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On Thursday, all our Year 7 students had a hangout with their first art expert.
Their expert was called Derek Robertson who was speaking to our pupils about his ‘Migrations‘ exhibition.
These pieces of artwork that Derek created fitted in perfectly with Y7’s current expedition called ‘Wherever I lay my hat’ where they are answering the guiding question of ‘Is migration worth the risk?’
Our expert was able to give our students information about his experiences when visiting refugee camps around the world and insights into the lives of the people he met.
Mr. Wilmot made loads of notes!
Mrs. Marshall was on fire with the anchor charts.
Miss Hickson was busy making notes on the board.
Manveer and Maisie shared the notes that they wrote during the hangout.
Keegan even recorded the whole hangout as a voice note on his iPad and sent it to me!
I was so impressed with our Year 7’s. They were respectful and inquisitive. They asked some fantastic questions and wrote brilliant notes.
Well done Y7!
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 and self assessment of HOWLs!
See all E24 apologies, appreciations and Stands made below on the Padlet
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Last term, XP School’s C24 GCSE Spanish students grappled to answer our Guiding Question: “¿Tecnología – somos sus servidores o sus maestros? (“Technology – are we its servants or its masters?”). Whilst some might have found it difficult to articulate a response in English, imagine doing so during lockdown and in a modern foreign language!
This formed part of an expedition culminating in a Final Product centred around the family, expressing their own and their family’s reading habits and preferences, and uses of social media at home. Students collaborated to create a challenging rubric designed to encourage extended responses – including making an argument in favour of digital books or paperbacks – that was then used as the framework for our Final Product…..a monologue spoken in Spanish with accompanying slide presentation that evidenced standards ranging from beginning to excellence across a range of learning targets, such as: “I can compare and contrast reading books digitally with paper-based formats, making an argument in favour of one of these”.
Unfortunately we have had a positive case of Covid19 in Year 11 at XP
The test result came from our mass testing provision a short while ago.
Public Health England have instructed me to send students home and isolate for 10 days. Could parents collect students as soon as possible. In the meantime, students will remain in their current classroom. Everything is calm, and students have been informed.
This is just a very quick message to make Y11 parents aware of the situation.
We will move to an online provision as quickly as possible. Stay tuned for further updates.
Jamie Portman
Dear Parents and Families of students in XP16,
Now that we have returned to school, I’m pleased to say that we will be opening our doors again each Saturday at the XP East site for D6, our sixth day of school provision. D6 is led by our Student Coaches and supported by our school’s Learning Coaches and is an opportunity for students to come into school to complete any additional study they’d like in a supportive and friendly environment. Whether students want to come into school and get some additional help with a specific topic or piece of Extended Study, or support from our Student Coaches, or just find a quiet space to work on their own priorities, our school is open and staff are ready to accept students.
Our invitation is initially to students in year 11 & XP16 but we hope to open things up to the whole school in the near future.
D6 will begin this Saturday 27th March for students in Year 11 & XP16 and then from April 10th for students in Year 10. However, there will be no session 3rd April as it is the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.
Sessions will begin at 9.00 and end at 12.30.
We look forward to seeing students back in school this Saturday!
Best wishes
Kate ap Harri
Today saw the day that we’ve all been looking forward to for so long – the full return to school of all our students. Like their peers, Crew Young were promptly tested and then they were able to join other E24 students in a Community Meeting and normal afternoon sessions. WELCOME BACK, YOUNGSTERS!
Please find below a written response from Gwyn ap Harri (co-founder of XP and CEO of XP Trust) regarding the consultation surrounding the proposed changes to our school calendars.
Best wishes, Jamie Portman
Dear Parents
Thank you for your considerable feedback during the consultation regarding our school calendar. We received over 800 responses and we have read and considered every single one of your comments.
It was clear from the consultation that the vast majority of parents agreed with the Trust, that the strongly preferred calendar was Option 3, the calendar that aligns more with the newly rationalised DMBC calendar.
Over 80% of parents across the Trust either preferred this calendar or didn’t mind either way.
The strong message within the comments was for the Trust to make the right decision for our children and to focus on the quality of educational provision. As a Trust we also reflected on the fact that a majority of parents were choosing time for families to be together over potentially cheaper holidays, and that these parents were not from affluent areas.
We know from the consultation that this decision will not please all our families, who strongly preferred our old calendar, and we understand why, but moving forward on balance, we feel that the Trust will be able to work more effectively together with one unified calendar, and therefore provide a higher quality education for our children than even the high standards we are reaching now.
I apologise to the families that feel they are being inconvenienced by this decision, and we will of course honour any pre-booked holidays by families and staff.
To address some points raised by parents during the consultation:
- We are proud of our differences from other Trusts, but we aren’t different just to be different, our differences are based on clear rationale. This isn’t the slippery slope to conformity. Over my dead body. In fact, watch this space…
- I will never apologise for the strength of wanting to work with our Primary colleagues, in fact, my message is that all Secondary schools should do more of this, as they will benefit massively as XP has. The convention of Secondary schools dictating to Primary schools is something I abhor.
- We will always take decisions on balance, but with the most important factor being the quality of provision to our children, including my own.
Finally, I would like to thank parents for their kind, beautiful and humbling comments about our schools. We were genuinely moved to tears by some, on both sides of the consultation. We work tirelessly on this very hard and very important work, and your comments reminded us why we give our todays for our childrens’ tomorrows.
Thank you.
Best wishes
Gwyn ap Harri
CEO
XP Trust
07886190332