Dear Parents/Carers

Happy 2023! We hope you have had a great Christmas and a safe and restful New Year. We are looking forward to welcoming students back tomorrow to the start of our new term at XP Gateshead.

Getting a good start…

Punctuality

School opens at 8:00am every morning. Students should arrive between 8:00am and 8:25 am and there are spaces available for socialising, reading or completing extended study. Students must be on site for 8.25am for the call to Crew. A calm start to the day is really important for students to settle into learning so we ask that parents support their child with this.

Daily kit list

As always, students need to bring a school bag with:

• A filled water bottle
• Pencil case including: pens, pencils, ruler, eraser and pencil sharpener
• A fully charged iPad 
• Their AR reading book (please remember that as part of our reading strategy, we expect all students to read between 20-30 mins. each day)
• Headphones 
• A healthy snack for break (no confectionery (sweets), fizzy drinks or energy drinks, nut products)
• A notebook

PE sessions

There are timetable changes for PE this week as there is no PE on the first day back.

• G28 students (Y8) will need their PE kit for Wednesday this week.
• G29 students (Y7) will need PE kit on Thursday this week.

Extended Study and Clubs

Clubs will all run this week along with extended study sessions every day except Friday. As usual, if a student attends an after school club or extended study session they must attend the full sessions until 4:30pm.

New Term – New Expeditions

A new term means new and exciting expeditions for our students. Immersion takes place this week and our students will be working hard to find out what their new guiding questions are and the challenges and new learning their expeditions will bring. 

Curriculum Updates 

There are some curriculum changes which continue to give our students a breadth and depth of experience at key stage 3. 

G29 are studying two new expeditions. As part of their studies for their new HUMAN and ARTS expedition, G28 will be continuing with drama with a new text and also studying computer science to help them to organise and analyse data from an expert.

G29 also have a new STEAM expedition which will include some food technology and a really great final product that will have an impact on our local community.

G28 are studying one new expedition that combines HUMAN, STEAM and ARTS. This will include some really challenging drama and music, both of which will be instrumental to their final product and presentation of learning.

Student-Led Conferences

SLCs (Student-Led Conferences) replace the conventional parents’ evenings at XP Gateshead. During an SLC, your son or daughter will share their learning with you and their crew leader. You will have an opportunity to look at work from their portfolio and ask questions about their HoWLs (Habits of Work and Learning) and AP grades (Academic Progress) .

These SLCs will take place this term in the two weeks commencing 24th January. In the coming weeks you will receive an SLC invite from your son or daughter’s crew leader.  

Over the coming weeks students will be working hard on their pledges and HOWLs in sessions. They will share their progress with you during the SLC and you will be able to ask questions around these. 

Staff Days

A reminder that we have two staff development days this half term; Friday 20th and Monday 23rd January. As normal, students are not expected to be in school on these days.

As usual if you have any questions please contact your child’s crew leader in the first instance. Thank you as always for your ongoing support.

Julie Mosley

Co-principal

Dear Parents/Guardians

What a fantastic week we had last week as our G28 students presented their learning to an audience of their parents and talked about their work in more detail sharing connections they made between different subjects in their expedition “Being Human”. Students were attempting to answer the age-old question – ‘What does it mean to be human?’ and I have to say I was blown away by the quality of their presentations and their work. Thank you to all of our parents for attending and helping to make this such a special evening.

Feedback from parents was overwhelmingly positive and some praises from parents who attended G28 POL were as follows:

“Impressed at the deep level of understanding, compassion, and appreciation.”; “praise the confidence of pupils”;  “impressed by student confidence and the way they presented their knowledge – shows real listening and progress in school”; “the confidence of all the students is astounding – it takes real courage to talk to an audience”; and “the depth of knowledge and thinking is wonderful”

This week

G29 PoL (Presentation of Learning) – Monday 12th December – live streaming event

This coming week we are equally excited about G29’s very first presentation of learning which will be live streamed on Monday evening. This is the culmination of G29’s very first expedition – From the ground Up and students will be answering the guiding Question – ‘What do communities of North East England owe to the miners?’ Our students have been working very hard on preparing for this and we are all excited to see the results.

You can join the live stream by clicking on this link on Monday Evening at 5.30pm.

Clubs and extended study

Please note that there will be no after school clubs or extended study on Monday 12th December because of the G29 PoL however clubs and extended study will be running as normal throughout the rest of the week

PE this week

We apologise for the short notice, but there has been a change that means we need to move PE sessions for this week.

Year 8 this week will be tomorrow: Monday.

Year 7 will have their PE sessions on Tuesday this week.

Early finish this Friday 16th December

Just a reminder to parents that students will be finishing early this Friday. They will be registered after lunch in crew rooms and then will leave school at 1.30pm. This is to allow staff to “de-gunge” and prepare for the start of next term.

Return to School on Tuesday 3rd January

students will be returning to school on Tuesday 3rd January at the normal time and we look forward to seeing our students again in January and starting some new expeditions.

Thank you

Thank you to all our parents and guardians for your ongoing support and trust. We are delighted with the progress your children are making in terms of their beautiful work, character growth and academic success – and know that we will continue to go from strength to strength in the new year. From all at XP Gateshead please have a Happy Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year. 

Best wishes

Mark Lovatt

Co-principal