Not long now until we go to watch Leeds Rhinos at the EIS Sheffield
Few details and reminders
Students to meet on XP east stairs at 5.30, the event is indoors.
Students can bring money to buy refreshments or merchandise at the event. You are allowed to take in your own snacks and drinks (no cans or glass).
Return to school for 22.15 (students to contact on the way home) Meet in car park 3 near the XP east entrance. Please be mindful that Doncaster Rovers are at home so there could be traffic around this area. Students will be waiting at the gate entrance to school in car park 3, where staff will dismiss when they see parents.
Better World Day is EL Education’s annual event showcasing student learning that contributes to a better world. Students work in partnership with each other and their local communities on this day to engage in and celebrate meaningful student work that positively impacts the world around them.
As a partner and friend of the EL Schools Network, XP Trust contributes to this every year. Like students at EL, all of our students are active citizens who engage in acts of service to their community – so naturally we have lots of Activism to share with the EL Crew.
This year, we’re celebrating all of our schools and their collective work. They’ve planted trees, created artwork for hospitals and raised money for worthy causes. Here’s just a few examples from this year of XP Schools making the world a better place.
Visitors from Northern Ireland!
Last week we welcomed a delegation from Catalyst Schools, an organisation in Northern Ireland that supports school leaders and teachers by exposing them to innovative educational experiences. Over the visit, they learned all about Crew and Expeditions from our awesome students at XP and XP East – including going to see world from across the Trust in Doncaster City Centre. As always we are delighted to welcome visitors into our Crew and share the beautiful work our students do every single day with the world.
This half term all Year 9 classes have been taking part in the Faster Reader Scheme, with the goal of increasing students’ reading ages. All of Crew Pasteur really enjoyed their novel ‘Legend’, and half of the crew increased their reading age by well over 6 months. Here are Bella, Summer, Neave, Ellis, Caleb and Kacper. A special mention MUST go to Bella, as her reading age improved by over FOUR YEARS!! Impressive Bella!
You can also see beautiful Maths work from Neave, and Science work from Kacper.
Last week the Year 7 Netball teams took part in a tournament with a number of different schools in Doncaster. The teams dedication, team work and resilience paid off having numerous wins across both teams.
The Year 9 Netball team then had a game at home which they unfortunately didn’t win. However, the girls put on a great fight and the skills they had been working hard on during training showed during their match and they did not stop until the final whistle!
The Year 7, 9 and 10 boys football teams have had 2 football games in the past week with the 9s winning both their games and the other teams putting on a fantastic performance but unfortunately couldn’t quite claim victory.
We have lots of new extra curricular clubs happening after the Easter break and we hope to see lots of new and familiar faces. Keep your eyes peeled for what is coming up.
Crew SMI have had another busy term. From visiting a Gurdwara to running a mile for the British Heart Foundation, Crew SMI have well and truly done it all this term. We’ve had some ups and downs, but we’ve made it through as a crew. We’d like to share a couple of our highlights from this term.
Highlight 1 – Passing our SLCs
We spent a few weeks preparing for our Student Led Conferences, gathering work to show our parents – work we were proud of, work we found challenging and work we needed to further improve. We all worked really hard to put together a presentation showing these pieces of work. Everyone completed their SLC and passed! Here’s a few of us with our certificates.
Highlight 2 – World Book Day
Crew SMI decided to dress up as characters from the famous book ‘The Lorax’ by Dr. Suess. We spent a few days planning our outfits, ensuring everyone had a character to portray. Then on the day, we arrived early and got into our costumes, ready to attend Community Meeting as our Lorax characters. Were we the only ones dressed up that day? Yes. Yes we were. But we didn’t care, as we had great fun choosing characters and coming up with costume ideas. It really brought us together as a crew. We did get a few funny looks and laughs throughout the day though, but we stayed in character. It was a great day and we can’t wait till next year to do it all again… but as who?
To finish the term on a high, Crew SMI celebrated Easter with a few games and an Easter basket full of goodies each. We hope you all have a wonderful Easter break and eat lots of chocolate!
Crew CBU have had a great start to the term- today we looked at the impact energy drinks can have on children. Crew were really surprised to find out the amount of sugar and caffeine content they contained.
Crew also had a fantastic first couple of days with a check in on Monday – learning what everyone got up to over the holidays and tranquil Tuesday where all students made sure they had a book to read and completed some independent reading to start the day.
Today, we had the most wonderful opportunity to attend the private launch of the exhibition dedicated to Sir Nigel Gresley at Danum Gallery Library and Museum. Here, a brochure created by XP was distributed to the VIP guests – some direct descendants of Sir Nigel, and other royalty amongst the rail community! Amongst these were the Chair of the Gresley Society, the Mayor, CEO of Danum Gallery – Damian, the regional director of Freightliner, and the director of the National Railway Museum!
Oscar and Seb were phenomenal representatives of XP School, and it was so lovely to see the rail experts (and the Civic Mayor) engage with them and discuss Doncaster’s rail heritage. Seb even made the rail experts a little teary when he described Sir Nigel as one of his heroes!
More to follow in the coming days… keep your eyes peeled. We’ll leave you with the lovely buffet we got to enjoy, too!
Crew have been busy writing appreciations to other students in their year group, looking at the effects of energy drink on our bodies and then fed back to crew looking at the books they’re reading!
We also looked at praise and conduct and analysed crew attendance.
Crew attendance is looking pretty good and students have worked really hard to improve this.
Last week, we met all of our agreed actions from our SOS analysis! Those of us with 0 conduct points headed to the sports hall on Thursday… for a ‘friendly’ (unless your name is Mr Morrison!) game of dodgeball to burn off some energy!
After writing apology postcards and discussing the reasons for conduct points, the rest of our crew (and Miss Cocliff!) headed over to join in.
Luckily, Mr Morrison’s knees juuuuuust about held up, and we were able to get a couple of action shots. I’ll still claim I’m the best at catching (not dodging) though!
It was lovely to see compassion and integrity in crew. Great game, guys – I look forward to our next sporty reward!
