Sharing our Stories: 22/01/2024

22nd January 2024Geoff Hewitt

Beautiful Work This Week

XP Festival of Learning

On Friday, staff across our Trust gathered to launch the first phase of our exciting new Teaching and Learning model, with a focus on our culture of Crew, underpinning principles, deliberate & intentional teaching/learning behaviours at its heart…

Staff from our secondaries and primaries grappled with this exciting new model and took part in a wide range of workshops to develop teaching and learning at XP.

More on this next week…

Carcroft School: How Could We Help Our Planet Survive?

In Autumn 2023, Years 5 and 6 completed an expedition looking at the impact we are having on the planet and what we could do to make a difference now and for future generations. They held their presentation of learning last week!

Their final product for this expedition was a picture frame made from sustainably-sourced materials. Students then chose their favourite piece of writing from across the expedition to publish in the frame alongside (or behind) a simple piece of artwork reflecting elements of our learning. Beautiful work!

Top of the Blogs

Delicious Recycling @ Norton Infants

Crew Oldridge’s Experiments @ Green Top

Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead

XP Outdoors – Mindfulness Walk @ XP

Future Architects? @ Plover

Life Skills in LOOL @ XP East

Crew Challenge @ Carcroft School

Problem Solving – Square Numbers @ Norton Juniors

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!

Delicious Recycling 🥛

17th January 2024Laura Parsons

We have had the most delicious expedition session this afternoon! We were really lucky in class 5 Carter’s mummy brought us some chocolate milk in glass bottles. We thought about why it is better for the environment in a glass bottle than cartons or plastic bottles. We then talked about what happens to the glass bottles next so that they can be used again.

Miss Tinker and I enjoyed everyone’s chocolate moustaches 🤣

Investigating Animals

16th January 2024Claire Goodyer

Class 6 have been busy this week reading to research different animal groups. After sharing their findings and creating class anchor charts they were able to work collaboratively to identify and sort animals into their correct groups.

It was great to see everyone willing to share their ideas and ask questions to clarify their understanding.

Great work Class 6, keep it up!

Animal Collaboration

16th January 2024Laura Parsons

We are busy working on our HOWLt of sharing the same goal as our crew this morning. We are working together to sort the animals into the different groups, using the anchor charts we created yesterday. We finished our lesson with the post it note game – we had to think really carefully about the questions and vocabulary we were using!

Well done class five 😊

Animal Experts

15th January 2024Laura Parsons

This morning we used a jigsaw protocol. Each group worked to research a different animal group – we then became experts and presented our learning to everyone else. We even created anchor charts to help us later in our expedition.

We all worked really hard to meet our HOWLt of sharing the same goal as the rest of my crew.

Awesome job class 5 xx

Dead, Alive or Never Alive?

15th January 2024Laura Parsons

We have been learning about life processes in class five this morning. We have then been using our iPads to apply our knowledge to work out what is dead, alive or has never been alive.

I wonder how many you could get right? Here is the link to have a go! https://wordwall.net/resource/64469168

Great job Scientists 🔎

Sharing our Stories: 12/01/2024

12th January 2024Geoff Hewitt

Beautiful Work This Week

Another brick in the wall: Beautiful Work from XP Gateshead

In Autumn 2023, students in Year 9 studied a joint HUMAN and STEAM expedition called ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ where students had to answer the guiding question: ‘How are structures important in helping us to explain our world?’ 

For the final product, students used plaster to create sculptures in the brutalist aesthetic. The Presentation of Learning (PoL) was an unveiling of an installation to the community and dedicated to the people of Gateshead, who have suffered due to the Covid pandemic and the cost of living crisis; both examples of failings of societal structures. Experts, including architects from SOS-UK and Ryder Architecture, whom the students had worked alongside throughout the learning expedition, came along to speak at the PoL at the Farrell Centre, Newcastle University.

The work will be on display there for the foreseeable future!

We Are Artists at Plover

Mel from the XP Trust Comms Crew visited Plover as an Expert Artist – showing Year 5 how to draw trains and teach them about perspective and the vanishing point. The children enjoyed seeing her amazing drawings and made a great start on having a go at their own drawings.

Carcroft’s Fabulous Foyer!

Whilst making an impromptu visit to Carcroft Primary in December, we noticed this! We simply had to get the phone out and take some photos of the wonderful displays on show in the Carcroft foyer area. The array of work exhibited was interesting, engaging and of high quality; and was curated impeccably by the staff – beautiful work!

Top of the Blogs

Who’s hiding in the pages of this book? @ Norton Infants

Crew Jackson – Science Investigations @ Green Top

Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead

Crew Pasteur @ XP

Working Hard @ Plover

C30 – HSBC Money Management @ XP East

Amazing Fieldwork at YWP! @ Carcroft School

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!

Family learning

12th January 2024Anna Wojcik

We enjoyed our family learning time and creating posters on how we can reduce single use plastics to help our environment. We made pledges to show what our family could do at home to help.