Dear Families

Hard work has continued as always in school this week. In crew, students have been working on their pledges around improving their HoWLs and academic performance. You will receive your child’s snapshot next week and your child will share their pledges with you so that you can see which areas they are targeting for improvement over the coming months.

Craftsmanship and quality is high on our agenda with Presentations of Learning for G28, G29 and G30 in the final two weeks of term. Our students will be working hard on their final products and preparing their responses to the guiding questions that they have been exploring all term. We cannot wait for them to share their beautiful work with you and know that, as always, they will impress with their compassion in supporting each other in the coming weeks, and the courage they will show when presenting their learning to the community. 

On Tuesday G30 students enjoyed working with our expert singer songwriter  Joe Solo on their folksongs which they will perform as part of their final product.

As you know, Mr Devitt graduated on Friday. Crew Parks gave him a great send off as he left site on Friday to attend his graduation ceremony with an impromptu guard of honour. 

Our week ahead 

Extended Study and Clubs

Our full after school offer is available this week with extended study and clubs running. 

PE sessions this week

Our PE sessions this week are as follows. Please ensure that your child has their  full PE kit.

All G30 students (Year 7) have PE on Monday this week.

All G29 students (Year 8) have PE on Wednesday this week.

For G28 students (Year 9)

• G28 Class 2 students have PE on Tuesday and Friday this week. This is to account for the session that was missed due to a staff day.
• Due to the Crew Day this week on Thursday, G28 Class 1 students will have an extra session of PE in a future week to accommodate this.

Crew Day – Thursday 7th December

Every term, we look to run a Crew Day which is an opportunity to ‘tend’ to crew and culture. Crew is our support network at XPG and key to the continued success of everyone at our school, we will revisit what it means to be crew and our responsibilities in getting everyone to the top of the mountain.

On Thursday, students will work with their crew and Crew Leader for the day developing their teamwork, crew identity and wellbeing.

In this week’s Crew Day:

G30 students will start their work on researching suitable people after whom to name their crews – people who have achieved great things and who display our character traits of courage, integrity, respect, craftsmanship and quality, and above all compassion.

G29 will start their work on  looking at which charity they want to support. Students will be putting together their proposals and pitching to the rest of their crew their choice of charity.

G28 will continue their activism work, the awareness raising and charity work they are planning to carry out this academic year. 

Presentations of Learning – a reminder of dates for your diary

G28 – How are structures important in helping us to explain our world? 

G28 will be presenting their learning on the evening of Thursday 14th December in Newcastle. The venue for this is Newcastle University, with part of the evening being held in the Herschel Building Lecture Theatre – where we held our Do Your Bit PoL in Year 7. The other half of the evening will be in the Farrell Centre which is nearby on Claremont Road. We anticipate that the evening will start at 6pm and finish at around 7.30pm. More details to follow on which building to go to first.

G30 – What do the communities of NE England owe to the miners?

G30 will be presenting their learning on the evening of Monday 18th December at St Mary’s Church in Heworth at 6pm-7.30pm.

G29 – What does it mean to be human?

G29 will be presenting their learning on the evening of Tuesday 19th December at XP Gateshead at 6pm-7.30pm.

A reminder that on these evenings, students remain in school to rehearse and polish their presentations. For the events that take place outside of school, we will transport students to the venues. Families are then asked to take students home directly from the venue.

Public speaking and sharing of learning through PoLs are an important element of our school model, and so it is vital that every student has someone from their family that is able to attend and support them in developing their character and demonstrating their academic learning.

As usual if you have any questions about your son or daughter please get in touch with your child’s Crew Leader in the first instance or email general enquiries to [email protected].

Julie Mosley

Principal, XP Gateshead

Dear Families

We hope you have enjoyed your long weekend break, our staff have all been really busy at XP Gateshead planning our curriculum and next term’s expeditions. As you can imagine, there is a huge amount of time and effort spent on planning and preparing for our expeditions which include immersion, work with experts, fieldwork opportunities, guiding questions, anchor texts, high quality final products and presentations of learning. 

Thank you to all G28 families who have attended SLCs over the last two weeks. It has been great to read your exit tickets and see how proud you have been of your children who, once again, have stepped up to the challenge of presenting their work to you, sharing their progress and plans for next step development. We look forward to January now when we will have our next round of SLCs for G29 and G30 students. In advance of this we will have updated snapshots to share with you in the w/c 18th December.

Our week ahead 

Experts in school this week

G30 students will be working with our expert composer Joe Solo turning their mining community interviews into folksong.

Extended Study and Clubs

Our full after school offer is available this week with extended study and clubs running on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. 

Congratulations to Mr Devitt

As you may know, last year Mr Devitt was training in school to gain his full teaching qualification. Mr Devitt has his graduation ceremony this Friday. I know you will join us in congratulating Mr Devitt. We look forward to sharing pictures of Mr Devitt in his full academic gown and mortar board!

PE sessions this week

Due to our staff days and the above, G28 and G30 students will not have PE this week. We will look to rebalance this in a future week.

All G29 students (Year 8) have PE on Wednesday this week. Please ensure that your child has their  full PE kit.

As usual if you have any questions about your son or daughter please get in touch with your child’s Crew Leader in the first instance or email general enquiries to [email protected].

Julie Mosley

Principal, XP Gateshead

Dear Families

Last week was another busy week for us at XP Gateshead. On Monday students were given the opportunity to listen to our remembrance broadcast on Memory Lane Radio. If you have not yet done so, please take some to listen to this wonderful piece of work from G29.

G30 – What do the communities of NE England owe to the miners?

This week G30 students have interviewed more experts from the mining community: Alan Cummings, MP Ian Lavery, Jean Spence & Norman Strike, each with different perspectives on the turbulent times of the 1984 Miners’ Strike and our guiding question.

Students will continue to work with these interviews to turn them into folksong next week with our expert composer Joe Solo who will be working alongside the students to hone their work ready for their Presentation of Learning on the evening of Monday 18th December at St Mary’s Church in Heworth.

G29 – What does it mean to be human?

This week, students have begun to turn more of their attention towards their final product and how we can promote organ donation through our artwork and responses to the guiding question. Andrew Lowes, consultant in anaesthetics and intensive care and clinical lead in organ donation for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital talked to our students about the importance of organ donation and therefore how important their work will be in saving lives in the future. We were also thankful to have Prahalad Nadella in school to talk to students about how Hindu teachings and beliefs contribute to his view on what it means to be human. You will be able to see a temporary installation of the artwork and hear our students; speeches in response to the guiding question at their Presentation of Learning on the evening of Tuesday 19th December at XP Gateshead.

G28 – How are structures important in helping us to explain our world? 

As well as their ongoing work to prepare for and host their SLCs, G28 students have been continuing in their studies of the structure of the atom, including reactivity, isotopes and radiation. Another area of study has been structures in government and society, with students making connections to our anchor text Lord of the Flies. On Friday students spent time preparing for a visit from Alice Wiseman – Director of Public Health for Gateshead who will talk to students about the structures that gave rise to the local response to the pandemic as well as the potential for careers in health. On the subject of careers, G29 students will also have some workshops with SOS connected to our school Climate Action Plan. The workshops this week will focus on Green Careers, an important and growing sector in the Local and National Labour Market.

G28 will be presenting their learning on the evening of Thursday 14th December. We should be able to confirm the venue for this event this week, once some final details have been arranged.

Climate Action Plan Launch

Congratulations to our Climate Action Plan Student Leaders from Year 7: Isaac, Elina, Molly, Freya & James; from Year 8: Reuben S; from Year 9: Hannah, Charlie, Harris &  Evan.

This group of students will be taking feedback from all students across the year to help develop a plan for how our school can be more sustainable.

Our week ahead 

Flu immunisations on Monday

Tomorrow morning nurses will be in school to administer flu vaccinations across all year groups for those students that have been given permission. These should be completed by lunchtime.

G28 Student Led Conferences

For the second week,  our Year 9 students will be presenting their SLC to families. 

Experts in school this week

As mentioned above G28 have Alice Wiseman in school tomorrow morning for their expedition. G28 also have their Careers workshops on Thursday.

On Tuesday, G29 will have experts on organ donation in school, some of whom have direct experience of the life changing impact of donation.

Staff Day on Friday this week and Monday of next week

We have a staff day this coming Friday. The focus for these staff days are forward planning, especially our exciting new learning expeditions for term 2 from January. Students are not expected to be in school on Friday and can work on their accelerated reader programme and any extended study – details of which are on Google Classroom.

PE sessions this week

Our PE sessions this week are as follows. Please ensure that your child has their  full PE kit.

• All G30 students (Year 7) have PE on Monday this week.
• All G29 students (Year 8) have PE on Wednesday this week.
• For G28 students (Year 9)
  • G28 Class 1 students have PE on Thursday this week.
  • G28 Class 2 students would normally have PE on Friday this week but are not in school. We will look to rebalance this in a future week.

Extended Study and Clubs

Like last week, there are some changes to our clubs this week due to SLCs.

This mostly impacts on Thursday’s after school offer; there will be no Nature Club, Geography Club or Multi Sports due to G28 Crew Leaders taking part in SLCs.

Our new dance, multi sports and robotics clubs after school on Wednesdays and Thursdays continue.

If your child attends a sports club, they will need a full PE kit. For dance sessions, students can wear leggings, loose T-shirts and must be in socks or bare feet rather than trainers.

Remember, if a student attends an after school club or extended study session they must attend the full sessions until 4:30pm. 

As usual if you have any questions about your son or daughter please get in touch with your child’s Crew Leader in the first instance or email general enquiries to [email protected].

Julie Mosley

Principal, XP Gateshead

Dear Families

What a great first week back it has been! Our students have returned well and quickly got back into the swing of things, working hard and enjoying the great learning opportunities they have had this week. We’ve had some amazing expert sessions in and outside of school which continue to feed into current expedition work around student response to their guiding questions.

G30 – What do the communities of NE England owe to the miners?

Our year 7 students have worked with several experts this week. On Monday they worked with Alfie Joey who discussed how growing up in a mining community has coloured his life and what he thinks our communities owe to the miners. On Tuesday they worked with Mel and Geoff from our Comms team, respective experts in journalism and podcasting to prepare them for more interviewing members of the mining community. Students will take these stories and turn them into folksong.

On Thursday students went to St Mary’s Church, Heworth where they met with Reverend Lucy to learn more about the connection between the church and the Felling Pit Disaster and to see where they will carry out their presentation of learning in December.

G29 – What does it mean to be human?

This week Year 8 students carried out fieldwork at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Sheriff Hill. This fieldwork connected to the work students have been studying in STEAM sessions on gas exchange and circulatory  systems. Students enjoyed hands-on sessions  in the Respiratory Simulation Room and met the clinical lead for organ donation. They also got the chance to see the area where their final art product will be exhibited.

There has been some stunning artwork this week too from students, which will go towards the final product promoting organ donation in Gateshead Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Climate Action Plan Launch

On Friday, all students met virtually with colleagues from SOS (Students Organising for Sustainability). SOS will be running workshops with all students across the year around their four foci:

• Decarbonisation (Year 9)
• Green careers (Year 9) 
• Adaptation and resilience (Year 8)
• Biodiversity (Year 7)

For example, soon Year 9 students will work on Energy Auditing our current building to determine how efficient it is, and make recommendations on their findings.

As a result of these workshops, a group of student leaders will develop a Climate Action Plan for our school. Students can apply to be part of this leadership group by clicking here. This will be shared with them through student notices too.

G29’s stunning Memory Lane Radio broadcast 

I think that the  biggest highlight of our week though must be our G29 radio  broadcast of unheard voices from WWI. This was played on Memory Lane Radio on Saturday 11th November at 11am as part of their Armistice Day programme. Listening to the beautiful voices and words of our students was simply stunning, their writing was powerful and really emotive. If you didn’t get the chance to tune in on Saturday, here is the recording:

I highly recommend you sit back and enjoy 30 minutes listening to their really important work. Well done to all students and staff involved in this piece of work.

Our week ahead 

G28 Student Led Conferences

This week and next, our Year 9 students will be presenting their SLC to families. 

PE sessions this week

Our PE sessions this week are as follows. Please ensure that your child has their  full PE kit.

• All G30 students (Year 7) have PE on Monday this week.
• All G29 students (Year 8) have PE on Wednesday this week.

For G28 students (Year 9)

• G28 Class 1 students have PE on Thursday this week.
• G28 Class 2 students have PE on Friday this week.

Extended Study and Clubs

There are some changes to our clubs this week due to SLCs (see the schedule below). We are really pleased to add a further two sports clubs on Wednesdays where we will be working with external providers.

If your child attends a sports club, they will need a full PE kit. For dance sessions, students can wear leggings, loose T-shirts and must be in socks or bare feet rather than trainers.

Remember, if a student attends an after school club or extended study session they must attend the full sessions until 4:30pm. 

As usual if you have any questions about your son or daughter please get in touch with your child’s Crew Leader in the first instance or email general enquiries to [email protected].

Julie Mosley

Principal,

XP Gateshead