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!
Dear Families
I start with a repeat of last weekâs 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.
If itâs good enough for our studentsâŠ
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.
Visitors in school âŠ
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.Â
Verbal feedback from Ron Bergerâs 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.Â
Our Local Governors Committee (LGC) meeting âŠ
On Thursday we had our first LGC meeting of the year. Our LGC is set up to provide support and challenge to XPGÂ 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
|
Andrea Mead |
Chair | Headteacher , Specialist provision |
|
Jane Sutton |
Governor/Parent |
Primary Link Advisor, Gateshead LEA |
|
James Renwick |
Governor/Parent |
Y6 primary teacher |
|
Elizabeth Shipley |
Governor/Parent |
Senior Clinical Psychologist |
|
Phil Latham |
Governor |
CEO Endeavour Academies |
|
Julie Mosley |
Principal |
XP Gateshead |
| Steph Oliver |
Staff/Governor |
Leader at Norton School, XP Trust |
In our first meeting we looked at last yearâs review, this yearâs 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.
Our week aheadÂ
G30 Fieldwork â Whitburn and Marsden
As part of their G30 expedition âFrom the Ground Upâ, 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.
- G30 Class 2 will be going on Tuesday 3rd October
- G30 Class 1 will be going on Wednesday 4th October
Please see the website post for full kit details and times of the day.
Open Evening Tuesday 3rd October
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:
- Beautiful work – How do we create beautiful work and why is this so important?
- Academic success – How do we lead our own learning to ensure that we are successful?
- Character – How do we grow our characters at our school?
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.
PE sessions this week
Our PE sessions this week are as follows. Please ensure that your child has their full PE kit.
- G30 students (Year 7) have PE on Monday this week.
- G29 students (Year 8) have PE on Wednesday this week.
- G28 (Year 9) Class 1 students have PE on Thursday this week.
- G28 (Year 9) Class 2 students have PE on Friday this week.
Extended Study
We will offer extended study sessions, from 3:15pm â 4:30pm each day this week Monday-Thursday.Â
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 childâs 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
Year 6 Open Evening – IMPORTANT FULLY BOOKED
Our Open Evening this week is now fully booked
Due to high demand and our limited size and space in our current temporary building, we have had to limit the number of places at the event. If you have not registered to attend, please do not turn up on the evening as we will not be able to accommodate you.
More information about our school
Our website is also a valuable source of information and will give you a real flavour of the rigour of XP and our relentless focus on academic success, character growth and beautiful work.
We have put together an information website for families that were are not able to attend which you can find here.
Frequently asked questions can be found here.
We look forward to meeting lots of year 6 families this week.
Julie Mosley
Principal
XP Gateshead
As many of you know, Go North East has confirmed a series of strikes on the following dates:
Saturday 30 September â Friday 6 October inclusive
Saturday 14 October â Friday 20 October inclusive
The Gateshead depot is affected.
Go North East anticipate that very few of its bus services across Gateshead will run. They are therefore advising customers to make alternative travel arrangements.
It is important, and your duty, to do everything that you can to get your child to school. Attendance is important in all schools, but as you know in our setting missed days mean that students miss big chunks the wider story of their learning expeditions.
Passes for buses and children’s nexus tickets will be accepted on the Metro where this is a viable option.
If you are encountering problems in arranging for your child to get to school, please do reach out to our Families Group on Facebook, we have a very supportive community and we know that other families will offer to help where they can.
Thanks for your support.
Some stunning monoprints that capture the grit, tone and texture of mining artefacts from Year 7.
Beautiful work G30!
  
  
Sharing our Stories: 29/09/2023
Beautiful Work This Week (…and last week!)
XP Outdoors: Campfire Training!
A Visit from Ron Berger!
We’ve been very lucky since XP first opened and as the Trust has grown over the last ten years, to be able to welcome Ron Berger to our schools. Ron, the CAO of Expeditionary Learning (EL) in the US, has visited us several times, sharing with us his knowledge, energy and wisdom.Â
Always supportive and inspiring, Ron has now, after a two week stay, just returned home. His time here has included visits to all of our schools, a well received and inspirational talk with our staff and chatting with our students and hearing their stories.Â
He also travelled to Scotland to visit our brilliant partners at The Wood Foundation and the educators they support in the Aberdeen area. Their school teams have been regular visitors to XP Doncaster on our delegate days for the last four years.Â
Last but not least, Ron joined colleagues on their induction in Derbyshire, sharing moment by moment with them the experience of developing Crew and fellowship.Â
Renowned as an educator and catalyst for innovation and compassion in education all over the world, we hope it won’t be long before we can welcome Ron back again.Â
Beautiful Curation at Plover
Top of the Blogs
Let’s get critical… critical! @ Comms
Year 2 Music – playing tunes on the Glockenspiel @ Carcroft School
More beautiful work in the community from Elyse and Brody @ XP Gateshead
Our Ambassadors run their first Macmillan Event @ Plover
Rainforest Research @ Norton Juniors
Drama Hut Visit in Class 6 @ Green Top
Let the children march @ Norton Infants
Food Bank Fundraising @ XP East
Share your stories with us!
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!
Elyse was a flag bearer at the recent game between England and Scotland at the Stadium of Light. Elyse has really grown as a footballer over the last couple of years, and what an honour to have such an important role at this local event. Great work Elyse!
   
If you visit the Shipley Art Gallery, and we think you should, you will see Brody’s pottery piece displayed in one of the cabinets in the Gallery. Fantastic and beautiful work Brody. Our students can say they are published authors, Brody is a published potter!
  
Lizzie has produced some thoughtful writing about the importance of coal in our region to help drive the Industrial Revolution. Josh, having produced similar quality writing then made extensive notes on the Industrial Revolution as an extension task. Great work Lizzie and Josh!
  
All G30 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.
G30 Class 2 will be going on Tuesday 3rd October
G30 Class 1 will be going on Wednesday 4th October
Students will need:
- to wear clothes that will keep them warm and dry â lots of layers.Â
- wellies or old trainers are needed for footwear as part of the fieldwork will involve studying the rocks in Marsden Bay which is a sandy beach.
- a packed lunch.
- their school bag with regular school kit list inside including iPad. Most bags are not waterproof so we suggest putting kit inside a plastic bag inside the rucksack.
A packed lunch will be provided for students that are entitled to free school meals and request one.
Students need to be in school at the normal time of 8.25am on each day.
We expect to return to school in time for the normal end of day at 3.15pm but will update our website should there be any delays due to traffic.
Dear Families
This last week has been a very busy and productive one again, even with four days due to the staff day on Friday.
On Thursday we welcomed the North East Creativity Collaboratives Network into school. Part of the conference agenda included an ambassador tour from our students, who were able to articulate how creativity is central to our rigorous 3-dimensional curriculum focussing on Beautiful Work, Character Growth and Academic Success.
In preparing for this visit it has reminded us of just what a special place our school is, and the breadth and depth of experiences that our students get in service to their mission of ensuring that they and their Crew are successful.
G30 – What do the communities of NE England owe to the miners?
Just this week we have had G30 preparing to interview Joe Solo, a folk musician and our songwriting expert in preparation for our students taking stories of members of the mining community and immortalising them in song.
Year 7 have also visited Beamish to carry out fieldwork which focussed on the working conditions of mines in the 19th and early 20th century. This fieldwork included demonstrations of what caused the tragedy at Felling pit (literally underneath our school) in 1812, as well as carrying out an investigation into the death of a young miner and going down the drift mine for a visceral understanding of what it feels like to spend your day under the ground.
Students will share their music and wider learning from this expedition with you in a presentation of learning at St Maryâs Church in Heworth at the Year 7 Presentation of Learning on the evening of Monday 18th December.
G29 – What does it mean to be Human?
G29 have this week been grappling with challenging text, including their anchor text âThe Bodyâ by Bill Bryson to help them to make connections between the structure and function of the lungs and the evolutionary path of humans, the smart ape. In Human students welcomed Reverend Lucy into school to ask her about her views on the sanctity of human life. Reverend Lucy was very impressed with the level of questions from Year 8, commenting that they were âUniversity-level questionsâ. In arts students have been continuing to learn to capture the most expressive object in the known universe – the human face. The connections students make between these disciplines will come together in a speech, excerpts from which you will be able to hear at the Year 8 Presentation of Learning on Tuesday 19th December.
G28 – How can structures help us to explain the world around us?
This week G28 visited the Byker Wall to learn from experts in the Byker Community Trust and Ryder Architecture about the influence that physical structures and our social environment can have on the way that we live our lives. Students toured the community, sketched the building in preparation for their own sculpture design and paid particular attention to a building that had been suffering from decline and anti-social behaviour, but after renovation and reconfiguration is now an award winning part of the Byker community.
In the coming weeks students will start to make more connections between structures of habitations, structures of government and structures of the physical world – down to the atom, to help them to answer their guiding question.
Year 9 will share their learning in a Presentation of Learning on the evening of Thursday 14th December.
Our week aheadÂ
Ron Berger – EL Education
This week we are honoured to welcome Ron Berger from EL Education to our school. Ron Berger is the Senior Advisor for Teaching & Learning at EL Education in America. Ron is a well-known educator nationally and internationally and will talk to our students about a commitment to quality, character and citizenship.
More than this though Ron is a friend of XP; in fact without Ron there would be no XP. Ron has been with EL Education in the US since the very beginning and was gracious enough to guide us in setting up XP in Doncaster. When we talk about Outward Bound and Kurt Hahn being the start of our story at XP, Ron is the person who helped us to fill in the gaps when the idea of XP was first developed by Andy Sprakes and Gwyn ap Harri – for that we will be forever grateful.
Some of our staff have been lucky enough to listen to Ron talk before. Our students are in for a treat, as Ron brings with him more than the stories of his experience as an educator over the last 25 years, but also a portfolio of beautiful work from students across the EL community – work of quality, work of character and work of active citizenship. We canât wait!
External School Review on Thursday
Building on the really positive external review that we had in the Summer Term, we have asked for another review to look specifically at Personal Development of our students and also to look in more depth at more subjects. We will update you with feedback from this review but we know that our students and staff will do us proud. Here is a reminder of some of the wonderful comments from the previous review.
âStaff are committed and relentless in their pursuit for culture to be rightâ
âCrew is an effective system for ensuring that primarily students are known very well to adults, and that students exist in a safe place to talk with confidence about many issuesâÂ
âThe curriculum model, is being implemented successfully, thanks to experienced leaders, as well as collaboration with other experienced leaders across the trust, which is positiveâ
âInterpersonal skills are being well developed â students are skilled at listening to others, being respectful and sensitive, as well as in offering advice, critiquing others, and in offering their own opinions and thinkingâ
PE sessions this week
Due to our staff day tomorrow, there is no PE for G30 students (Year 7) this week
G29 students (Year 8) have PE on Wednesday this week.
G28 Class 1 students have PE on Thursday this week.
G28 Class 2 students have PE on Friday this week.
Extended Study
We will offer extended study sessions, from 3:15pm â 4:30pm each day this week Monday-Thursday.Â
On staff days like tomorrow, our students do not attend school and there is no expectation that they complete work beyond their regularly set extended study (homework). Students will find this work on Google classroom.
Students are expected back to school on Tuesday 26th September by 8:25am at the latest.
As usual if you have any questions about your son or daughter please get in touch with your childâs 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