This week, we celebrated St. George’s Day at our school. The children took part in a special assembly where they listened to a retelling of the story of St. George. We really enjoyed learning about the legend and its meaning.
RE-St.George’s Day
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Sharing our Stories: 24/04/2026
Beautiful work this week
Here’s a selection of beautiful work from across the XP Trust!
To read about other stories from across the XP Trust, visit xptrust.org.
Top of the Blogs
Turning XP School Inside Out: A Global Art Project @ XP School
Third Annual Public Health Conference @ XP Gateshead
Earth Day Crew @ Norton Infants
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Our Power, Our Planet – Earth Day Community Meeting
This week, we came together for a special Key Stage 1 community meeting to celebrate Earth Day. This year’s theme, Our Power, Our Planet, helped us to think about how even the smallest actions can make a big difference to the world around us.
During our time together, we explored what is happening to our planet and talked about pollution—what it is, where it comes from, and how it can harm our environment. The children shared thoughtful ideas about what they already know and noticed how everyday choices can impact the Earth.
We also introduced the idea of renewable energy, helping children to understand that there are cleaner, more sustainable ways to power our world, such as using the sun and wind.
A big focus of our discussion was on what we can do to help. We talked about:
- Using less plastic
- Reducing, reusing and recycling
- Taking care of our environment in simple, everyday ways
Making a Pledge
To finish our community meeting, each child made a personal Earth Day pledge. This was a really special moment, as the children reflected on how they could take action.
Each child placed a counter into the pledge they wanted to focus on:
- Turning off taps and not wasting water
- Making sure rubbish and recycling go in the correct bins
- Walking, scooting or cycling more often
This simple act helped the children to feel empowered—showing them that they can make a difference.
Our Key Message
We reminded the children that looking after our planet doesn’t have to mean making huge changes. Instead, it’s about lots of small, positive actions that, together, have a powerful impact.
By working together, we can all play our part in caring for our world—because it truly is our power, and our planet.
Thank you for your continued support in helping us grow responsible, thoughtful global citizens.
🌍 Earth Day Crew 🌍
This morning in crew we were thinking all things Earth Day. The seam running through our expedition this term is “protecting our planet” and so the timing of Earth Day during our expedition was absolutely perfect. We started our crew session with discussions about what we can do to help protect our planet – thinking about turning off lights, picking up litter, using reusable water bottles and using the same shopping bags all the time.
We then started to think about what the ways that we were going to try and really make a difference. Thinking of four ways we are going to try and help the planet.
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🎨 Class 5 Artists – Sketching Like the Greats!
This afternoon, Class 5 fully embraced their role as artists as we continued exploring our guiding question:
The Blue Planet: How Can I Impact the World?
We began by reminding ourselves of our exciting final product — a reusable water bottle featuring our very own artwork. The children were buzzing with purpose, knowing their designs will help promote looking after our planet 🌍
✏️ Inspired by Beatrix Potter
We started by learning about the wonderful Beatrix Potter — a famous artist and writer who loved sketching animals using pencil. We noticed how carefully she observed real creatures and used soft, delicate lines to bring them to life.
Inspired by her work, we practised using our art pencils to create a range of tones, from light shading to darker, bolder marks. We then explored different patterns and textures, thinking about how these could help add detail to our own artwork.
👀 Thinking Like Artists
Next, we became art critics! We carefully studied a selection of model sketches and asked ourselves:
- How has the artist used shading?
- Where are the darker and lighter areas?
- What techniques do we like and want to try ourselves?
One of the examples was Mrs Parsons’ own artwork… but the challenge was set — could we do even better?
Finally, we took our sea creature outlines and began transforming them into beautiful, detailed pieces using all our new sketching skills.
The concentration in the room was incredible — children carefully adding shading, experimenting with tone, and bringing their sea creatures to life. Every piece is unique, thoughtful, and full of creativity.
We are so proud of the effort and artistic flair shown today — we can’t wait to see these designs printed onto our reusable water bottles! 💧✨
We’re on the Hook!
The whole of EYFS last week were well and truly hooked, lined and sunk into our new summer expedition “Seaside Explorers, what happens where the sea meets the shore?”
The children explored various sea creatures introduced to them through our hook text, “Commotion in the Ocean”. Each crew were given a sea creature to investigate and research, using the internet and supporting non fiction texts. The children then compiled fact files about their given sea creatures and created a large scale piece of artwork between them working collaboratively. They had lots of fun doing this and found out the most amazing facts! Each crew have employed all of their artistic talents to really think about how the creatures look and bring out the best in their features.
Both Nursery and Reception classes presented their sea creatures and fact files to each other in our weekly community meeting. They were so excited to share their interesting facts and spoke thoughtfully and beautifully about their creatures and the new knowledge that they now have! We can’t wait to dive deeper into our thrilling summer expedition. Just look at the quality and craftsmanship of our work, the children really were Go for it Gorillas!
Sharing our Stories: 17/04/2026
Beautiful work this week
Here’s a selection of beautiful work from across the XP Trust!
To read about other stories from across the XP Trust, visit xptrust.org.
Top of the Blogs
Weekly Update for Families @ XP Gateshead
Finding our happy @ Norton Infants
Year 11 Rise to the challenge! @ XP East
Litter picking legends @ Norton Juniors
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Write to us at [email protected] – we want to hear about it, write about it and celebrate it!
Finding Our Happy – Supporting Emotional Wellbeing in KS1
This week in Key Stage 1, we came together for a short community meeting built around the beautiful book Find Your Happy. Through this story, we explored something really important: understanding our feelings and knowing what to do when they feel big.
At school, the children are very familiar with the Zones of Regulation, which help us to recognise and name how we are feeling:
- Blue Zone – sad, tired, or unwell
- Green Zone – calm, happy, ready to learn
- Yellow Zone – excited, worried, or a bit wobbly
- Red Zone – angry, overwhelmed, or out of control
During the community meeting, we talked about how we all move through these zones every day—and that’s completely normal. The key message we shared is that all feelings are okay, but we can learn ways to help ourselves feel safe, calm, and ready again.
Using Find Your Happy, we explored how the character experiences different emotions and discovers simple strategies to feel better. We then practised some of these together:
- Breathing techniques – “smell the flower, blow out the candle”
- Relaxing our bodies – tightening and releasing muscles
- Thinking of something that makes us smile
These small strategies can make a big difference, especially when children are feeling in the yellow or red zones.
How you can support at home
You might like to continue these conversations at home by:
- Asking your child which “zone” they are in
- Talking about what helps them feel calm or happy
- Practising simple breathing together
- Reminding them that it’s okay to feel all emotions
By using a shared language between school and home, we can help children to better understand themselves and build the skills they need to manage their feelings with confidence.
Our key message
We reminded the children that being in the green zone all the time isn’t the goal—because that’s not realistic for any of us! Instead, it’s about learning how to recognise our feelings and find our way back to feeling safe and ready.
We are so proud of how thoughtfully the children engaged with this important message. Ask them about how they “find their happy”—you might even learn a new strategy yourself!
Thank you for your continued support.
Sharing our Stories: 27/03/2026
Beautiful work this week
Here’s a selection of beautiful work from across the XP Trust!
To read about other stories from across the XP Trust, visit xptrust.org.
Top of the Blogs
Another amazing week in PE @ XP
Double, Double, No Toil or Trouble: G31 Nailed It! @ XP Gateshead
Easter Traditions @ Norton Infants
Crew Rosa Parkes – Well done! @ XP East
Share your stories with us!
Write to us at [email protected] – we want to hear about it, write about it and celebrate it!