Dear Parents/Guardians

Welcome to our final week before the half-term holiday

We have been continuing with our new expedition  – What a Wonderful World with the Guiding question: What is our relationship with the natural world?

This week we are all very excited about our fieldwork on Friday (23rd) where we will be exploring our local “green” corridor through a “geocaching” activity. Students will be outside for most of the day so will need:

• Comfortable shoes for walking
• Appropriate clothing for the weather, the forecast is currently fair and mild
• Sunscreen
• Hat
• Water bottle
• Regular school day kit in their school bag

We will be combining this event with crew picnics so don’t be surprised if your son/daughter has asked for a couple of extra items to be added to the shopping list this week!

Students will be leaving school at 2.15pm this Friday (see de-gunge notice)

Crew picnics

Crew picnics have been organised for Friday 23rd and take place when we go out to explore our local green corridor. These have been organised by students in their crews and your children may have already asked you about the food they have chosen to bring along as part of  their crew contribution this Friday. Please contact crew leaders if this raises any questions,  issues or concerns.

Student Assessment Information and SLCs – Dates for your diaries!

Last week we shared updated assessment snapshots with students, giving information around their HoWLs and academic progress.

Students are updating their pledges at the moment. We will then share these pledges and assessment information snapshots with you at the end of this week.

The next set of SLCs (Student-Led Conferences) will be taking place in the fortnight starting 13th June. In this SLC, students will show you evidence of how they are working on their pledges.

You will be able to book an appointment for your child’s SLC from this week. At this time you will also be able to ask your child questions about their assessment information snapshot. Your child will answer these questions as part of their SLC too.

As part of this process, students will be reflecting on their HoWLs every week in Crew on Thoughtful Thursdays.

Visitors from Holland

We are excited to be hosting 14 Dutch Teachers on Monday afternoon who are on an organised tour of innovative schools in the North of England. They will be joining us from 1.30pm on Monday afternoon and will hear from myself, Mr Said and a panel of students who will share and discuss their work. We will be making use of the dining room for their visit which is a large and well ventilated area and we will ensure there is minimal disruption to student learning.

Transition meetings with new families

We will be continuing 1:1 transition meetings with our new families this week and are looking forward to meeting new students and their parents. These meetings are opportunities to find out more about our new students who will be starting in September and for our families to ask questions to find out a bit more about XP Gateshead. In time, our newest families will be added to our Facebook Group so please do make them feel welcome. Our community is strong because we are crew.

New Staff appointments 

We have successfully appointed to our admin position last week and welcomed Faye Dobson to our crew. Faye will be joining us on June 6th initially in a part time capacity as she learns about our systems etc and then will be full time form the start of next academic year. We are now fully staffed for next year.

AR (Accelerated Reader)

A reminder that our students should be reading their  AR books for between 20 – 30 minutes each day and crew leaders will be checking on progress every Tuesday in crew. For students to be great learners, first they must be strong readers. Please encourage your children to talk to you about what they are reading and support them to read on a daily basis. We have been really impressed with the range of books students have chosen and will be looking forward to seeing how they do on their first book “quizzes”.

Lateral Flow Testing

Please  make sure you complete a Lateral Flow Test with your child this Sunday evening and complete our online form as usual. We will also be asking you to complete a LFT on the Sunday (5th June) evening before your child returns after the half term holiday.

Whilst Covid infections are still falling in the community, 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 following the three days. There is no longer a requirement for students to test negative on the day when they return to school.

2.15pm finish – Friday 23rd

As usual we will be finishing slightly earlier this Friday to allow for “de-gunge” and restocking of classrooms in readiness for the new term. This Friday since we are also out and about geocaching, students will leave school at 2.15pm

It has been a fantastic half-term and there is much to look forward to after the holiday including the launch of our students’ first book

Thank you for your continued support and have a great holiday. As usual if you have any questions please contact crew leaders in the first instance.

Kind regards

Mark Lovatt

Principal

Dear Parents/Guardians

Welcome to another exciting week at XP Gateshead

We have been continuing with our new expedition  – What a Wonderful World with the Guiding question: What is our relationship with the natural world?

Students have been doing some creative writing inspired by rainforests, completing their cave art, and learning about specialist cells such as nerve, muscle, red blood, and root hair cells. We will be starting to do some microscopy work in Science this week too.

We are beaming live to the world this week! Do Your Bit Radio Broadcast

This week our students’ radio broadcast of untold stories will be broadcast from Memory Lane Radio at 2pm on Friday afternoon.

Trailers for the show will be being broadcast all week. You can listen along live on Friday using this link.

Student Assessment Information and SLCs – Dates for your diaries!

Last week we shared updated assessment snapshots with students, giving information around their HoWLs and academic progress.

Students are updating their pledges at the moment. We will then share these pledges and assessment information snapshots with you at the end of this coming week.

The next set of SLCs (Student-Led Conferences) will be taking place in the fortnight starting 13th June. In this SLC, students will show you evidence of how they are working on their pledges.

You will be able to book an appointment for your child’s SLC from next week. At this time you will also be able to ask your child questions about their assessment information snapshot. Your child will answer these questions as part of their SLC too.

As part of this process, students will be reflecting on their HoWLs every week in Crew on Thoughtful Thursdays.

Visitors

We have received visits this week from Jane Sutton who is a member of our Local Governing Committee. Jane was looking at inclusive teaching and also reading across the curriculum. Jane said of her visit – “It is like you have taken the best of primary school practice and translated it into a secondary setting”. We are looking forward to Jane’s report which will be discussed at our next Local Governance Committee meeting.

We also had a visit from John Turner. John is an educational consultant who is currently working with Headteachers in Wales to see which bits of XP “magic” can be transported into schools he is working with. John thanked students and staff for the visit and was blown away by the students’ passion and enthusiasm for the school and by the quality of their work. We look forward to you visiting again John.

Transition meetings with new families

We will be starting 1:1 transition meetings with our new families this week and are looking forward to meeting new students and their parents. These meetings are opportunities to find out more about our new students who will be starting in September and for our families to ask questions to find out a bit more about XP Gateshead. In time, our newest families will be added to our Facebook Group so please do make them feel welcome. Our community is strong because we are crew.

New Staff appointments – admin+ post at XP Gateshead

We will be interviewing for an admin+ post this Wednesday afternoon which if successful will complete our staff recruitment for next year. All new staff will join us on 6th June just after the half term break and we have been busy planning their induction to XP Trust and to XP Gateshead.

“Above All Compassion” –  XP the movie

The Edge Foundation UK have made a film about XP schools which premiered at the Samsung centre in London last week. Students have been watching some of the film in their community meeting on Friday. If you would like to watch the approximately 30 minute film then please click on the link below and enjoy. It is a powerful tribute to the aims and aspirations of XP schools across the Trust and the hard work of all the staff, students and parents.

You can watch the movie on Youtube here.

AR (Accelerated Reader)

Students should be reading their  AR books for between 20 – 30 minutes each day and crew leaders will be checking on progress every Tuesday in crew. For students to be great learners, first they must be strong readers. It would be great if you could encourage your children to talk to you about what they are reading and help to ensure that reading continues on a daily basis. In addition we hope to start a new crew reader soon which links to our current expedition.

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 still falling in the community, 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 following 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

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

Dear Parents/Guardians

Welcome to another exciting week at XP Gateshead

I hope everyone has enjoyed the bank holiday weekend.

This week we will be revealing our very exciting next expedition which students will be working on up to the end of the Summer term – this was slightly delayed from last week as we wanted to make sure our food boxes were delivered to Edberts house.

Food/recipe boxes were successfully delivered to Edberts house and students presented their learning and also learnt a little about the work Edberts house do in the community.

New Staff appointments Learning Coaches and Crew Leaders

We successfully appointed two new members of staff as learning Coaches and crew leaders for next year. They are Saorise Blain and Kati Donlan and we are looking forward to both joining our “crew”. They will start with 5 weeks of induction alongside other new staff on June 6th.

This week we will be holding interviews for a full time administrator post to begin next year.

PE lessons

Apologies for the short notice, but due to a staff absence and interviews for the admin+ role, PE will now need to be on Wednesday of this week for both classes.

Lateral Flow Testing

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

Covid infections are decreasing, but given the size of our setting this really helps us to keep everyone safe and for our school to remain open.

We really do appreciate your support.

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

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 following 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

Dear Parents/Guardians

Welcome to another exciting week at XP Gateshead

It is a bumper update this week.

New expedition

This week we will be revealing our very exciting next expedition which students will be working on up to the end of the Summer term.

Staying Alive

We will also be delivering our food/recipe boxes to Edberts House in Gateshead – you will remember that this is our “Final Product” from our last expedition which concluded before the Easter break. We have asked for students’ food donations to be in school with their Crew Leader by Wednesday morning at the latest please. 

In Google Classroom students have access to a spreadsheet where they have each indicated which ingredient/s they think that they can donate. Please have a conversation with your child about this. If there are any problems in sourcing the ingredients, please do ask you child to talk to their Crew Leader.

At XP Gateshead students are community activists and we use what we have learned to make a positive difference in our communities. In this case students have used what they learned about nutrition to put together food boxes and recipes which will feed two families for a week. We are proud to support the work of Edberts House which does so much for families in our community.

From the Ground Up

We have not forgotten that students have also used what they learned in their first expedition to publish their local history book on our mining heritage. We will be launching our students’ book this term and will provide further information in due course. We are proud that every student at XP Gateshead will be a published author before they break up for the summer holiday.

Guitar Lessons start this week

Students that signed up to guitar lessons will start these this week on Monday. This will be added as an item for payment in ParentPay for those students. Students have a timetable shared with them where they can check their times each week. As soon as we have further information on other instruments, Mr Said will let students and families know.

Local Governance Committee meeting

We will also be holding our Local Governance council meeting and will be hearing back from Andrea Mead (chair of LGC) as she takes us through her report looking at “Developing Crew” and also from James Renwick who will be reporting back on his visit which had a focus on “inclusive teaching”.

New Staff: Learning Coaches and Crew Leaders

In addition we will be holding interviews this week for two new members of staff who will take the role of Learning Coaches/Crew Leaders next year. Successful appointments will mean we are fully staffed for next year and all new members of staff will join us on June 6th to begin their induction.

Welcoming our next cohort of students and their parents

We will be beginning our transition arrangements for welcoming 50 new students this term and we are all very excited to meet our next cohort of students and their parents. Mrs Mosley will be taking a lead on this and further information will be appearing on our website in the coming weeks

COVID Updates

Guidance for isolation following a positive test

Any student who has a positive Covid-19 test result should try to stay at home and avoid contact with people for 3 days. There is no longer a requirement for students to test negative on the day when they return to school, however if they still feel unwell then they should not return to school.

Lateral Flow Testing

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

Covid infections are still high 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.

We really do appreciate your support. If you require any extra LFT kits please let us know. 

Mitigations in school

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. 

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

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

Kind regards

Mark Lovatt

Principal

Dear All,

I hope you have all had a restful and safe Easter break and I would like to take the opportunity to welcome you all back to what will be an exciting new Summer term at XP Gateshead.

We are expecting students at the normal time tomorrow and look forward to welcoming them back after the holiday.

Expeditions

Students will be completing their final product from the “Staying Alive” expedition this week and we will start on Tuesday morning with students sharing the recipes they have been cooking from the Jack Munroe recipe book. Students will be using what they have learned about nutrition during this expedition to put together food boxes. Our food boxes will contain ingredients and recipes to feed a family of four for a whole week. We hope to be able to deliver our food/recipe boxes to Edberts House in Gateshead next week.

We will also be  starting our major new Summer term expedition and students will begin immersion this week. I wonder if anyone will be able to guess what it is about!

PE sessions this week

As mentioned above, this coming week we are starting a new learning expedition which will combine HUMAN and STEAM. This has meant that we have changed the timetable slightly for the coming week.

For this week, Class 2 will have PE on Tuesday 19th April as normal. However Class 1 will have PE on Wednesday 20th April this week.

In the week commencing Monday 25th April, both classes will return to PE on Tuesday.

Covid Testing

Covid infections are still high in the community so as normal we would ask you to ensure that your child has taken an LFT test and entered the result on our website as normal. LFT tests are available on request so if you have run out your son/daughter can ask their crew leader for more. We appreciate your support in helping to keep our community safe and our school open.

As usual if you have any questions/queries please ask your child’s crew leader in the first instance.

Best wishes

Mark Lovatt

Principal

End of Term – Easter holiday

Wow what a fantastic term it has been and thank you so much to all those who came and supported our students at their PoL (Presentation Of Learning ) yesterday evening.

I think we can all agree that it was a special occasion and our students made us all proud. When I woke up this morning I was still thinking about the breadth and depth of learning covered in the expedition ‘Do Your Bit’ and the confidence of our students in talking about what they had learned. As someone said in their feedback “It was like an hour long living history show”.

We celebrated with students today in our community meeting and have read back to them many of the comments written by people in the 120 strong audience. I know they are proud of themselves as well.

Who would have thought that 6 months after opening our students would be presenting live to a large audience in the Herschel Building of Newcastle University.

Our thanks also to all of our experts who supported students in this expedition and also to Newcastle University and Professor David Leat for supporting us in use of the lecture theatre.

Over the Easter holidays

We are asking students to relax, rest, exercise, and Read Read Read with their newly borrowed books from our virtual library. 

We are also asking students to cook (with parents) and try out several recipes from the Jack Munroe cookbook in readiness for our final product for our expedition  – Staying Alive. Full instructions have been sent out to students via Google Classroom and crew leaders have gone through this with students today.

Happy Easter

As a small token of how proud we are of students we have bought all students an Easter egg which we presented to them in crew just after lunch. This is a present from our staff to our students.

We will be in touch before the start of next term if there is anything more we need to let families know about. In the meantime have a great Easter holiday and thank you so much for your continued support.

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

We look forward to seeing you after the holiday on Tuesday 19th April at the usual time where we will be starting our next exciting expeditionary adventure.

Happy Easter from all the staff crew at XP Gateshead

 

Mark Lovatt

Principal

 

Dear Parents/Guardians

Welcome to our final week at XP Gateshead before the Easter break

Expeditions

DO YOUR BIT – Presentation of Learning

Students are currently working hard on their final product for their expedition “Do your bit” as they build towards their Presentation of Learning. This will be held at the Herschel Building at Newcastle University on Thursday 31st March at 6pm.

If you have not already done so, please complete this Google Form to indicate how many family members you will be bringing to the Presentation of Learning. 

Please note that we will be asking all participants to take a LFT on Thursday before joining us as we will be in an indoor setting and we would not like anyone to be ill over the holiday.

Please add your own details to the COVID Testing Google Form in the same way as you would for your child. This information will be held securely and then deleted following the event.

We’d appreciate it if you could also delay testing your child from Wednesday evening until Thursday morning before school this week if at all possible, we know many of you do this already.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation. We are determined to be able to welcome you to the event in as safe a way for you and your children as is possible.

STAYING ALIVE

In “Staying Alive” students will begin case study three. Case study three is about access to clean water. This is particularly relevant with recent stories in the press about sewage in our national rivers and also, according to the World Health Organisation, about a quarter of the world’s population still lacking access to clean water. Students will be learning to separate mixtures and will attempt to produce clean water from a mixture of sand and salty water by filtration, evaporation and condensation.

The final product for this expedition will be created in the week after the Easter break. I am delighted to announce that we will be working with the local community based charity, Edberts House, to donate ingredients/recipe boxes that our students will create. We will ask families for small voluntary contributions to these boxes from families so that across our 50 students we have two food boxes which will each feed a family in need for a week. Following the Easter break our students will walk to Edberts House to deliver these packages and hear more about the great work that they do with families in need. This will be a great opportunity for students to see first-hand the impact that their social activism and learning has in their community. Of course, given the current rise in cost of living, contributions will be voluntary and if support is needed in contributing, please do speak to your child’s Crew Leader.

To assist in planning the above, we will be giving students access to recipes from Jack Munroe’s book – “Cooking on a Bootstrap” and we would encourage parents to cook some of these meals with their son or daughter during the Easter holiday. More information on all of this on Thursday evening.

Crew

In crew this week students will continue to research suitable people after whom to name their crews. These will be people who have achieved great things and who display our character traits of courage, integrity, respect, craftsmanship and quality, and above all compassion. Students will research and present possible contenders to the rest of their crew who will decide on their crew name. Among names I have heard students mention so far are – Zelensky, Marie Curie, Malala Yousafzai, and Kurt Hahn. Crew presentations and student voting will take place after Easter and we will let you know what students decide.

Common Mission

Our first official session of Common Mission will begin this Thursday morning. This is student choice led and students will be learning about subjects as diverse as Mandarin and creative writing, and forensic science to coding and sports and exercise. Students will be setting their own Learning Targets (with support from teachers) and will present their learning as normal in due course. Students will be completing the “my interests” part of the Junior Award Scheme for Schools (JASS) as part of their study.

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

Please complete a Lateral Flow Test with your child on Sunday evening, and again on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning and complete our test results sheet with the results before sending your child to school.

Covid infections are increasingly high 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.

We really do appreciate your support. Timely completion of the Google Form is really helpful to us. If you can imagine, at 8.30 when students arrive, if there are a number of students that need to be tested this has an immediate impact on our staffing and also means that students miss part of Crew, which is such an important start to the day.

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

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.

Early Finish Friday

Please note that we will be finishing early this Friday and students will leave school at 1.30pm. This is to enable us to thoroughly clean up rooms and to re-stock equipment so we are ready to go again when students return on Tuesday 19th March.

We look forward to seeing family members that are  joining us at our presentation of learning at Newcastle University on Thursday evening and I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our wider families, parents and students a Happy (and safe) Easter

 

Best wishes

Mark Lovatt

Principal

Dear Parents/Guardians

Welcome to another week at XP Gateshead

Expeditions

DO YOUR BIT – Presentation of Learning

Students are currently working hard on their final product for their expedition “Do your bit” as they build towards their Presentation of Learning to answer the guiding question “Why is it important we honour all those that sacrificed in WWI?”. This will be held at Newcastle University on Thursday 31st March at 6pm.

If you have not already done so, please complete this Google Form to indicate how many family members you will be bringing to the Presentation of Learning.

STAYING ALIVE

In “Staying Alive” students will complete their second case study which is about keeping warm, which is particularly topical in light of recent rises in fuel prices and heating bills. We will then begin case study three. Case study three is about access to clean water, again which is particularly relevant with recent stories in the press about sewage in our national rivers. Students will be learning to separate mixtures and will attempt to produce clean water from a mixture of sand and salty water by filtration, evaporation and condensation.

In both case studies we will be able to make connections to what many in Ukraine are enduring at the moment. These case studies are designed to help students to answer teh guiding question “Is survival sufficient?”.

The final product for this expedition will take place in the week after the easter break and I am delighted to announce that we will be working with the local community based Charity, Edberts House, to donate ingredients/recipe boxes that our students will create.

There will be more information about our ‘fight food poverty’ recipes soon, as we hope to encourage parents and children to try some of the recipes – watch this space.

Crew

In crew this week students will continue to research suitable people after whom to name their crews. These will be people who have achieved great things and who display our character traits of courage, integrity, respect, craftsmanship and quality, and above all compassion. Students will research and present possible contenders to the rest of their crew who will decide on their crew name. Among names I have heard students mention so far are – Zelensky, Marie Curie, Malala Yousafzai, and Kurt Hahn. Crew presentations and student voting will take place after Easter and we will let you know what students decide.

Robotics

Considering the short amount of time that our students have had their robotics kit, we are so proud of their efforts and achievements. In particular it was wonderful to hear of the way that they communicated with teams from other schools to agree strategies for the team challenges in the afternoon. At one point we were riding high in 7th place overall but in the end our students came 13th out of 16 entries. Look out NISSAN and Sunderland though because next year – “We’ll be back”.

HoWLs

This week teachers will be reviewing student Habits Of Work and Learning (HoWLs) as we update assessment information based on the learning behaviours in their lessons and communicate with students how well they are working hard, getting smart and being kind.

Staffing updates

From September 2022 and throughout the next year it will be unavoidable that some of my time is taken up preparing for our move into our permanent building in September 2023. As chunks of my time will be taken up working with the Department for Education, Architects and builders, the Trust have asked Mrs Mosley to share some of the Headteacher roles and functions. For this reason from next year we will operate a co-headship model with myself and Mrs Mosley sharing the role between us. Mrs Mosley will focus largely on continuing to develop staff and student crew and I will focus mainly on school strategy and performance. This change will take place from September 2022 and we will release more details about how this will work in practice later in the academic year.

Extended Study and after school clubs

• Extended Study and after school clubs will be running as normal this week.
• MONDAy: Extended study
• TUESDAY: Extended Study
• WEDNESDAY: Extended Study
• THURSDAY: Sports / Extended Study / Minecraft

Lateral Flow Testing

Please complete these this evening, and again on Wednesday.

COVID infections are still high in the community and rising again. 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.

We really do appreciate your support. Timely completion of the Google Form is really helpful to us. If you can imagine, at 8.25 once all students have arrived, if there are a number of students that need to be tested this has an immediate impact on our staffing and also means that students miss part of Crew, which is such an important start to the day.

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

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

 

Dear Parents/Guardians

Monday 14th March is a staff development day and students return to school on Tuesday 15th March at the normal time.

Accelerated Reader

Students this week will begin to choose books from our recently launched Accelerated Reader platform. This is part of our reading strategy at XP Gateshead and students have already completed a baseline assessment which will be used to steer children towards the most suitable books to support and challenge their reading. Accelerated Reader tracks what students are reading and Crew Leaders use this to ensure that students develop as readers.

Learning Expeditions

Students will also continue with their expeditions – in Staying Alive, they will begin case study two and consider the importance of staying warm, different energy stores, insulation and how heat energy transfers through conduction, convection and radiation. In Do Your Bit students are beginning to work on their final product and we would encourage you to talk to your children about this. We will have details on the Presentation of Learning very soon.

Next Expedition planning 

During our staff development days we have been working to plan and resource our next learning expedition – Top secret ! (That’s not what it’s called by the way, we’re just not telling anyone what it’s about yet). Students will begin this expedition after our Easter break.

Robotics

Students will be entering their robot for the Robotics competition on Wednesday of this week and will make their own way to the competition. Mr Said has been in touch with parents about arrangements for the day but as a reminder:

 

• 8.30 – 9:15 Teams arrive at NISSAN Sports Complex
• 16:30 – Teams ready for collection

Good luck to our students! They have worked so hard developing our inaugural XP Gateshead entry, including building the robot from scratch, building the practice field and coding and testing the robot in a virtual environment. Also we’d like to give a special appreciation to Dr Steve Bunce who has been working with the students as part of their Common Mission time each week. There will be many experienced teams at the competition so this will be a great learning experience for our students.

Student Assessment Information and reflective narratives

Families have now received their child’s report containing information on attendance, academic progress and HOWLs. You will also have received a second document with your child’s reflective narrative describing their own learning journey and containing comments from their crew leader. Please let your child’s crew leader know in the first instance if you have any questions or wish to follow anything up.

Extended Study and after school clubs

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

• TUESDAY: Extended Study
• WEDNESDAY: Extended Study
• THURSDAY: Sports / Extended Study / Minecraft

Lateral Flow Testing

Please complete these on Monday evening this week  in readiness for return to school on Tuesday 15th.

COVID infections are still high in the community and rising again. 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

Safeguarding Review

Thank you to our parents for your fantastic support and overwhelming positive feedback in response to our safeguarding review – some of the comments literally brought tears to our eyes. We also received a very positive report from the Trust team and as ever will be using any feedback we received to do even more to ensure our students are safe and happy at XP Gateshead.

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