we had gone home. Then our crew room was truly spotless!
We have thoroughly enjoyed the degunge process and wish to continue this next term.
Don’t forget to check the latest Lost Property post on our website to see all of the lost items. Remember to claim your lost belongings before Friday 5th November.
