Dear Parent/Guardian
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas – with our Christmas tree delivered by Buster the superdog.
We have 2 weeks of term to go until the Christmas Holiday and our students continue to work hard and smash it out of the park in terms of Being Kind, Getting Smart, and Working Hard. We have had our second HoWL (Habits of Work and Learning) information snapshot and will be entering Academic Progress grades before the end of term. This information will come to parents after Christmas in readiness for our Student Led Conferences which will be in the fourth week in January.
This week we have had a full review by the Trust Executive Team who commented on how well our students could talk about their school and how happy they are to be here. Students said that there was no bullying and students were kind to each other. They also said that they felt XPG was their school and they had a voice in how their school was being run, they were listened to and staff knew them well . The executive team also commented on how engaged students were in the classroom and on the high standard of work in student books.
It’s been a week of reviews and we have also been visited by two members of our Local Governing Committee, Andrea Mead (our Chair) and Liz Shipley, who were looking at the development of Crew within the school.
We are really happy with the feedback we have received and couldn’t be more proud of the progress we have made in only 12 weeks -Hard to believe that we are a new school that didn’t exist before the Summer holidays !
The week(s) ahead …
Presentations Of Learning (PoL) Tuesday 14th December at 5.30pm
This week students will begin to prepare for their POL where they will piece together and present all of the work completed during the course of their expedition – “From the Ground Up”. Due to COVID we regret that this will need to be a virtual event. Students will broadcast their PoL live via Youtube on the evening of the 14th December. We will post details of how you can join us to celebrate the beautiful work produced by our students.
Local Governance Committee (LGC) visit
On Thursday 9th December, Phil Latham (CEO of Endeavour Trust) and member of our LGC will visit the school to report back to us on our curriculum and expeditions. We look forward to hosting the visit and hearing what Phil has to say.
MP visit (Ian Mearns)
Ian Mearns our local MP will be visiting this week. Ian has a special interest in Education and has sat in the past on the Education Select Committee in the House of parliament. I hear he was also a chair of Governors at Thomas Hepburn (the building we are now in). We can’t wait for our students to show Ian around and tell him all about XP Gateshead.
Early closure of school on Friday 17th December
School will close to students on the last Friday of term at 1.30pm, this is so that staff can de-gunge classrooms and leave no trace in readiness for the start of term after the Christmas break.
Important dates
So that you can check upcoming dates for your diary, we have set up an ‘important dates for parents’ calendar which you can access here. We will post dates to fieldwork etc. on this calendar too. This is also linked from our xpgateshead.org homepage under the parents section of the menu.
Covid Testing
Please remember to complete lateral flow tests for your child on Sunday and Wednesday evening and it is just as important that you ensure these results are entered into our website please. This is an important part of keeping our community safe and our school open and I really appreciate your help and support in this respect.
As usual please get in touch with crew leaders in the first instance with any questions or queries or just to tell us how things are going.
Mark Lovatt
Principal
XP Gateshead