Dear Parents/Guardians

Welcome to another exciting week at XP Gateshead

Last week we revealed our big new Summer expedition  – ‘What a Wonderful World’ with the Guiding question:

What is our relationship with the natural world?

Students have already begun looking at physical geography as they explore biomes and habitats and have been learning about how the earth’s atmosphere has changed over billions of years. They have also begun to learn about cells which are the basic “building blocks” of all living things.

New Staff appointments – admin + at XP Gateshead

We have yet to appoint an admin post for next year to join our Staff Crew – we are looking for someone with experience of admin, ideally in a school setting, who in addition to normal school admin and looking after our front desk will also help us to contact local organisations to support expeditions and liaise with the Trust Communications team to help us curate beautiful work.

Further information will be available on our website from tomorrow and the deadline for applications is Friday 13th May at 12pm with interviews taking place w/c 16th May. Put the word out and if you know anyone who might be suitable for such a role then please let us know.

PE lessons 

PE lessons are back to normal times (Tuesday) this week.

XP the movie

The Edge foundation UK have made a film about XP schools which premiered at the Samsung centre in London last week. We will share the film as soon as it is made public.

AR (Accelerated Reader) book launch

As you know students have access to a virtual library of books and they were reading from this library over the Easter holiday. Students have already taken a baseline test so we have a good idea of reading ages now and this week we will be launching our AR reading programme. Students should be reading for between 20 – 30 minutes each day and we will be asking parents to support us in this – we will also reconfigure the amount extended study we set to make space to incorporate the daily reading. Further details will be forthcoming from Ms Tatters in due course. Reading is such an important skill and like all skills it needs to be practised on a regular basis; for students to be great learners then they must also be great readers.

Lateral Flow Testing

Please complete a Lateral Flow Test with your child on Sunday evening (tonight), and again on Wednesday evening and complete our website with the results before sending your child to school.

Whilst COVID infections are decreasing in the community and given the size of our setting this really helps us to keep everyone safe and for our school to remain open.

If you require any extra LFT kits please let us know. 

We will continue to keep doors and windows open for ventilation so students are advised to bring multiple layers to school to keep warm. This is how we look after each other – #wearecrew

Guidance for isolation following a positive test

Any student who has a positive Covid-19 test result should stay at home and avoid contact with people for 3 days. As long as they are well they may return to school follwoing the three days. There is no longer a requirement for students to test negative on the day when they return to school.

As usual if you have any questions please contact crew leaders in the first instance.

Kind regards

Mark Lovatt

Principal