Winnie made the ‘Swim England Regional Championships’ this weekend. Winnie keeps on getting better and better with some new personal bests in the pool. Great work Winnie.
Category : Front Page News
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We’ve got a vacancy at XP Gateshead!
We’re looking for a Learning Coach (teaching assistant) and Crew Leader at XP Gateshead!
Find out more and apply now to #JoinOurCrew.
Dear Year 6 Families
We are delighted to be able to announce the calendar of transition events that we have planned to welcome your children and your family into our community at XP Gateshead.
More details on each of these events will follow in due course, but here is an overview of the activities so that you can plan ahead and discuss this with your child.
Online Family Meetings
This week we will send details of how to sign up for an online family meeting. Meetings will be in the fortnight commencing 15th May. These take place via Google Meet during the evening and are with a senior leader in the school. The meetings are a first chance for us to meet you and your child, to find out about them and discuss our expectations as a school. Your meeting will last up to 30 minutes.
Primary School Visits
We aim to visit every child in their Primary School starting from the week commencing 22nd May. This is done by members of our transition team and means that as well as seeing your child in an educational setting, they get to know another friendly face before they come to us.
In-Person Information Evening for parents/carers
We will be holding an In-Person Information Evening at our school on 7th June at 6pm.
It is important that all families attend as we will give important information about the Outward Bound course that takes place for all students at the start of Year 7 as well as our iPad scheme. In addition, we will address some of the misconceptions about our school so that families are completely clear on what we are: ‘A mainstream school with a relentless focus on beautiful work, character growth and academic success’, and also what we are not. There will be an opportunity for you to ask us questions too of course.
Due to the size of our temporary accommodation, we ask where possible that a maximum of two people from each family attend this event.
Transition Days at XP Gateshead
Your children will join us in school on Tuesday 4th July and Wednesday 5th July. Again more details of these days will follow in due course. Like a regular school day, students can arrive in school from 8:00am but need to be present by 8:25am. Our school day finishes at 3:15pm.
Your child will follow a typical day at XPG on both days which include some crew sessions, expedition sessions and a community meeting.
Meet your child’s Crew Leader
Following the transition days, on Thursday 6th July we will invite parents and carers into school in the evening to meet your child’s new Crew Leader. We expect all families to attend this event. We are proud of the strong relationships that we form with families at XP Gateshead and this is an important opportunity for you to begin to build that relationship with the person that will be the key adult for your child when they start with us. As well as our cross-curricular learning expeditions, our pastoral structure Crew is what sets us apart from other schools.
Information Gathering
A huge thanks to all of those families that have completed the Google Form to let us know about you and your child. We will also gather information from Primary Schools over the coming term so that we build a clear picture of your child and how we can support and challenge them to be the best version of themselves and see success.
In summary:
We would like to gather feedback from all of our families around future XPG term dates 2023/24 and 2024/25.
Please click here for more information about our consultation, and how you can give your views.
The deadline for responses is Friday 28th April.
We’ve got Vacancies at Plover!
We’re looking for a Leading Learning Coach (HLTA) and Teachers at Plover School! Find out more and apply here to #JoinOurCrew
In our lunchtime club: ‘French Arts and Crafts; the students have gone through the alphabet in French and made salt dough figurines for something that begins with each letter.
Through A to Z they created animals, items of furniture, places and things. Then, with the help of an online dictionary and Señorita/ Mademoiselle Quested they have written facts about each thing in French.
The students have painted each with acrylic and have displayed them to present their beautiful work! Très bon travail!
For our first Crew Day in Year 8 following the establishment of our Crew charity, we took the morning to gain further knowledge of our charity – Trees For Cities! Our vision is to create a notice board that will inform other Crews in our School of what our charity does and raise awareness of the importance of trees in urban spaces, connecting this to what we have learned about trees in biology.
In the afternoon, we walked together to ‘The Fortress’ in Windy Nook, where we had a picnic to which each crew member had contributed. When returning to school we took a longer walk back through the nature reserve which made us appreciate how important our environment is to us, and the positive impact that trees can have in urban environments.Â
As a crew, we are really eager to learn more about ‘Trees for Cities’, and we cannot wait to contribute further to our community!Â
For our immersion in G29, our science sessions took students off to Windy Nook Nature reserve. Here the students had a hugely successful day developing their fieldcraft skills for spotting wildlife.
The students’ patience was challenged whilst listening for and observing our local bird life to measure its biodiversity. They were rewarded with, amongst others, Chiffchaff and Great Tit songs as well as some great views of a hunting Kestrel. They used sweep nets to sample for the invertebrate life in the grassland to measure its biodiversity.
Amongst the species found were earwigs, leafhoppers, peacock butterflies, thrips and even the odd green dock beetle!
Students completed a litter survey to collect scientific data on the quality of the environment and finally a litter pick to act as stewards of their environment. A brilliant day – well done G29!
Dear Families
We are delighted to announce that you can now book your online family transition meeting with us. We would like for your child and at least one other adult to attend the meeting. The meeting will last for 30 minutes
We are looking forward to meeting with you as a family, and finding more about your child.
During the meeting we will discuss our values and expectations through our home/school agreement.
There will also be an opportunity for you and your child to ask any questions that you might have. You can also share anything that you would like us to know about your son or daughter too.
Please complete the booking form linked below and book one slot.
Once you have booked a slot, in due course a member of our senior team will be in touch with you with details on how to join the online meeting.
Dear Parents/Carers
What a great first week back we have had! Our students have settled back into school quickly and, as always, have impressed us with their HoWLs, character values and their engagement in learning.Â
Immersion
This week has been immersion week for all of our students marking the start of our new Summer expeditions. Both G28 and G29 students have been puzzling over what their new guiding questions will be after 4 days of immersion this week.Â
As part of their new expedition G29 students have been learning about keystone species and carried out fieldwork in our local nature reserve at Windy Nook – there will be a separate post on that coming soon. They have also been learning about major rivers in the world and beginning to build background knowledge about drainage basins and key vocabulary. In Arts they have been studying the work of an artist Jason de Caires Taylor, who creates sculptures that are placed under the sea to become artificial reefs, where life can take hold. Students will find out their expedition title and guiding question this week.
Immersion for G28 has involved hearing stories from people that have been displaced in modern times, and also looked back to the great depression in the USA and the dust bowl, building background knowledge for their new anchor text ‘Of Mice and Men’. Students were particularly puzzled by the connections between this and light waves in science, and the creation of paper prints in Art. All will be revealed this week!
Crew Day
On Friday, our students and staff enjoyed a great Crew Day. Crews took time to ‘tend to’ Crew and culture as well as start their activism work with charities.Â
Our G29 (Year 7) Crews completed the ‘Walk for Water’ covering a huge distance around the Gateshead Stadium track. What was most impressive was the support and encouragement the Crews showed each other throughout the challenge. Here are just some snippets from Friday and there will be a longer post coming this next week with details of the amount raised. We have asked if sponsorship forms could come back into school by Wednesday of this week please.
In total students completed 702 laps around the track with water, that’s over 280km! What a great effort.
Our Year 8 our crews started the work with their chosen charities:Â
- Crew Frank (MRS) – Bobby Robson Foundation
- Crew Stanton (ETA) – Tiny Lives
- Crew Angelou (DME) – Young Minds
- Crew Parks (TDE) – Trees for Cities.
Each crew is posting an update on our website to share the work they did on Friday and their charity plans for the future. Again. Here’s a couple of photographs from a fantastic day of hard work:
This week
PE sessions
As usual G28 students (Y8) will need a PE kit for Tuesday, G29 students (Y7) will need a PE kit on Wednesday.
NEU Strike Action, Thursday 27th April – Y8 only in school.
When students are not in school they can work independently on extended study tasks. There will be extended study after school on Thursday, but no sports due to the strike action.
XPG Term Dates 2023/24 and 2024/25
We have had several parents approach us over time to share the challenges caused when our holidays do not align to other Gateshead Schools. We have discussed these challenges at our Spring Term LGC (Local Governing Committee) and we have investigated possibilities for term dates with the CEO of XP Trust. On Friday, I shared our proposals with all of the other XP Trust School Leaders at our Heads Network and on Monday I’d like to share these proposals with you and gather your feedback. Please look out for this post on Monday. I would like to get feedback from all of our families so everyone’s voice can be considered in our decisions around future term dates.
Looking Ahead:
Early May Bank Holiday –Â Monday 1st May.
School closed for all.
NEU Strike Action, Tuesday 2nd May – Y7 only in school.
When students are not in school they can work independently on extended study tasks.
As usual, if you have any questions please contact your child’s crew leader in the first instance.Â
Thank you for your ongoing support.
Julie Mosley
Co-Principal