Dear Families
When we get to the end of the day on Friday, staff and students head home for what is always a well-deserved weekend rest. There is no wonder when you look at all that is achieved in a week at XPG. As always, I will try to capture some highlights from this week.
Club Tasters
As well as tasty tacos on Friday (see above), this week our students had the chance to try some of the clubs on offer this year before school, at lunchtime or after school. As a small school, it can be challenging to offer a wide variety of extra-curricular opportunities but staff at XPG always go that extra mile and it has been wonderful to see such a choice of clubs offered as well as daily extended study clubs. We have extended our offer this year with more sports clubs, a school newspaper, psychology, languages clubs including Mandarin, music and arts opportunities and targeted study support. It is great to see real leadership in our students with some G28 student leaders running clubs this year in girls football and cheerleading.
Please encourage your son/daughter to get involved in clubs and make use of an extended study slot or two to keep on top of their work load with help on hand from their peers and staff.
G29 Fieldwork
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Once again G29 students worked on a university campus at Newcastle University, beginning preparation for their final product, which will be sound installations as part of the ‘Concrete Dreams’ exhibition at the Farrell Centre for architecture. They also were able to spend time at the beautiful Edwardian Hatton Gallery, considering how abstract art can use visual structures to illicit meaning. In both settings students had input from our expert partners and were able to make further connections between the arts and design and their wider expedition and guiding question “How can structures help to explain our world?’
Open Evening
On Tuesday we held our Open Evening and welcomed over 400 people to our school. As you know, on evenings like this our students take centre stage and as always, they shine.
Families attended 4 sessions – XPG Mythbusting, Beautiful work, Character and Academic Success. Every session, apart from the Mythbusting one, was a showcase ran by students who shared the work done at XPG and answered questions from their audience.
The positive feedback on exit tickets was stunning, our students definitely communicated our culture well with very few questions left unanswered. Here is just one of the many comments we received:
“I just wanted to say what a brilliantly executed evening it was last night and what absolute stars the students were. They were so articulate, passionate and professional. They gave thoughtful answers and were fantastic ambassadors for their school. I have seen a couple of them present previously and the difference in their confidence and presentation skills was remarkable.”
The confidence shown by our young people and their ability to articulate what we do and why we do it is stunning and we are extremely proud and grateful to all students who were involved. A thank you to families too who supported this event.
G31 Fieldwork
Our history and our story forms the backdrop for G31’s first learning expedition with a timeline that starts in the events surrounding the Norman invasion of England in HUMAN sessions and brings in the development of our society, our language, church and industry. In STEAM students have already studied the industrial revolution and how we exploited our mineral wealth in the coal-powered Industrial Revolution. In the last few lessons, students have taken that same timeline and looked at our geological story, in the deep past. The fieldwork this week helped students to see how, by working alongside our expert, they could make inferences about 250 million years ago just by looking at the rocks in Marsden Bay. It also helps that we picked a perfect day in terms of the weather, although conditions were not quite the tropical temperatures from the Permian Period when those rocks were first laid down.
And as always, we are working hard, getting smart and being kind
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We continue to challenge our students in every session around our habits of work and learning (HOWLs). Our students reflect on their HOWLs each week during Thoughtful Thursday Crew session, setting pledges for the week ahead and challenging each other to be better and offering support to each other to get there. Over the next two weeks our staff will be entering their assessment of students’ current HOWLs and academic performance in each subject. This will be shared with students and their families after the half-term in preparation for our first Student-Led Conferences this year.
Our week ahead
Extended Study and Clubs
Our clubs will all run this week (see schedule below) along with extended study sessions every day except Friday. If a student attends an after school club or extended study session they must attend the full sessions until 4:30pm.
Our before-school fitness and running clubs on Tuesday and Thursday will start at the earlier time of 7.45am this week.
PE sessions this week
- G30 students (Year 8) have PE on Monday
- G31 students (Year 7)
- Class 1 have PE on Tuesday
- Class 2 have PE on Wednesday
- G29 students (Year 9) have PE on Thursday
- G28 students (Year 10) have PE on Thursday
Looking ahead to next week
Half term break starts Friday 18th October
On Friday 18th October, we will finish at 1:30pm as is our usual for our end of half-term de-gunge. This allows classrooms packs to be replenished and checks carried out to ensure that spaces are ready for learning when we come back from the break.
We return to school on Monday 4th November at the normal start time.
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].
Thank you as always for your ongoing support. Together we are stronger #WeAreCrew.
Julie Mosley
