Lucy has recently done some wonderful work as part of her dance group. Having recently won first place for team dance in a competition, last week Lucy and her dance school ‘Dance Fusion Extreme’ danced at Tomasz Oleszak’s memorial service and even made it into the Evening Chronicle. Beautiful work Lucy!
On Saturday 14th October, the annual service which celebrates the northeast’s mining heritage and commemorates Thomas Hepburn takes place at 11am in St Mary’s Church, Heworth (the church will be open from 10am). As our Year 7s are currently carrying out an expedition titled ‘From the Ground Up’ and will be having their Presentation of Learning in the church in December, we are honoured to have been asked to attend with some of our students.
Thomas Hepburn is buried in the churchyard at St Mary’s, and spent his life working to improve the lives of miners and their families as well as being the founder of the Colliers United of Durham and Northumberland in 1825.
The acclaimed filmmaker, Ken Loach, will speak at the memorial service for the leader of the first miners’ trade union and the service will also feature music from North East folk singer Bill Elliott as well as readings from MP for Easington Grahame Morris and the Mayor of Gateshead Cllr Eileen McMaster. Following the service, wreaths will be laid at Thomas Hepburn’s grave.
The Durham Miners Association Brass Band will play during the service, before performing Gresford, the miners’ hymn, at the graveside.
We have sent out some individual emails to families inviting their children to attend the service with myself and Mrs Mosley but would also like our families to know that they are welcome to attend the service themselves should they wish to.
On Tuesday we held our Open Evening and welcomed over 350 people to our school. As you know, on evenings like this our students take centre stage and as always, they shine.
Families attended 4 sessions – XPG Mythbusting, Beautiful work, Character and Academic Success. Every session, apart from the Mythbusting one, was a showcase ran by students who shared the work done at XPG and answered questions from their audience.
Exit ticket feedback was really positive and our students definitely communicated our culture well with very few questions left unanswered. The confidence shown by our young people and their ability to articulate what we do and why we do it is stunning and we are extremely proud and grateful to all students who were involved. A thank you to families too who supported this event.
We also received some feedback this week from an external review of personal development at XPG. Areas of personal development include: developing responsible, respectful and active citizens; promoting equality of opportunity; promoting an inclusive environment; developing pupils’ character; giving pupils the qualities they need to flourish in society.
The feedback was positive and included the following
“Crew and the Expedition curriculum, as well as routines such as Common Mission, Community Meetings, Field Work all serve to ensure that students know what they are learning in order to shape their character, and work towards being positive members of society.”
“The interlinked approach to personal development means students can talk about how and why they learn as they do, how it will help them in the future, and why it is important.”
“Students can articulate themselves very well, and confidently. This is the case within Crew, in lessons, at social times, and when interacting with adults – even when they do not know the adult.”
“The school ensures that statutory regulations around RSHE are implemented and thanks to the repeated and lived-out protocols, as well as the consistency of the approach to the different elements of the school day, the students are knowledgeable of the RSHE curriculum and are able to speak sensitively about certain matters.”
“Students show each other and adults respect at all times. This is evident in learning and Crew, as well as at social times.”
An area for continued development is our careers programme – how we support students in their next steps, from GCSE and further education choices, making them aware of the diverse future pathways available to them and what they need to do to achieve their goals. Our work continues this year, look out for our website updates.
The character of our G30 students continues to impress us. It is hard to believe that our year 7 students have only been with us for 6 weeks when you see them in and outside of classrooms, look at their high quality work and hear them speak about their progress. The experts who work alongside G30 have continued to praise their hard work, craftsmanship and quality and the respect they exhibit towards each other and staff who work with them.
As part of their expedition, our Year 7 students have interviewed songwriting expert Joe Solo, a folk musician, in preparation for their work in taking stories of the mining community and immortalising them in song.
They also carried out fieldwork at the location of the former Whitburn Colliery and Marsden Village near to Souter Lighthouse in South Tyneside working as geologists and archeologists.
High quality work has continued in art this week with students capturing the most expressive object in the known universe – the human face. Students have been developing their skills in monoprinting.
In STEAM sessions, after carrying out heart dissections earlier in the week, students have been learning about the human reproductive system and normalising discussion of our reproductive organs. Students have been fantastic at showing kindness and understanding to each other and discussing such important learning maturely.
This week students have been digging further into their anchor text Lord of the Flies, which examines what happens to a group of children when the adults are not their to provide structure. In addition they have also started to create isometric drawings and using CAD software to create digital designs of their Lego moulds in order to create plaster casts of brutalist-inspired structures.
Our PE sessions this week are as follows. Please ensure that your child has their full PE kit.
All G30 students (Year 7) have PE on Monday this week.
All G29 students (Year 8) have PE on Tuesday this week.
All G28 students (Year 9) have PE on Friday this week.
As usual, we offer extended study sessions, from 3:15pm – 4:30pm each day this week Monday-Thursday. Please ask your son/daughter about extended study and support them in their organisation. Where students continue to struggle to get organised or need additional support we will direct them to attend Extended Study sessions after school on Mondays and Thursday with Mrs Mosley and Mr Said.
All Extended Study tasks are posted on Google Classroom. Year 7 parents should receive an invite to receive weekly Google Classroom updates this week.
The schedule for setting extended study with deadlines can be found here. More information on our rationale for Extended Study can be found here.
Students have signed up for some taster sessions for clubs this week and next. We offer clubs at lunchtimes and after school and students will be able to try some sessions to help with decisions on weekly clubs they will attend after the holidays.
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].
Thank you as always for your ongoing support. There is more in us than we know #WeAreCrew.
Julie Mosley
Crew MW’s School Trip @ Carcroft School
Beautiful Work from Scarlett @ XP Gateshead
Year 3 Glow Day Crew Maths and Science @ Plover
Rainforest Research @ Norton Juniors
Reading for Pleasure @ Green Top
Class 2 Make Bird Feeders @ Norton Infants
We now have a new dedicated news email so that you can send your stories, updates or ideas about potential news articles directly to us in Comms.
It might be something you or your students have achieved, a charity you’re supporting or anything at all that deserves a wider audience.
Write to us at [email protected] – we want to hear about it, write about it and celebrate it!
XP Gateshead have their first school football fixture tonight, with a mixture of all year groups taking part. The tie will be played at Heworth Secondary School and will kick off at 4.00pm. All parents are welcome to spectate and can take their children home straight from Heworth. All other students will arrive back on site by 5.30pm.
Thanks!
Mr Devitt
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Scarlett competed in the northern area regional schools judo championships over the weekend and secured a silver medal! She has also qualified for the national finals in March, what a fantastic achievement. Good luck for the finals Scarlett!
Please arrive from 5.45pm this evening. You will be signed in based upon the surname of your child:
There is very limited parking available on our site so please be considerate of our neighbours if parking on the street. Please do not park in front of dropped kerbs or pathways arcoss the verge as many of the residents are elderly and require easy access to their homes from the street.
This week Ollie and Owen took part in trials for the district football team at under 12 level. Fingers crossed for both boys, but we know that they gave a great account of themselves. Beautiful work Ollie and Owen!
I start with a repeat of last week’s starting sentence: it was another very busy and productive week, even with four days due to our second staff day on Monday. We really do work hard here to produce beautiful work with our staff and students always striving to be the best versions of themselves.
This week has seen the first of our staff days for this term. We have two staff days each term at XP so that our teachers can collaborate across the Trust to create and deliver the high quality curriculum that our students study. On Friday 22nd September we focused on our teaching and learning model at XPG and on Monday 25th September we carried out some Outdoor Education work which focused on crew development including crew reads, crew initiatives and outdoor safety. This work sets us in good stead for future student learning opportunities and Year 9 DofE challenges.
We have had several visitors in school this week meeting our students and looking closely at the work they do. As adults, we always step back and let our students take the floor when visitors come and our students always talk openly and honestly about their school and work here at XP Gateshead.
Verbal feedback from Ron Berger’s visit and our external school review last week has been really positive praising our strong school culture and the quality of our work. We will share more detailed feedback when reports come our way.
On Thursday we had our first LGC meeting of the year. Our LGC is set up to provide support and challenge to XPG leadership around the three dimensions of XP:
Our LGC focus on our school improvement priorities and regularly visit school to validate, support and challenge our work. We have a very strong LGC group as you can see below
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Andrea Mead |
Chair | Headteacher , Specialist provision |
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Jane Sutton |
Governor/Parent |
Primary Link Advisor, Gateshead LEA |
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James Renwick |
Governor/Parent |
Y6 primary teacher |
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Elizabeth Shipley |
Governor/Parent |
Senior Clinical Psychologist |
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Phil Latham |
Governor |
CEO Endeavour Academies |
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Julie Mosley |
Principal |
XP Gateshead |
| Steph Oliver |
Staff/Governor |
Leader at Norton School, XP Trust |
In our first meeting we looked at last year’s review, this year’s school improvement priorities and the work we plan to undertake. LGC visits are scheduled across the year to check on our progress around these priorities.
As part of their G30 expedition “From the Ground Up’, our Year 7 students will be carrying out fieldwork at the location of the former Whitburn Colliery and Marsden Village near to Souter Lighthouse in South Tyneside.
Please see the website post for full kit details and times of the day.
On Tuesday we will open our doors to prospective families that are considering XP Gateshead as a destination school for their children in the next academic year (from September 2024). Our students will host sessions across the evening around our 3D approach, sharing their responses to key questions:
As always, it will be their voice and work that is centre stage. Unfortunately we are not able to have all students with us for the night (all would happily volunteer) due to space but we have a great group of ambassadors who have stepped up to work with us for the evening. Thank you to their families who have supported too with late collection from school.
Our PE sessions this week are as follows. Please ensure that your child has their full PE kit.
We will offer extended study sessions, from 3:15pm – 4:30pm each day this week Monday-Thursday.
We will be sharing our after school club offer with students later this week and taster sessions for clubs will start in the final two weeks of this half term.
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].
Thank you as always for your ongoing support. There is more in us than we know #WeAreCrew.
Julie Mosley
