Last week our E24 / Y8 explorer students began consolidating their command of Spanish numbers 1-1000. Due to common spelling and grammatical errors this is an area that we may have to return to in future, since spontaneous recall of this material is tested at GCSE level. A deceptively simple “do NOW!” challenge caught out nearly all students (except for Alanis who did not fall for my “trap”) and helped us to identify gaps in knowledge. Here students are racing each other to spell a series of numbers, randomly generated, using the letters provided.
Please click on the link and take a look at the following pictures to see if you recognise anything. Go to the school office to reclaim anything that belongs to you. All unclaimed items will be donated to charity on the last day of term. Many thanks
Our new staff crew have been today working on their final product for their Learning Expedition Slice. Having completed two case studies looking at social inequity in Doncaster and the wider socioeconomic impact of environmental breakdown, staff crew are now putting together a community garden in our school grounds. This garden will have a legacy in that food grown will be donated to the food bank in Thorne and Moorends which formed part of the fieldwork for our first case study. Staff crew will maintain the gardens, but they will also be a learning resource for their crews too in the next academic year and beyond.
On the last day of this term, Friday 19th July 2019, school will be closing for all students at 1:30pm after Crew for staff to prepare for the new year. There will not be any provision for students to stay after this time so all students must leave at 1:30pm.
We have recently welcomed a new student to Crew Finch – welcome, Kobe!
Kobe joined us at a time when we’ve been busy preparing for SLCs, so I was conscious that – three weeks on – he doesn’t really understand the concept of crew, or why it’s so crucial to us as a school. This was confirmed to me when I asked him if he felt like he was part of crew yet, and he answered: “Almost.”
Now, I know it’s a difficult transition for any student joining a new school and making new friends, but to join an already formed, tight-knit crew, who have literally and metaphorically climbed mountains together for 2 years, must be doubly difficult.
“Almost” made we realise that we haven’t done enough over the past 3 weeks to make sure that Kobe is Crew and gets Crew.
We took Kobe right back to the beginning of Crew Finch by showing him this video (cue goosebumps!)
It made us all remember what it was like on that very first day, and the feelings we had about joining a new school and making new friends: anxiousness, worried, scared, excited… But by the end of that day, we had become crew.
It’s true that our shared experiences have made us crew, but we’re excited that Kobe has now joined us just in time for the next stage of our journey: Year 9! And I hope that when I ask him at the end of term if he feels like crew yet, he will reply with a resounding “Yes!”
One last thing (well done if you’ve got this far!)
A few weeks ago I had the absolute privilege and pleasure of facilitating a workshop for the Trusts’ annual XPosé conference, looking at the power of relationships in crew. This session was led by Y7 and Y8 students who spoke confidently and passionately about what crew means to them. As part of this, the workshop participants had been asked to do a mind mapping activity where they had to write down what they thought crew was and I thought these were worth reviewing with crew today.
They looked at the sheets and picked out the words/phrases which really illustrated or reminded them what crew was about. I was worried that we have forgotten – or become complacent about – the power of crew. Maybe an “outsiders” perspective would remind us, and give Kobe a better understanding, too.
We had a really interesting conversation afterwards about the impressions of crew from these sheets, and we made a list of the ones that were most important to us.
E25 will be holding the Presentation of Learning for their current expedition ‘Three Cheers for Trees!’ on Thursday 18th July at 5.30pm.
Students have been working extremely hard throughout their expedition and this will be an opportunity for them to share their learning with parents, carers and visitors.
We will also have a surprise to share with you at the end of the evening – the grand revealing of our final product!
The lines were being switched over at 4:30pm yesterday evening and expected to cause no disruption. We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible.
Please email all absences this morning and any urgent queries into [email protected]
