Celebrating Success at Our Friday Community Meeting

Today, we came together for our weekly Friday Community Meeting—a time we all look forward to each week. It’s a wonderful opportunity to reflect, celebrate, and recognise the fantastic efforts and attitudes our children have shown over the past few days.

This week, we celebrated our “Work Hard, Get Smart, Be Kind” stars—children who have gone above and beyond in demonstrating our school values. Whether it was through focused learning, a growth mindset, or acts of kindness, each child has truly earned their moment of recognition.

Sharing our Stories: 26/09/2025

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

Class 6’s visit to 1666 @ Green Top

Amazing craftsmanship and quality in home learning @ Plover

]Crazy Crew Challenge @ Carcroft School

Outstanding Craftsmanship and Quality in X29! @ XP

Crew Hoy – Not Passengers @ XP East

Continuing Our Marvellous ME Expedition @ Norton Infants

Weekly Update for Families @ XP Gateshead

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!

Continuing Our Marvellous ME Expedition

This week in Class 1, we’ve been diving deeper into our Marvellous Me expedition, celebrating all the things that make each of us unique and wonderful. As part of our journey, we’ve been reading the heartwarming book “What I Like About Me”—a joyful story that encourages children to embrace their individuality.

At the end of the book, we had a very special moment where each child looked into a mirror and shared what they liked about themselves. The positivity they expressed were truly touching.

Here are just a few of the heartwarming things the children said:

  • “I like my glasses because they help me see.”
  • “I like my freckles.”
  • “I like that my hair is curly at the bottom.”
  • “I like the colour of my hair and when it is in an Elsa plait.”

It was a moment filled with smiles, pride, and self-love. These small reflections showed just how confident and thoughtful our children are becoming, and how important it is to recognise and celebrate what makes us all special.

Sharing our Stories: 19/09/2025

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

Reception: Crew champion music makers @ Green Top

Demonstrating the character trait courage @ Plover

Bye-bye litter! @ Carcroft School

First week back – CREW CHIPS @ XP

Star of the week @ XP East

Rain or shine: Learning outside every time @ Norton Infants

G28 morning fitness, breakfast, revision! @ XP Gateshead

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!

Rain or shine: Learning Outside Every Time

At our school, the outdoors isn’t just a place to play—it’s a space where some of the most meaningful learning happens. Whether it’s bright sunshine, a light drizzle, or a brisk breeze in the air, you’ll find our children outside, exploring, investigating, and connecting with the world around them.

Getting smart in Class 1…

We are excited to share that we have officially launched our very first case study of the year! This term, we are diving into the big, meaningful questions: “Who am I?” and “Who is in my family?” These questions are at the heart of helping children explore their identity, build self-awareness, and celebrate the unique stories that make each of us who we are.

To kick off our exploration, we read a delightful book called Measuring Me. This story is packed with fascinating and fun ways to measure yourself. It inspired us to start measuring ourselves too.

In addition to measuring, we’ve been busy exploring new vocabulary from the book. The children have shown so much curiosity as we unpacked the meaning of different words, building our understanding and adding some exciting new terms to our word banks. One of the highlights? Discovering what stapes are! (Ask your child if they remember!) The children were amazed to learn about this tiny bone in their ears—and couldn’t believe just how extraordinary they really are!

We’re also thrilled to share how well the children are doing in phonics. This week, we’ve been focusing on identifying initial sounds in words. The children have been listening carefully and working hard to write down the first sound they hear. It’s been wonderful to see their confidence grow as they connect sounds to letters—a big step in their early reading and writing journey!

Super Veggie Superheroes

This week, Year One designed their very own Super Veggie Superheroes! From lightning-fast carrots to broccoli defenders of the planet, the imagination on display was truly inspiring.

Each child created a unique veggie-themed superhero and after completing their masterpieces, the children took part in a gallery walk, proudly showcasing their artwork and admiring their classmates’ creations.

All Things Bright and Beautiful.

What a “Marvellous” hook week Nursery had last week! As part of our first expedition “Marvellous Me” the children shared parts of their personality that make them “the same, but different” to each other. To begin the week we all dressed in our favourite colour, we were all very bright and beautiful, very much like the rainbow.

Over the next couple of days the children brought in their favourite toys, certificates or props from a hobby to share with their friends during Crew and explain a little bit more about what they like and are interested in. Here are a few;

On Thursday we shared photos of our families and spoke about who our special people are. The children loved to see their photos up on the big screen or being held up. We played a short guessing game to see if we could work out whose family it was? There were also lots of beautiful pets that featured in the photos – We were all excited to see them.

Friday saw us finish our hook off with a teddy bears picnic. The children brought in their favourite friend in the form of a soft toy or teddy and we shared a delicious brunch together in the sunshine. We sang nursery rhymes and some tried croissants and fruit juice for the very first time. It was just lovely.

Beautiful Art work

We’re excited to share some amazing artwork that our Year 1 children  have been working on. We have been exploring Pop Art known for using bright colours and bold shapes. We used powerful action words like “BANG!” “ZOOM!” “WOW!” “BAM!” and “WHAM!” 

Our first EYFS Community Meeting

We had a lovely community meeting this morning where we celebrated our first HoWL stars in Reception. It was a very difficult decision as all children have made a wonderful start to their time in Class 1 and 2 and we are very proud of them all. Here are the first children to receive a postcard:

We celebrated our first few weeks in school and the end of our hook week with a lovely breakfast of fruit, toast, croissants and juice. Well done everyone.