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.
Family learning
Crew Thurman
It’s been a busy week in Crew Thurman – we have been busy preparing for our Student Led Conferences next week – we are looking forward to sharing them with our grown ups.
We spent Flexible Friday playing games – we thought it was a great end to the week!
We are looking forward to next week already,.
Mrs Thurman 😊
Once upon a time 📖
The children have enjoyed becoming immersed in our new expedition titled ‘Once upon a time’.
We have been fairytale detectives in our crew sessions, finding clues to work out which fairytale we are exploring that day.
The children have been enjoying our new castle role play area and recreating their own fairytale stories.😊
We have been creating our very own fairytale characters. The children had to decide whether they created a hero or a villain. They all have wonderful imaginations! I’ve got a feeling this will be a magical expedition 🏰👸🤴📖
Super Symmetry
Who’s hiding in the pages of this book?
To begin our spring term expedition Nursery have become Nursery Rhyme Detectives! Our task this week has been to find new clues each day to work out which Nursery Rhyme we are exploring that day. The children have searched high and low for clues and used their existing and new knowledge of Nursery Rhymes to work out which props fit with which Nursery Rhyme. Here are some of the props Nursery have found so far….
Also to immerse ourselves in our new expedition, Nursery have been working collaboratively to create artwork of large scale images of Nursery Rhyme characters and iconic objects. There have also been a couple of rather large mice around the Nursery Building!
Predicting Pip
We kicked off our new expedition by making predictions about what we thought our immersion week text could be about!
We then read the book The Blue Giant and tried to work out what the important message is.
Great start class five!
Sharing our Stories: 22/12/2023
Beautiful Work This Week
Lungs of the World: Beautiful Work from Norton Juniors
In Autumn 2023, Year 5 and 6 across the trust embarked on an expedition with the guiding question: Why should we help our planet survive?
As part of the Expedition, students created their own soft toys based on a chosen animal from the Amazon rainforest – learning about why it is endangered and what we can do to protect the species. The students used ‘The Great Kapok Tree’ as a model text. The pupils wrote their own version of the story through rainforest animals’ eyes for younger children in the form of a book and shared them with Year 2 pupils (along with the soft toys) with the purpose of teaching them about deforestation and its impact.
G30’s first POL at St Mary’s Church, Heworth
In the Autumn term of 2023 students at XP Gateshead studied an expedition called ‘From the ground up’ with the guiding question “What do the communities of the North-East of England owe to the miners?”. They presented their learning from this Expedition on Monday at St Mary’s church – sharing their story and performing the songs they have written to tell the stories of the mining community.
These songs will be recorded in New Year and a CD will be produced!
As part of the presentation, students unveiled a board full of their beautiful work – including narrative accounts, diary entries and artwork relating to the Felling Pit disaster.
The chosen venue for the presentation was also historically significant. Not only is St Mary’s the site of a memorial to the disaster and those who lost their lives, but it is also the final resting place of Thomas Hepburn – the famous miner, Trade Union leader and advocate of better working conditions for miners. The building that XP Gateshead is now based in was once named after him.
Sir Tim Brighouse
We were deeply saddened across the XP Trust to hear about the death of Sir Tim Brighouse on 15th December.Â
Sir Tim was considered to be one of the most important voices and thinkers in education, and a great champion of state schools.
We were very fortunate to be able to welcome him to XP on a couple of occasions and to hear him speak about our school with warmth and encouragement.
He has left a legacy of equity and advocacy for education for all and we are very proud that he is part of our story.
Top of the Blogs
Rail City Launch @ Doncaster Free Press
Enjoying Christmas Lunch in our festive clothes! @ Norton Infants
Crew Spetch Christmas Fun @ Green Top
Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead
There’s s’more from XP Outdoors @ XP
Primary School Christmas Musical @ Norton Juniors
E28 Crew Malala Roundup @ XP East
We’ve got Vacancies at XP Trust!
Visit xptrust.org/vacancies to find out more and apply to #JoinOurCrew
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!
Merry Christmas
It’s the most wonderful time of the year… 🎄✨
What an amazing couple of weeks we’ve had in school. Firstly, I would like to say a huge well done to our Reception children for putting on the most amazing Nativity titled, ‘A Little Bird Told Me’. They all looked the part and did an incredible job performing to their grown ups.
We’ve had a very special visitor in school who put a smile on everyone’s face and brought everyone a gift 🎅🏼
We all looked very festive when we had our Christmas lunch in school…
PARTY TIME!
We’ve all enjoyed our party day and would like to thank you all for your very kind party food donations. It’s safe to say we will be eating more party food tomorrow 😊 We danced, played games and ate some delicious food. Smiles all around 🙂
Enjoying Christmas Lunch in our Festive Clothes
Today we all enjoyed a delicious traditional Christmas lunch while wearing our festive clothes. The children loved talking about their jumpers and dresses in Crew today too. We all did a twirl in front of our friends!
Tranquil Tuesday in Crew Thurman
