On Friday students carried out fieldwork at St Mary’s Cemetery in Heworth. Whilst there, students noticed the plaque for the victims of the Felling Pit Disaster and the tribute to them inside the cemetery gates.

You may remember that we dedicated our music from our presentation of learning to the 92 that lost their lives as a result of the events on that day.

Here are the authors of the Felling Colliery section of the book in front of the plaque: Delaney, Katie and Lucy

Below is an extract from their writing for the book, which addresses the disaster with compassion and sensitivity. Beautiful work!

“The history of Felling Colliery is heartbreaking. The mining conditions were similar to other mines; terrible. The conditions in all mines including Felling were really hot or cold depending on how far away from the door you were.

Sadly a lot of men were getting injured while going down the mine. They would describe conditions as cramped, torrid and exhausting. For example, William Holle was a miner at age 15 for 4 years. He broke his thigh and was unable to work for 2 years because a waggon rode over his leg. He still suffered from dust inhalation throughout his life and said it made him feel dry inside; “it gives me heartburn.”

The colliery suffered four disasters in the 19th century. The disasters were in 1813, 1821 and 1847 as well as 1812 which was the most major of all the tragic events. It was on 25th May 1812 when firedamp (methane) caused an explosion. A miner had come into contact with firedamp underground. The flame of his candle caused the mine to go up in flames in a huge explosion. Of the 128 working in the pit at that time 92 miners had died and the rest luckily made it out alive. Since the disaster had affected a lot of miners and their families, from that point on, the government required miners to use safety lamps when going down the mines. This makes the Felling Pit Disaster a really important moment, not just because of the awful loss of life, but also for the improvements to mining conditions that came as a result of the uproar from the public and from miners.”

Both classes have had double sessions today in HUMAN writing as a person or animal on the battlefield during WWI.

Both classes have impressed me so much with their focus, their commitment and their kindness when offering critique to each other; knowing that telling someone how their work could be better is the kindest thing we can do for each other.

I would strongly encourage you to ask your child to show you their descriptive writing that they have been working on because the students should be really proud. I also know they would welcome your feedback too to help them improve it even further before the deadline for redrafting on Monday.

Well done to the XPG Crew today!

In Minecraft Club this evening Liam and Daniel started building a Gurdwara following our fieldwork to our local temple earlier this week.

Beautiful work gents!

Ethan used his time in Extended Study yesterday evening to get more work done on his team’s robotics kit. Not only that, he has organised the work in progress, labelling up the different elements which are nearing completion.

Great work Ethan.

Today Daniel set up an experiment on our school site. He has installed a can with a pinhole through to photo sensitive paper, onto a south facing fence. Over the coming months this will track the motion of the Sun as we move from Winter into Spring.

What a great idea, and thanks Daniel for bringing this into school!

Good morning, we hope that you have all had a lovely Christmas with your families.

It being a rainy day this morning I have been looking at the geology writing that students were working on for our ‘From The Ground Up’ book.

I just wanted to highlight a really smart strategy that Isabelle has been using to ensure that here writing contains everything that it needs to.

In her prep, Isabelle has been highlighting key information in the model. Likewise, she has been indicating when she has included important information in her prose paragraph by highlighting her notes. This has led to a really solid introductory paragraph.

Smart and beautiful work Isabelle, well done!

Product work continues in HUMAN sessions this week. I am SO impressed with the student’s work, as well as their commitment to producing something really important.

Some top quotes from today:

“I am trying to do an excellent job because this is for our final product and it is important.”, “I am really proud of my writing this lesson.” , “Maybe you could try and find a better synonym for sad?”

As well as students appreciating each other for:

“Really getting their head down”, “Giving me really kind critique”, “asking for critique and using my feedback to redraft their work”, as well as noticing that “he had a shaky start but I explained what he needed to do and he got really focused and then did some great work.”

The classroom culture that these students are nurturing is BRILLIANT.

Well done XPG!