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Today we held our weekly meeting. It was a pleasure to be part of such a lovely celebration of our HoWL’s superstars. Some great examples of working hard, being kind and getting smart in our Early Years. Well done everyone!
Yesterday Class Six took over Conisbrough Castle. We hopped off the coach and straight into our “History Of The Castle” workshop where we learned all about Lord Hamlin and Lady Isabelle.
After lunch we headed into the grounds of the castle and explored where the prison, hall and kitchen would have been before heading up the tower. We climbed lots of stairs, exploring both Lord Hamlin and Lady Isabelle’s rooms on the way up to the top of the tower, looking over the village of Conisbrough!
We had an amazing day at Conisbrough Castle and learnt so much about it’s history from our expert guide Janet.
We explored inside the stone keep and saw Lord Hamlin and Lady Isabelle’s private rooms and chapel.
We even climbed to the top to see how far the guards could see when they were defending the castle.
After lunch we listened to a story about castle life and heard about the people who would have lived and worked there, we all enjoyed dressing up and getting into character.
We’ve learnt so much to help us along in our expedition ‘From Rags to Riches: What Lies Within the Castle Walls?’
Year 1 had a great day being historians and learning about the life in the past and exploring castles.
We’d like all parent/carers opinions on school dinners, including those who’s children have packed lunches. XP Trust would like as many children as we can having delicious healthy meals so your and your child’s opinions are important to us. Children will be asked about their dinners at school but it would be good to have parent/carer opinions too.
Please complete the below form:
Nursery this week have been thinking about the kind and right thing to do for others as a continuation of our current case study “What do stories tell us about being kind?” We had another visit from our Kindness Elves, who again brought us another story titled “The Bog Baby” by Jeanne Willis. Through this story the children have thought about what being kind really means as sometimes we all would like to take things “home” to look after or keep safe, as we think we can love them better. However is this always the right and kindest thing to do for that being? The girls in the story find out that this is not the case.
The children listened carefully to the story and thought hard about the kind of environment that the Bog Baby lives in. They explored what a pond and bog actually are. The children had lots of fun putting on their imaginary goggles and pretending to swim in a pond thorough the use of a real life video of under a ponds surface. As the children swam they thought about what they could see through the murky, green water such as mud, stones, plants and creatures that live in and under the pond. They thought about the smell of the pond and their clothes as they got out!
This weeks “Get Smart” tasks were to create a bog of their own in provision using materials and larger loose parts. The children also had lots of fun exploring the pond we had created in the water tray to enhance this weeks provision. The children loved investigating what pond creatures they could find amongst the stones and plants in the green water. As a separate active task the children were asked to observe two tanks of water, one taken from the sea and one from a pond. They were encouraged to go and stand by the tank which they thought the Bog Baby would prefer to live in, thinking about the creatures feelings. The majority of children choose correctly, stating “He likes the green, dirty water best”.
Our beautiful work this week was to create our own Bog Baby’s using salt dough. We closely observed and counted the features of the character and the children then used their wonderful imaginations to create a Bog Baby of their own. They had lots of fun squashing, squelching, moulding, rolling and marking the dough to shape and add details with a tool to their creations. They then enhanced their bog babies using small loose parts to decorate add features to their models. Just look how beautiful they are!
Finally we re-read the story and thought about whether the actions of the girls taking the Bog Baby home in a jam jar to live in their shed was the right and kind thing to do? We discussed this individually and these are some of the children’s responses.
Well done Nursery – another busy but wonderful week!
Check out this actively awesome video courtesy of Yorkshire Sport Foundation. The children and staff at Plover were superstars in explaining their positive experiences regarding the OSF funding they secured last year, to provide after school and community clubs! Plover have been lucky enough to secure some OSF funding this year too, so watch this space for Community Clubs starting in October! #LovePlover
We don’t just ensure our work is made public – it needs to live inside our school communities, too! More beautiful work has been curated at Plover School, celebrating their ‘Pride of Plover’ award winners and recent Expedition products!
One of our great friends and mentors, Ron Berger, once said to us that ‘staff culture can never outpace student culture.’ With this firmly at the forefront of our minds we set out last week on our bi-annual outdoor staff induction process with a group of educators from across our Trust.
We headed out into the wilderness to answer the guiding question, ‘What does it mean to be Crew?’ through a number of shared experiences and activities our Crew formed very quickly. We explored the purpose of Crew deeply and considered how we could make Crew even stronger on our return to our respective schools so that we continue to create the culture in which our students grow their character and make our community and the world a better place for everyone.
Below is an immediate reflection from one of our XP educators:
‘This experience has helped me to understand the building of community. The support that other members of our Crew showed this week has been immense. There have been some activities that have been challenging but everybody has been supportive whilst giving positive challenge so that everybody has been able to push themselves in a safe environment where everybody trusts each other and it’s lifted me and made me feel that I can achieve anything I put my mind to with the support of other people.’ – Louise
It was an honour and privilege to support and challenge our adults to reflect on the imperative we all have at XP to become and create great learners and even better human beings!
We are Crew!
Andy Sprakes and Kate ap Harri
Find out more and apply here to #JoinOurCrew
Year 5 Teacher/Leader at Carcroft School
F2 Teacher/Leader at Carcroft School
Here are our latest Be Kind, Work Hard and Get Smart superstars!! It is proving very difficult to choose just 6 stars every week as all of our Reception children are demonstrating excellent habits of work and learning in their first few weeks of full time school….Well done everyone!!
One of our favourite times of the day in class 1 is story time. At choosing time I often find the children hooked in a book in our reading areas both inside and out! It’s wonderful to see…
