Dear Families

As we come to the end of term, we continue to celebrate our expedition work with Presentations of Learning where our students publicly share their final products and answers to their guiding questions with an audience of peers, staff, families and invited guests. Here is a lovely note of thanks from the Dickens society who attended G28’s PoL a couple of weeks ago.

Thank you for inviting myself and my fellow Dickensians, Chris McLoughlin and Chris Robson to discuss and share with your pupils our love of Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol. 

They were open, receptive, challenging and keen to share their thoughts with us on the narrative and characters within the book.

Having attended your event on Wednesday it was wonderful to listen to  various crew members share excerpts from their essays addressing, with confidence, the expedition question “is charity enough”? A Christmas Carol deals with huge emotive themes of hunger, ignorance, poverty, greed and isolation along with family, love and happiness. As 14 and 15 year olds, they handled these with maturity and understanding. 

It was heart-warming to hear our words reflected back in depth showing they listened to us and used our conversations as a catalyst to undertake more indepth research.

Your students did you proud and are a credit to themselves and their school.

I wish all the students every success with their exams and thank you for the opportunity to be involved in some small way.

As Tiny Tim says “God bless us, every one!”

Yours,

Anne and all my fellow Dickensians in the N.E. branch of the Dickens Fellowship.

Last week was the chance for our G29 students to share their work from this term’s expedition with the GQ: How are structures important in helping us to explain our world?. We returned to Newcastle University where our students also got the opportunity of a campus tour and time with ‘The 93% Club’ ( a students’ society for young adults who have come from state schools) who shared their experience of attending University.

We are very sorry but there is an issue with our website at the moment which means we can’t post images. We will put out another update at the end of the week with some more images, or there were some posted here at the end of last week.

Our students took over the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University and also showcased work at the Great North Museum creating a living expedition. They shared their knowledge around art and architecture, atomic structures in science, structures in government and society and made connections to the anchor text for this expedition, Lord of the Flies. Standing back and listening to our students ‘lead the learning’ in every sense of the word was simply stunning and we all could not have been prouder of G29.  We will post a link to the final product of the oral histories of Trinity Square Car Park in January – we had more experts in on Friday being interviewed to contribute to this important piece of local history.

We owe a huge thanks to all of the people who supported us and gave our students another opportunity to spend time at Newcastle University.

Our week ahead 

As always, we will be working hard until the end of Friday at XP Gateshead and students will be continuing to complete work on end of term assessments, final products, answers to GQ’s (guiding questions) and preparing for presentations of learning.

Presentations of Learning this week

A reminder that students will stay in school until they present. If you want to provide healthy snacks, students will be given some time during the afternoon to get a break between rehearsals.

Students should dress smartly for these occasions.

G31 Presentation of Learning – Monday 16th December at St Mary’s Church in Heworth at 4.30pm.

G31 will be presenting their learning from their first expedition – A Whole New World. More information can be found here.

G30 Presentation of Learning – Wednesday 18th December at XP Gateshead at 4.30pm.

G30 will be presenting their learning  from their current expedition – What does it mean to be human? This presentation of learning is taking place in school, so please arrive from 4.15pm.

G28 Presentation of Learning – Thursday 19th December at XP Gateshead at 4.30pm.

G28 will be presenting their learning  from their current expedition  – Raiders and Invaders. More information can be found here

No Extended Study and Clubs this week

We are not running our extended study offer or clubs this week due to Presentations of Learning this week.

PE sessions this week

Our PE sessions this week are as follows. Please ensure that your child has their  full PE kit.

• All G30 students (Year 8) have PE on Monday.
• For G31 students (Year 7)
  • G31 Class 1 students have PE on Tuesday.
  • G31 Class 2 students have PE on Wednesday
• All G29 students (Year 9) have PE on Thursday.
• All G28 students (Year 10) have PE on Thursday.

And finally…

Christmas events this week:

• Crew Watson’s Christmas Bric-a-Brac event takes place during lunchtime, Monday 16th December. Students will be able to purchase gifts for a loved one and get it wrapped too! Full details here. 
• XPG Christmas Lunch will take place on Tuesday 17th December. There will be a vegetarian option for Christmas lunch but none of the usual deli options on this day. If your child does not want a Christmas lunch, please provide a packed lunch on Tuesday. We are really looking forward to our whole school community having lunch together on Tuesday, it’s always a special one thanks to the hard work of our kitchen team. We’d love to see students in Christmas jumpers if they do have them too!

Early closure this Friday

Don’t forget that school finishes at the earlier time of 1.30pm this Friday. This is to allow us time to “degunge” and set up for the next term. Please make arrangements to pick up your children at the school gate for 1.30pm. As always, please be conscientious of our neighbours if parking as it is always very busy when students all leave school at the same time.

We return to school on Monday 6th January 2025. 

As usual if you have any questions about your son or daughter please get in touch with your child’s Crew Leader in the first instance or email general enquiries to [email protected].

Julie Mosley

Principal, XP Gateshead