Just a reminder that this Friday the 29th November and Monday 2nd December are staff days, therefore, the school is closed to students.
We hope you have a lovely weekend.
As you will be aware, E25 were due to complete their 5k sponsored run/ walk around Lakeside today afternoon (26th Nov) but unfortunately due to unforeseeable circumstances and staff absences this has had to be postponed until next week, Tuesday 3rd December. Could we please ask that all sponsorship forms are brought into school by Thursday 28th November. Sponsor money will should be brought in by Friday 6th December – thank you to those who have already done this.
Please be aware that students are still expected to bring in their PE kit on Tuesday.
We appreciate all of your support in helping us to fund an education and support people in Doncaster’s Community.
A special mention to Aaron and Denim who have raised between them £55! – this is fantastic and any amount sponsored will be much appreciated, it’ll all add up!
ABOVE ALL, COMPASSION.
I’d like to say a huge thank you to Mrs Green for coming in and doing a session on careers with my crew! I can’t wait to build on the work she did helping my crew come up with careers they might be interested in or suited to based on the questionnaires they filled in. This week we’ll look further into some options and what they will need to do in terms of qualifications or work experience to enter certain industries or careers.
This week, my crew have been focusing on our position on the crew dashboards comparatively with other crews in E25. I’m delighted that we have almost no entries to the negative conduct form and that on the whole, extended study is handed in on time and equipment is organised amongst my crew.
There were two aspects of the dashboard that we acknowledged needed working on: praise form entries and our attendance. There were lots of bugs being passed about last term, even I ended up really poorly at one point! However, we’ve made an agreement that this term we focus on making marginal gains in terms of our attendance percentage as every day at school mattered.
We even did the maths, since our average attendance last term was just 90%, as a collective crew we’d miss out on over 100 days of school if we carried on like this! I’m already seeing a great improvement this week.
The issue of our praise form entries was something that we also needed to intervene in as a crew. We discussed how we could improve our number of entries on the praise form, and we decided to set a challenge. Daily, each member of my crew were to record how many times another crew member put their hand up and answered a question or posed a question to a teacher to help clarify their understanding. Here’s how they got on:
I’d like to massively appreciate Torran for his improvement from no entries on day 1 to 5 by day 3 and Dylan for increasing his to 13 on one day! Most of my crew really rose to the challenge and I, amongst others, noticed a real difference in sesion. We even went from the bottom scorers on the praise entries, to the 3rd crew in the year, making gains of +4.0 in our entry average. I’m going to carry this on next week until we reign supreme at the top of the crew dashboard, I’m determined that each marginal gain will have a huge impact on our comparative scores across the crews.
Another focus we’ll be looking towards as a crew this week is the general election and taking a wider look at the world around us. I’ve got us a subscription to National Geographic magazine which I’m going to make the focus of this week’s accelerated reader crew, I can’t wait to delve into important issues in our global community!
Deposits are now being taken, and parental reply slips returned, for our proposed art and Spanish optional fieldwork visit to Madrid in June 2020. The ability to make payment of the initial deposit (required by our travel company) by Parentpay is now live, and the deadline for receipt of these funds has been extended to Tuesday 3rd December due to the two staff planning days over the next weekend. Thank you.
There will be a group of students involved in a cheerleading competition after school 3-5 which will take place at Campsmount School. We will be travelling on the school minibus and returning to school. Parents can come and watch however there are limited seats so if you could let me know I can check this will the school.
These students are
Oliva, Lucy, Oliva, Mollie, Tammy, Billie, Abbie, Dylan, Alice, Aisha, Cerys
Many thanks Miss O’Grady
My apologies for the late notice but the following Y7/8 students are involved in a football game against Ash Hill school this Monday 25th November. They need to provide their own boots, shin-pads, shorts and socks (preferably black) and also warm top and drink. I will provide shirts. We will kick off approximately 3:45 and be finished by around 4:45. Parents/carers are welcome to spectate.
Y7
| Ben B |
| Lynden B |
| Harrison P |
| William L |
| Danny D |
| Arjun D |
| Sam F |
Y8
| Callum A |
| Luke H |
| Thomas P |
| Callum B |
| Caiden G |
| Torran |
| Ruben W |
| Zach M |
This week Crew Young booked the sports hall and chose to play Dodge Ball to let off some steam before the start of sessions. Besides strengthening the cardiovascular and muscular systems and lowering the risk of many diseases, research suggests that physical activity also positively impacts the brain and improves cognition, mood, attention and academic achievement in students.
Just exactly what was needed to start another day at XP East.
We appreciate Maclaren for his considerable achievements in martial arts, as we’re very fortunate indeed to count a student that represents England in World Championship level Tae-Kwon-Do amongst our Crew. Go for it Maclaren!
E26 had a fantastic time at the Leeds Armouries Museum on Tuesday. All students were a credit to the school and definitely met all our HOWLs and character traits while there.
We had time to explore the museum and have a look at some of the fantastic artefacts that we on display. We were lucky enough to be able to watch a rifle fire display which was based around WW2 but the experts explain the links and similarities between the weapons which were used.
After lunch, students took part in two workshops – one was a handling session where students could try on uniforms and explore the weapons and equipment that was used in the trenches to get a better understanding of trench life. Students then got to experience training thanks to our very own Captain – he certainly put the students to the test! We learnt about the Pals Battalions and their roles in the war and how the soldiers would’ve been trained and treated during the war. I had the pleasure of accompanying Pioneer in the afternoon and I was so proud of how involved they’ve got in answering and asking questions – they will certainly Get Smart with this attitude!
It certainly was a brilliant day and the conduct of the students was great!
We didn’t have the best start to Crew this week.
I received an email from Mr Pearson telling me that (with the exception of 2 students) Crew Finch hadn’t behaved very well during Friday’s DofE session. They’d been disrespectful to him and to each other. To top it off, other teacher had similar feedback about certain members of Crew. As you can imagine, I was not a happy Crew Leader!
So they spent Monday’s session writing out reflections on what they’d done and how they were going to put things right with Mr Pearson, myself and with each other.
However, what struck me about their reflections is that there was no sense of accountability in any of them and that they were all blaming each other! We had a discussion about this during Tuesday’s Crew session, and it became apparent that Crew are actually a bit fed up with one another at the moment, be it because of general conduct, missing extended study deadline, or not respecting each other during Crew time (talking over people is a major issue in my Crew!)
I thought it was worth regrouping and revisiting what Crew should be, and all it has been to us in the past.
I set up an activity where they had to tell me “just one thing” about Crew, focussing on the following areas:
- Crew makes me feel…
- Without Crew I would be…
- How has Crew helped me?
- How have I helped Crew?
- What could be improved?
- If I could give one piece of advice to another Crew it would be…
We used the silent conversation protocol for this – a dialogue using writing rather than speech – meaning that we all had chance to have our ‘voices’ heard.
It was heartwarming to see that Crew is still something special: it makes us feel safe, welcome and not alone.
There were lots of examples of how Crew had helped one another (Aden broke the rules here and added 3 things rather than just the one!)
The ‘What could be improved?’ sheet gave us the chance to reflect on what is going wrong at the moment, and open up discussions on how we are going to fix these issues.
The activity really helped to clear the air and we’ve now got a plan to get back on track. I guess like most relationships, we will have falling outs and annoy each other from time to time, but what matters is that we make the time and space to address the issues and make things right!
An appreciation goes out to Libby for making an apology to Mr Pearson on behalf of Crew Finch during our Y9 community meeting.
As part of our HOWLS – Working Hard – students are asked to arrive for class on time and prepared, allowing lessons to run smoother and improve opportunity for learning. I have attached a stationary list for your information. Students also need a water bottle to bring into lessons.
Students also need to remember to fetch their accelerated reader books to school every day, they read both in a morning and an afternoon.
Stationary 
1 purple pen
2 pencils
3 pens (blue/black)
1 rubber
1 pencil sharpener
Highlighter pens
30cm ruler
