Beautiful Work on Fieldwork at St Mary’s Cemetery in Heworth

By Martin Said6th March 2022

On Friday students carried out fieldwork at St Mary’s Cemetery in Heworth. Whilst there, students noticed the plaque for the victims of the Felling Pit Disaster and the tribute to them inside the cemetery gates.

You may remember that we dedicated our music from our presentation of learning to the 92 that lost their lives as a result of the events on that day.

Here are the authors of the Felling Colliery section of the book in front of the plaque: Delaney, Katie and Lucy

Below is an extract from their writing for the book, which addresses the disaster with compassion and sensitivity. Beautiful work!

“The history of Felling Colliery is heartbreaking. The mining conditions were similar to other mines; terrible. The conditions in all mines including Felling were really hot or cold depending on how far away from the door you were.
Sadly a lot of men were getting injured while going down the mine. They would describe conditions as cramped, torrid and exhausting. For example, William Holle was a miner at age 15 for 4 years. He broke his thigh and was unable to work for 2 years because a waggon rode over his leg. He still suffered from dust inhalation throughout his life and said it made him feel dry inside; “it gives me heartburn.”
The colliery suffered four disasters in the 19th century. The disasters were in 1813, 1821 and 1847 as well as 1812 which was the most major of all the tragic events. It was on 25th May 1812 when firedamp (methane) caused an explosion. A miner had come into contact with firedamp underground. The flame of his candle caused the mine to go up in flames in a huge explosion. Of the 128 working in the pit at that time 92 miners had died and the rest luckily made it out alive. Since the disaster had affected a lot of miners and their families, from that point on, the government required miners to use safety lamps when going down the mines. This makes the Felling Pit Disaster a really important moment, not just because of the awful loss of life, but also for the improvements to mining conditions that came as a result of the uproar from the public and from miners.”

G28 Weekly Update – w/c 7th March 2022

By Mark Lovatt6th March 2022

Dear Parents/Guardians

Welcome to the start of another phenomenal week at XP Gateshead – It’s a busy and exciting week ahead for our students. Please note below the parent voice survey that we are asking all families to complete as part of our safeguarding review.

Expeditions

Students this week will have the opportunity to work with Marek Blonski on Wednesday 9th. Marek is the development Chef for Gateshead Council. This is part of our science expedition – “Staying Alive” which looks at what we need to survive and also asks the question – Is Survival Sufficient ? Marek will be sharing his background in being a Chef and the work he does across Gateshead Council. Part of this expedition is to learn about food poverty and students will put together food boxes with ingredients based on recipes of Jack Monroe – the “Bootstrap cook”. Marek will be sharing with students how to make meals from nutritious and affordable ingredients.

Trust visits – Safeguarding review and Parent Voice Survey

On Wednesday we will be joined by the Trust safeguarding team who will carry out a full safeguarding review. Every school in the Trust has a safeguarding review to ensure we are carrying out our statutory requirements and our students are safe. We look forward to the review and to any feedback we receive.

As part of this review, we are asking for all families to complete a short survey. your feedback is incredibly important to us and helps us to ensure that we continue to run an excellent school for your children.

Please complete this short Google Form and hit submit.

Extended Study and after school clubs

Extended Study and after school clubs will be running as normal this week.

MONDAY: Sports / Extended Study

TUESDAY: Extended Study

WEDNESDAY: Extended Study

THURSDAY: Sports / Extended Study / Minecraft

Lateral Flow Testing

COVID infections are still very high in the community and, given our scale, an asymptomatic case in school could cause issues if it were to spread, for example in terms of being able to staff the school. Please continue to support us with lateral flow testing each Sunday and Wednesday evening and make sure you enter results into our website on each of these occasions.

Now that the government has decided to remove the wearing of face coverings as one of the mitigation measures in schools, we are happy for students (and staff) to continue wearing masks if they feel more comfortable doing so. 

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

Staff Days

Please note that this Friday (11th March) and the following Monday (14th March) are staff days and students will NOT be in school on these days. Staff days are to support staff in receiving statutory training and in preparing and resourcing expeditions throughout the year. Students will return to school after next weekend on Tuesday 15th March

Calendar dates

Our calendar can be found here.

 

As usual if you have any questions please get in touch with your child’s crew leader in the first instance.

 

Best wishes

Mark Lovatt

Principal

Expert session tomorrow Friday 4th March

By Emmy Tatters3rd March 2022

As part of an expert session with Commonwealth War Graves Commission tomorrow, students are carrying out some fieldwork in the morning at St Mary’s Church at Heworth.

We will be walking down to the church, and will return to school for lunch.

The forecast for the morning has a high chance of light rain, so it is important that students are dressed for potentially wet weather.

Welcome to our new students and families!

By Mark Lovatt1st March 2022

Many of you will have received notification today that your child will be joining our Crew in September 2022. Congratulations!

No doubt, you have lots of questions, hopefully many of which will be answered in our FAQ section of the website.

We will be contacting you in time as part of a range of transition activities once 50 families have confirmed that they accept their offer of a place at XP Gateshead.

In the meantime, below is some information about ‘From The Ground Up‘ our very first learning expedition with our current Year 7 students. This will give you a sense of how our curriculum works. We will continue to post updates on our website for our new parents, so that you can get a sense of the culture of our school and in the incredible things your children will do with us.

 

From the Ground Up

 

Here is the narrative for the expedition. This tells the story of the students’ studies, all of which led to the celebration of learning below.

 

G28 Save the dates – Presentation of Learning for ‘Do your bit’

By Emmy Tatters1st March 2022

We are currently in conversation with an exciting potential venue for our PoL (Presentation of Learning) for the current HUMAN expedition, to which we will be inviting all families in person as things .

Details of the current expedition can be found here.

The dates that our venue are looking are either Wednesday 30th March, or Thursday 31st March. We expect the event will take place between 5.30pm and 7.00pm.

At the moment we are just awaiting confirmation, but our contingency is to host the PoL at our school, again with families invited.

We will update you as soon as we have confirmation from our venue.

G28 Weekly Update – w/c 28th February 2022

By Mark Lovatt27th February 2022

Dear Parents/Guardians

Welcome to the start of another phenomenal week at XP Gateshead – It’s a busy and exciting week ahead for our students.

Staffing Update

Simon Walters, our new member of staff, will be starting on Tuesday and will begin work in classes getting to know students and supporting their learning in the first instance. Simon is based at XP Gateshead and in due course will also be spending some time with colleagues in Doncaster, learning more about his new role as Educational Welfare Coordinator. We can’t wait to begin working with our newest member of our staff crew. 

Expeditions

There are a lot of exciting things happening expedition wise this week. We are hoping to confirm that Marek Blonski, our nutrition expert, will be working with students on Monday afternoon as part of our – Staying Alive expedition. The Durham Light Infantry “museum” will be working with students on Tuesday as part of our “Do your Bit`” expedition and students will be taking part in fieldwork on Friday with our visiting “expert” on commonwealth war graves as part of the same expedition.

Digital Leaders

Congratulations to our Digital leaders who will be travelling to Doncaster on Monday (early start 8am !) to take part in training with students from across the Trust as they prepare for their new role. Mr Said has already sent out details of this trip in a separate post. Students will need a packed lunch.

Trust visits

On Tuesday we will be joined by the Trust “Comms” team who will be curating students’ work, helping us to prepare final products, and putting up new displays of “beautiful” student work around the building. A big thanks to the team in advance for the hard work they will be doing on this – we are excited to see more of our students work on our walls.

Extended Study and after school clubs

Extended Study and after school clubs will be running as normal this week:

MONDAY: Sports / Extended Study

TUESDAY: Extended Study

WEDNESDAY: Extended Study

THURSDAY: Sports / Extended Study / Minecraft

Lateral Flow Testing

Until further notice – Please continue to support us with lateral flow testing each Sunday and Wednesday evening and make sure you enter results into our website on each of these occasions.

This is especially important now that the government has decided to remove “masks” as one of the mitigation measures in schools although we are happy for students (and staff) to continue wearing masks if they feel more comfortable doing so. 

COVID infections are still very high in the community. If you require any extra LFT testing 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  – We are Crew.

Calendar dates

Our calendar can be found here.

As usual if you have any questions please get in touch with your child’s crew leader in the first instance.

Best wishes

Mark Lovatt

Principal

Digital Leaders: Reminders for tomorrow

By Martin Said27th February 2022

A reminder that students travelling to Doncaster as part of the digital leaders event will need to be in school for 8am tomorrow. I will be in school from 7am so any time from then will be OK for drop off.

Students should bring full kit,  including a fully charged iPad and a packed lunch.

If any students need travel sickness tablets, if we do not already have it,  we must have signed permission that you give consent for them to self-administer,  along with the name of the medicine, dose and instructions.

For example:

“I give consent for #student name# to self-administer #medicine name# 150mg. They should take one tablet 30 minutes before travel.”

Any medicine must be in its original packaging.

I will update our arrival time back at school on our website when we are on the road for the return journey.

Many thanks

Writing in persona

By Emmy Tatters25th February 2022

Both classes have had double sessions today in HUMAN writing as a person or animal on the battlefield during WWI.

Both classes have impressed me so much with their focus, their commitment and their kindness when offering critique to each other; knowing that telling someone how their work could be better is the kindest thing we can do for each other.

I would strongly encourage you to ask your child to show you their descriptive writing that they have been working on because the students should be really proud. I also know they would welcome your feedback too to help them improve it even further before the deadline for redrafting on Monday.

Well done to the XPG Crew today!