Beautiful artwork

We have been very creative this week and made some beautiful pictures of Islamic tiles using constructive colours. We also enjoyed learning about stained glass windows.

How can we help save the ocean?

This week class one have been reading ‘Harry Saves the Ocean!’ It taught us all about plastic pollution and how Harry and his friends work together to help clean the ocean.

In crew, we looked at pictures from the story and identified all the items that didn’t belong in the sea.

We have been sorting plastic into useful plastic and single use plastic…

We went on a gallery walk around the classroom and looked at images from the sea. The children had to decide if the images made them feel happy or sad.

Well done for working so hard class 1! The children have shown a real care and concern about the plastic pollution problem, which has been really heart warming. We understand that working together is key to making a change. As it says in our core text (Harry Saves The Ocean!)… ‘It’s a big job for one but if we all lend a hand, We’ll soon make a difference to the sea and the sand’.

Sharing our Stories: 26/04/2024

Beautiful Work This Week

Beautiful Activism @ Green Top

A few months ago, Jake in Year 6 approached the school and his Crew with wanting to raise awareness around Motor Neurone Disease. Being a big fan of Leeds Rhinos, he has been inspired by Rob Burrows’ bravery and the superb effort of his ex-team mate, Kevin Sinfield.

Last week, Jake and his Mum organised a coffee morning fundraiser – including a bake sale, raffle and more! With the help of the Green Top Community, they have raised over £2600.

You can donate here: xptrust.info/MND – please leave a note to say ‘care of Jake at Green Top School’!

We would also like to give a massive shout out to Elsie from Class 6 and her family, who raised an outstanding £275 to buy raffle tickets. This is a cause very close to their hearts as they sadly lost Elsie’s Grandad to the disease in 2011. You can read more about it here.

Once again the generosity of the Green Top community has blown us away. We are Crew!

Full Steam ahead at Gresley Exhibition launch

A remarkable new exhibition about Sir NIgel Gresley has opened at the Danum Gallery in Doncaster – and our XP Schools Trust is playing its part! Our Rail City book, which is on sale in the gift shop at the gallery, was one of the catalysts for the invitation to contribute to this important collection of work – and the inspiration for the brochure which has been delivered by our Comms Crew. Our students’ study of our city’s rail story has given them a real overview of how important the work of Sir Nigel Gresley, who created Flying Scotsman and Mallard at the Plant, is in the history of steam and speed.

Letters and personal objects such as his hat and portrait are part of the exhibition, which has been curated with the collaboration of the Gresley Society, the Doncaster Grammar School Railways Archive and Doncaster City Council. Students from XPD are creating an audio experience for exhibition visitors and our Primary School Pupils are being invited to create rail related illustrations for colouring books that will be part of the gallery’s summer holiday resources for children across Doncaster.

Seb, who joined us at the launch said: “Going to the private viewing of the exhibition was great. It is important that young people carry on the legacy of our ancestors!”

Mel Cocliff added: “It was a privilege to be invited to the launch of the Sir Nigel Gresley exhibition at the Danum Gallery. To watch students from XP interact with people involved, including our Civic Mayor, was truly heartwarming. It’s vital that young people in our communities continue to appreciate the rail heritage of Doncaster, and pass on that baton as they grow up, too!”

The exhibition runs until September.

EYFS @ Green Top build their sandpit!

Following the playhouse being removed from the Reception outdoor area, it was in need of a revamp so the children decided to create a sandpit in this space! What a perfect opportunity to work collaboratively to create a purposeful learning space for their Summer term expedition ‘What happens where the sea meets the shore?’ The children designed the space and made a list of resources and jobs – beautiful work!

Beautiful Curation @ Carcroft

Beautiful displays were installed this week at Carcroft School – a culmination of last term’s Expedition ‘There is no Planet B’.

Top of the Blogs

Crew RPU Highlights @ XP

Beautiful Work from Grace @ XP Gateshead

Sunshine and Fairies @ Norton Infants

Long Jump @ Green Top

Messy Maps @ Plover

Exploring in the tree @ Carcroft School

E29 Working Hard @ XP East

Investigating Foods @ Norton Juniors

Join our Crew!

We’re looking for Cleaners and a Cleaner in Charge to #JoinOurCrew at XP Doncaster – find out more and apply here!

Share your stories with us!

We now have a new dedicated news email so that you can send your stories, updates or ideas about potential news articles directly to us in Comms.

It might be something you or your students have achieved, a charity you’re supporting or anything at all that deserves a wider audience.

Write to us at [email protected] –  we want to hear about it, write about it and celebrate it!

Spots and Dots

We had a great community meeting this morning. We thought really hard about resilience and bravery particularly when it comes to completing beautiful work that we might find tricky.

We listened to the story called The Dot about a little girl called Vashti who found art difficult but worked hard and succeeded. We all got a dot of our very own to create our own mini piece of art work which we put together to make our very own dotty masterpiece.

We finished our community meeting with crew champions – we are really proud of all of you.

Mrs Parsons

Dear World…

Today the children in EYFS had a wonderful time going to the Junior School hall to listen to children in Years 3 and 4 sing Dear World. This song was written by Key Stage Two children in their previous expedition that explored the importance of looking after our planet.

In their current expedition the children in EYFS are learning all about sea conservation and the need to recycle plastic waste so it was a perfect opportunity to listen again to Dear World and the poignant message it has. Thank you to the Junior School for a fantastic performance, the legacy of your beautiful work lives on!

Human and Physical Features

Class Five have blown me away today with their Geography skills. We started by thinking about the differences between human and physical features. We worked collaboratively to sort images into the two groups, we kept reflecting and changing our minds the more we went through the construct part of our lesson. Finally we used our learning to identify these features on different maps of Doncaster.

Awesome job guys ⭐️

Mayor of Doncaster

We were so lucky to end our week with some more experts. We welcomed Mayor Ros Jones along with the Civic Mayor of Doncaster. We loved learning about their roles and finding out even more about Doncaster. We are looking forward to using our learning to answer our guiding question for this term – Diverse Doncaster – Where do I belong?