Y2 have kicked off our Autumn expedition in style with a fun filled week of activites. To start the week, we had an exciting visit from an expert – Mr Lamb!!
We have been artists. We spent the week creating stained glass windows, castle flags, clay shields and tissue paper torches. We have also been looking at the story of Cinderella, thinking about the characters and of course Cinderella’s glass slippper. To finish the week we threw a party fit for princes and princesses – all the children came dressed to impress with their own crowns and played party games, ate buns and revealed our title and guiding question.
It has been lovely getting to know the children over the last two weeks and we are so excited to full jump into our expedition!
As part of the close to an amazing hook week, last Friday the children came in their summer clothes and brought in their special soft toys and teddies to share a picnic with their new friends. The children and their families kindly donated food to show an example of how we are kind and share. We all had lots of fun and it was a special end to a very positive first week exploring our new autumn expedition “Be Kind – How do we show we care?”
Class 1 really enjoyed their first P.E session. They really impressed us with their super listening ears. They demonstrated their balancing skills and even took part in some team games.
The children have enjoyed a delicious picnic in the sunshine today. Thank you to all the parents for your kind donations. The children had such a lovely time and it was a great way to end the week.
We celebrated the end of our second full week in Reception with our Community Meeting in the sunshine. It was lovely to see lots of happy, smiley faces talking about the fun that we have had this week in crew. It was very difficult to choose our stars of the week for working hard, been kind and getting smart as all children have continued to amaze us. Well done Reception.
Welcome to our first selection of beautiful work from the brand new 2024/2025 academic year!
Highlights from our first week back!
At XP Trust we always use our first week back to establish and reaffirm our culture of Crew. This year has been another resounding success as young people across our schools have considered deeply the purpose of Crew through a range of opportunities and experiences and how Crew develops character and service so that they can help themselves, others and the wider community to be compassionate and successful.
At Carcroft we saw students engaging fully in a community meeting reflecting on their habits of work and learning and expressing what working hard, getting smart and being kind looks like every day at school. Students at Norton Infants Y5 visited local Care Homes delivering glasses cases they had made as well as treats! At Plover students were working alongside the RSPCA to capture and tell the stories of abandoned pets and, alongside drawing beautiful pictures of the animals, helping to find them homes as well as creating stunning murals in a street art style to promote the importance and legacy of Crew.
Students at Green Top took part in a fundraising Colour Run which was quite frankly spectacular whilst also creating kindness key rings that they gifted to members of the community! At XPG, Year 8 showed their qualities as leaders of their own learning by planning, organising and leading Year 7 activities including creating resources and fieldwork opportunities for their peers. Finally at XPD, students carried out acts of random kindness at the Lake side and welcomed past students who came back to school to talk about how Crew and their time at XP shaped the beautiful people they are today.
It was striking to hear a member of staff at Carcroft say, ‘I’ve been teaching for over twenty years and this is the best start back I’ve ever experienced.’ – I think that says it all!
In addition, our new Year 7’s from XP Doncaster and XP Gateshead spent their first days of secondary school building Crew together in the Lake District with Outward Bound. This is something we have been proud to do with our students for ten years now and it was inspiring to see students cultivating resilience, compassion and teamwork – especially through some very adverse weather! We are looking forward to seeing Crews grow together over the coming years…
Andy Sprakes at BridgeFest
Our Chief Academic Officer, Andy Sprakes was the keynote speaker at Spaghetti Bridge’s ‘BridgeFest’ earlier this week. He shared beautiful work and stories from our students at XP as part of their inspiring itinerary celebrating the last year. We are proud to be a part of their story and a key influence on the work that they do.
XP Alumnus Alfie is Oxford bound!
Alfie Lockey was part of the X22 cohort at XP and left two years ago to study for his A Levels at New College. His results of 3 A*s and and A, helped secure him a place at one of the oldest and renowned universities in the world – Christ Church College, Oxford. Alfie will be studying biology; a lifelong love and something that during his time at XP was actively encouraged and supported.
He created an allotment at school, had an opportunity to take part in an online conference organised by the Edge Foundation, which addressed climate change. That day Alfie spoke alongside the co-creator of the Eden Project in Cornwall, Sir Tim Smit KBE. An office at XP also became the perfect place for Alfie to experiment with growing a variety of plants for several years; bringing a touch of hot house greenery to XP!
CAO of the XP Trust, Andy Sprakes commented:
“Alfie is one of our many alumni who are already making a positive difference to the world. We’re always thrilled to hear about how our students are progressing and where they are now – they will always be part of our Crew.”
XP Doncaster’s High Flying Birds
In Summer 2024, XP and XP East’s Year 8 students embarked on Learning Expedition called ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’, where they aimed to answer the guiding question: ‘Is migration worth the risk?’.
In Art, they looked at the work of artists who used imagery of birds to represent migration. Leonardo da Vinci studied anatomy and used that to design flying machines. The students took his ideas and constructed their own three dimensional bird designs. They then made large scale sculptures of the birds that you can see on display, here. Before culminating in the display, the sculptures were paraded at this summer’s inaugural XP Festival of Arts & Culture.
During crew week, Class Six asked ourselves “Does crew stop at the school gates?” We decided to be Norton Book Fairies and between Y2 delivered 20 books around Norton. These were left around the village for people to find and take home.
We hope everyone is enjoying our books and leaving them around the village for other people to find!!
Over the past eight days of this brand new school year, Nursery have been immersing themselves, exploring and adjusting to their new environment. The children have had lots of fun and have began to make new friendships through Crew and playing together. We have been learning all about what Crew is and how we gather for Crew each day, circling up and sharing information about ourselves. We have taken part in crew challenges where the children have had to work together to play simple games and compete against either Crew Mortimer or Crew Winkley. The children have worked very hard to understand and take part in the games and shown courage when talking in their Crews.
Passing the ball above their heads in their crew line.
Gathering balls and replacing them in the baskets – fastest crew first.
We also had some surprise visitors this week that have helped us to begin to understand how to spread kindness. They were the “Kindness Elves” and they brought with them gifts for the children which were Everywhere Bears for each crew. These bears will be sent home each week with a child from both crews, to have adventures of their own, just like the children from our hook text “The Everywhere Bear” by Julia Donaldson and Rebecca Cobb. The children are very excited to have met the elves and have been trying hard to show kindness to each other.
