This week at Plover, students in EYFS completed a sponsored Bear walk as part of their new Expedition! They raised £1148 to support their local community – and dressed up as bears to perform bear related exercises and have fun during the process! Beautiful work!
Beautiful Curation at XP Gateshead
Last week, Comms installed some new wonderful displays of student work at XP Gateshead. These wall displays are culminations of recent Expeditions and Activism from the last year.
Steplab Coaching @ XP Trust
Last Monday, our staff worked closely with Steplab to start implementing their ICT platform for coaching across XP Trust. Staff spent the day looking at effective coaching and learning and how Steplab can help create a positive culture around it.
Crew JPO/JNO’s Ullswater Story
Over the coming week’s we’ll be sharing more stories of Crew from our recent Outward Bound Expedition – here’s another from Crew JPO/JNO!
It has been a busy start to life for 4TE. Pictured below are some images from when the children were tasked with creating a bridge during Crew Week and as they flexed their architectural minds, they had a brilliant time!
Year 6 undertaking some critical fieldwork (space work). Complete immersion in our upcoming expedition, building background knowledge and asking inquisitive questions were high on the agenda. And, in true British fashion we ended the day with a mighty downpour. What a day!
Whilst hook week is over, the expedition has only just begun. 5CC created their own galaxy art using oil pastels and blending to create light and shade. Each galaxy, like every star in our universe, uniquely different as crafted by our 30 artists!
The class also finished their model solar system and matched the paints to their planets’ distinct colours, ready for our learning about our universe, movement and the unseen forces at play. Awesome work, 5CC!
The end of the week was also signalled by a few (15) rocket launches of our own. With perfect flying conditions and pre-flight checks all green, the class all launched their rockets with most completing their journey across the MUGA. Top job!
What a fantastic week for year 6! This week we have completely immersed ourselves in our expedition and finished with an incredible display of engineering as the children designed, made and launch our own rockets. NASA, we’re coming for your jobs!
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, our guiding question was – How can crew be strengthened by acts of service to other? On Friday, Yr 5 visited The Laurels Residential home in Norton taking freshly baked scones and shortbread fingers. The children spent time making personalised bookmarks and decorating canvas bags which were given to the residents who truly appreciated the children’s visit and gifts.
This morning 3EG were evacuated (temporarily!) to the mission rooms in Norton. We listened to 1940s music, played musical statues and circle games. We also enjoed jam sandwiches and the classic Ovaltine!
