This October half term, 9 members of staff from across XP Trust travelled to San Diego to work with the best project based learning teacher in the world – Jeff Robin. Each teacher brought with them a personally crafted exemplar – a tangible product of their passion and planning – to refine and inspire transformative future Expeditions.
Inspired by Jeff’s groundbreaking work at High Tech High, the school that inspired XP, they sought to elevate their teaching through creativity, activism, and lasting legacy. Away from the familiar, they embraced new ideas in a setting that ignited their imagination…
Stay tuned for the full length documentary and story of Jeff Tech High…
We have been working hard on creating portraits of local people who endured the Second World War. Here is a catalogue of our work that includes children who attended Norton School in the late 1930s and two local soldiers, both born in Norton, who sadly died in service. We aim to honour the memories of those affected and in particular the local service men and women that were lost due to this conflict. Norton Remembers.
Stanley Mynett Leading Aircraftman – Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve Born in Doncaster in 1920 Died 6 May 1944, aged 23
Artwork by Luna
Horace Potter Private – West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales’s Own) – 2nd Bn. Born in Doncaster in 1919 Died 1 September 1942, aged 23
XPD hosted eight visitors from the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust – an organisation established in 1884 – that is one of the top ten charities in the world . The visitors are looking at models of education, visiting XPD to see how and why we do what we do. The feedback they left about our team and students was wholly positive. They were ‘touched, impressed and inspired’. We hope to be able to welcome them again soon.
Bikeability at Plover!
Plover Primary had an exciting and active day, thanks to the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, who awarded the school a cycling workshop with triple Olympic Gold Champion and Active Travel Commissioner, Ed Clancy. This recognition was given for Plover’s dedication to promoting active travel and the high participation of their students in the Mayor’s Walk and Wheel Challenge. The Bikeability Trust, led by CEO Emily Cherry, generously donated balance bikes to the children, further supporting the school’s commitment to encouraging cycling from an early age.
Cycle North also played a key role, delivering ‘learn to ride’ workshops that taught 26 KS2 pupils how to ride a bike for the very first time. Additionally, Judith Shaw from Doncaster Council Road Safety Education kindly donated bike lights to the school. The day concluded with an inspirational whole school assembly led by Ed Clancy, where children were celebrated with Bikeability badges and snap bands for their achievements.
Check out our creative Flexible Friday Halloween crafts and super scary outfits today. We also spent the afternoon taking part in a spooky Halloween Hunt. Happy half term everyone!
Last week, year 5 embarked upon case study 2 (physics) discovering why unsupported objects fall to the ground. Here we are completing 2 scientific investigations using Newton meters to measure the weight of objects and investigating how the mass of an object affects how fast it falls to the ground.
Y4 were lucky enough to have some visitors this week – Y6 children who wished to share their non-chronological reports about the planets within our solar system. I must say, hats off to the year 6 children – the quality of their work, expression when reading and ability to engage with their younger y4 counterparts was quite phenomenal. Just as special, was the will and want of the year 4 pupils to thank the year sixes for sharing their amazing work – and each child wrote a postcard to offer such thanks. Beautiful.
Have you seen these beautiful newly curated areas at Green Top – awesome spaces for students to learn and play in!
A great sporting week at XP Doncaster!
On Monday, students met a few of the Doncaster Rovers first team players and were able to have photos and get autographs from the players. Students asked questions about the life of a professional athlete and the journey that the players have been on playing for different clubs. It was great to hear the players speak about our character traits and how these character traits link to sport.
Then on Tuesday students visited Hill House school to listen to Olympic gold medal GB hockey player Sam Queck. Her experience as an athlete and the ups and downs she has faced really helped our students to understand that if you want something in life you have to work hard for it! Students were able to have a photo and ask questions to Sam at the end – they even held her gold medal.
5CC have been busy bees working away on their child-friendly non-chronological reports. After being allocated a planet in hook week, the children recently researched and recorded all sorts of juicy facts about their planet. Now, they have utilised their understanding of subordinating conjunctions and parenthesis to ensure their reports pack a factual punch, with some humour of course!
