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A great big thank you to the staff from DMBC Waste and Recycling Education Team who visited Y4 on Wednesday and held a workshop around the importance of recycling waste products and the journey it takes when leaving our bins. The session was highly engaging and interactive, incredibly informative and both the children and staff learnt a thing or two about how we should be recycling our household waste!
This week, 6CC have enjoyed learning about the Doncaster Plant Works and its use throughout and after Industrial Revolution. After exploring the five stages of its development, the children created their own informational flap books as well as drawing their own unique covers for each of the phases. This was a piece of work where many members of the class enthusiastically took it upon themselves to write about the Plant and present their work as beautifully as they could. Awesome work, class!
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…
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!
Delicious Recycling @ Norton Infants
Crew Oldridge’s Experiments @ Green Top
Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead
XP Outdoors – Mindfulness Walk @ XP
Crew Challenge @ Carcroft School
Problem Solving – Square Numbers @ Norton Juniors
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!
We finished this week in Mathematics with some problem-solving activities. The students were showing resilience and perseverance by using a trial and error method to try and order the numbers so the adjacent numbers were added together to make a square number.
What an amazing first week we had back at school! Here, the children undertook a variety of tasks and activities that built towards revealing our Expedition Title and Guiding Question: There is no Planet B and Why Should we Protect our Wonderful World. The week began with a gallery walk critiquing the work of Hull based artist Mandy Barker and was followed by some graphite drawings of woodland animals. We then revealed our Core Text: The Last Bear and imitated the cover picture in our own style. Our children were also physically as well as mentally active and took part in a local litter pick where we counted, categorised and recycled our rubbish. The innumerate number of tin cans collected from this litter pick were used to create some amazing artwork that will form part of our final product. Both Y3 and 4 engaged in a breathtaking and immersive VR experience and if that wasn’t enough, our pupils managed to write their scripts for their Student Led Conferences this week. Indeed, what a week!
Last week, Year 6 embarked on fieldwork to Doncaster City Centre and Danum Museum to discover how the Industrial Revolution has influenced Doncaster today. We found out that Doncaster Plant Works were pivotal in the development of trains and took a tour around Doncaster looking at Victorian buildings and their purpose then and now. We concluded our trip with a visit to Danum Museum where we found out more about Doncaster’s rail heritage.
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!
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.
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!
Who’s hiding in the pages of this book? @ Norton Infants
Crew Jackson – Science Investigations @ Green Top
Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead
C30 – HSBC Money Management @ XP East
Amazing Fieldwork at YWP! @ Carcroft School
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!
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.
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.
We were deeply saddened across the XP Trust to hear about the death of Sir Tim Brighouse on 15th December.
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.
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
Visit xptrust.org/vacancies to find out more and apply to #JoinOurCrew
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!
A massive well done to the fabulous children who took part in the Christmas musical last night. They put on a super performance, sang their hearts out and delivered their lines like oscar worthy actors. Their hard work, giving up their lunch times, staying after school and being pulled out of classes paid off, with them giving a performance of a lifetime. Well done to everybody who took part, we are incredibly proud of you!
Our latest Trust publication ‘Rail City’ was launched at the amazing Doncaster Gallery, Library and museum – DGLaM.
The book, an updated and lavishly illustrated compendium of all the work created by students across the Trust, over the last five years, captures our city’s rail heritage – and future.
It is also timely as 2023 is the Flying Scotsman’s Centenary year, the iconic steam engine built here in Doncaster.
Our thanks go to the team at DGLaM and the city council who have facilitated the launch and supported our work across the Trust.
‘Rail City’ will be on sale in DGLaM, the TIC and Waterstones in the Frenchgate Centre. The perfect present for anyone who loves rail, trains and local history. (You can also purchase the book from our online shop!)
We continue to welcome delegates from all over the world. Last week our friends and partners from the Wood Foundation in Scotland joined us once again with 25 teachers from schools in the Aberdeen area.
Over two days they looked at Crew, expeditions and the bigger picture of what we do and how we do it.
They even enjoyed a tour of our students’ work in the heart of Doncaster.
Last but not least as you can see from the photograph with their Crew they also joined in with our charity Christmas Jumper day!
Dave Evans ran a series of awesome workshops for our Year 7 students with professional musicians! Our students improvised, created digital beats, sang and played the drums!
Making Someone Smile at Christmas @ Norton Infants
A Spanish Extravaganza! @ XP Trust
Year 3/4 Presentation of Learning @ Green Top
Jujitsu Success @ XP Gateshead
Crew Pasteur Working Hard @ XP
Bazaar Bonanza at NJS @ Norton Juniors
Our Christmas themed day was a big success @ XP East
Visit xptrust.org/vacancies to find out more and apply to #JoinOurCrew
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!
