Week 4 starting 27.01.20 students will be delivering their passage presentations to a panel of parents, teachers and outside visitors to the school. This is an incredible piece of work that allow students to start their chosen GCSE or common mission subject.
The students have worked extremely hard to put together the presentations and we look forward to your attendance.
Booking slot options will be sent out to parents by crew leaders via Sign Up Genius over a 2 week window. Please see the attached letter to see the presentation content:
Our E24/Y9 GCSE Spanish students have received session slides showing the parts of the body that they must learn for Extended Study ahead of a vocabulary test on Friday 10th January.
As well as written comprehension and communication tasks, our E24 GCSE Spanish students will also be asked to regularly revise new vocabulary for Extended Study as they work towards GCSE examination standards.
Rehearsals will restart next week (week 2) on Fridays at lunchtime (12:45 – 1:15) in P13.
This is a change to the previous rehearsal day and time – we will no longer meet after school on a Thursday.
Lunch passes will be issued to support getting lunch quickly and students will have 15mins to eat before coming up to P13.
Any questions please feel free to contact Mr Robins.
By Debbie Rigby5th January 2020
XP16 Subject Information Evening
Wednesday 8th January
XPEast at 5:30pm
Happy New Year!
Are you looking to be the ‘Best Version of Yourself’ in 2020 and beyond?
Then we would very much like to welcome you at our subject information evening this Wednesday, for you to see first hand how our 3-Dimensional Rigorous Curriculum and unique wrap around support, enables us to relentlessly focus on each and every student becoming the Very Best Version of themselves.
To ensure we offer you a personalised experience, please let us know you are coming! Simply click on the link or visit our new XP16 website.
Can’t attend on the 8th? Still have questions? Dont hesitate to contact me:
We are hoping that all staff and students have enjoyed a well earned rest. We will be hitting the ground running first thing on Monday 6th January, as we are open as usual.
It’s fair to say that this week Crew Young have needed reminding of why the XP Trust sign: “above all, compassion” greets them as they enter the school premises. We decided to re-boot our concept of Crew as a result of recent issues involving relationships within our group. Starting with a focus on our character traits – courage, integrity, craftsmanship and quality, respect and compassion – we considered where students have exhibited these in sessions and around school, and, remaining with the latter we contemplated the guiding question: “what do we want compassion to look, feel and sound like in Crew?”.
Following a silent conversation protocol, we collated our ideas:
using kind words and empathy
being sensitive towards others
being able to feel comfortable in Crew
feeling that everyone is there for each other
supporting others when they need it, e.g. Crew can support someone subject to reflection
This is a work in progress, and it’s likely that we’ll need to return to this character trait and develop our ideas further after the Christmas break, but at least for now we’ve started the ball rolling.
Good afternoon. All lost property that has been collected by both XP and XP East will be available for all students to go and have a look to see if anything belongs to them. It will be in XP East in the Drama space from tomorrow. Please encourage your child to have a quick look as we have collected a large volume in just 1 term. Many thanks. XP Office
Last week was a monumental, for both our school and our country. General elections come round very rarely, and while our students are not able to vote currently in any national elections, the importance of being educated on why we vote and who we might vote for is still of utmost importance.
Students started engaging with politics the week prior to the election, they were given the following learning target in crew:
DLT: I can explain the importance of voting and engaging in political issues
Students were asked to digitally rank issues from least to most important, and express why they had chosen certain issues over others. The issues were the environment (which was very popular), mental health, affordable housing, employment and crime. My crew paired up with the Y10s, and it was excellent to hear them make links between all these issues and their interconnectedness.
The following crew sessions, crews were given broad overviews of the four main political parties standing in the general election, and their stances on the issues they’d discussed in previous crew sessions. Crews came together to write up questions for party leaders, if they had the opportunity to ask them about one of their policies or pledges. It was fascinating looking at the key similarities and differences on issues like Brexit.
On the Wednesday before polling day, my Y12 politics students held a hustings where students were able to put the questions they’d been working on in crew to my experts! Each party had prepared a short speech that was in response to my guiding question:
How can political parties bring about positive change for our community (XP East)?
They then welcomed questions from the students. There was lots of interest in the NHS, in environmental policies and pledges, and some great questions about Boris, Jeremy and Brexit. It showed how much students had engaged with the work that had been done in crew and I was delighted to see how passionate and thoughtful the debate was between both my sixth-formers and lower school.
The following day, XP East went to the polls. I collected all ballots in crew and we counted them in the politics session. We treated each crew like a constituency, so the first past the post voting system was used – just like the actual general election. Some members of my crew were still struggling to choose a party on the morning of the election, as all the speakers at the hustings had done so well!
The Green Party won a majority of seats (8) with a 38% of the vote, followed by the Labour Party with 3 seats and 25% of the vote, Lib Dems were close behind on 21% but with no seats due to the electoral system, and finally the Conservative Party won 2 seats despite gaining less votes than the Lib Dems, just 16%.
It’s been a really exciting couple of weeks at XP East, and I hope that although the voting is over and the election is through, that we keep revisiting what is going on in Parliament and how we can engage further with politics after learning how important it is to get your voice heard.
