XP Gateshead

Dear Parents/Carers

We’ve had a great first week back and our students have returned to school approaching learning in their usual manner – working hard, getting smart and being kind. As always, much has been achieved in one week!

Common Mission

Common Mission started this week for both G28 and G29. This is an hour each week where we personalise our curriculum to support and challenge students to become the best versions of themselves?”. Common Mission provides our students opportunities to uncover and develop passions in areas outside of our core offer, with some students getting additional academic support where appropriate. 

For the first time, this weekly session was an opportunity for both year groups to work together. It was a fantastic scene when we walked around sessions and a real testament to the strong culture and community we are building when we saw our students step up to fresh challenges with new people and readily support each other. 

This term’s Common Mission sessions are:

Creative Writing; Directed Numeracy; Directed Literacy; Fitness; Mandarin; Mindful Arts; Personalised Research and a STEM project.

Clubs

Our clubs started this week and lunchtimes and after school have been full of activity. Students have enjoyed a real variety of clubs:

Expedition sessions

As always our students have been working hard in sessions striving always for high quality. G29 have been producing beautiful artwork, exploring mark making using mono printing.

G28 showed courage this week in STEAM sessions when they carried out heart dissections. They demonstrated real maturity approaching this challenge, carrying out these experiments with care and precision, working as scientists.

HoWLs – Habits of work and learning

HoWLs snapshots were shared with students in Thoughtful Thursday Crew this week and our students got to see teacher reflections on their HOWLs alongside their own weekly HOWLs self reflections. 

There were some real highlights in this snapshot from both G28 and G29. In G29 we now have 42% of students who have achieved an average HoWL of 3.5 and above. This means that they are demonstrating consistently great habits of learning: working hard,  getting smart and being kind in all sessions. These students will take greater leadership roles this term and have been offered the opportunity of being the first students to attend a one-day project with one of our careers partners,  linked to their current expedition with an architecture focus. More details on this for students involved this week. 

G29 students who have demonstrated similar greatness in HoWLs will join our G28 HoWL leaders in student focus groups taking place this term. These are sessions which allow students to work with staff and share their insights on different areas of school (sessions, extended study, clubs, etc) as part of our school improvement and student voice.

Over the next few weeks all students will be working on pledges to improve areas of their HOWLs  and these will be shared with you. Crew Leaders and Y8 Crew Buddies will support our new Y7 students with this process.

This week: 

We will be taking time this week to work with our students on remembrance of service and the importance of honouring those who serve to defend our democratic freedoms and way of life. 

We will explore this in our Crews and take the opportunity to revisit the radio podcast from last year’s ‘Do Your Bit’ G28 expedition which had the guiding question ‘Why do we need to honour all those who sacrificed in WWI?’.

For our new parents who haven’t heard this, here is the link to a really beautiful product from Y7 last year.

I did say that it has been a great week back and we have achieved lots! 

Thank you as always for your support and as usual, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact your children’s crew leader in the first instance.

Julie Mosley

Co-principal

Dear Parents/Carers

Welcome back after what I hope has been a restful and safe half term holiday.

We are looking forward to seeing all of our students again, raring to go and ready to continue their hard work on current expeditions.

G28 students are continuing with their Being Human, exploring the guiding question ‘What does it mean to be Human?’. Last term in Case Study 1 they looked at what it means to be human from an anatomical perspective in science and art through drawings and dissections and also from a theological perspective looking at beliefs about the importance of humans and the sanctity of life. In their second case study they will be looking in more depth at our shared humanity, and mistakes of the past such as slavery held up against the genetic evidence of just how similar we all are, regardless of ethnicity – and yet how such a small difference in our DNA gives rise to such wonderful diversity.

Our students continue to work with some amazing experts and none more so than Sister Josepha Matthews who spent the final morning of last term with G28 discussing how her beliefs and the teachings of her catholic faith have informed the way that she has lived her life and her opinion on what it means to be human. Our students were full of admiration for Sister Josepha and the great work that she has done in service to her community and to those in need around the world.

Tyler from Crew Stanton said to Sister Josepha: “You must be very proud of the life you’ve led and the lovely things you do for people. You are inspiring.” which sums up just what an incredible and compassionate life that Sister Josepha has led as a practising nun and headteacher in Walker.

It was fantastic to hear our students share their thoughts and appreciations in our final community meeting. She commented on how thoughtful and mature our students were and the eloquence of their questions and discussion. 

Our G29 students are also continuing in their expedition,  ‘From the Ground Up’ with the guiding question ‘What do the communities of North East England owe to the miners?’. 

Last term in Case Study 1 students learned about the industrial revolution and how we began to harness the properties of matter on a massive scale. We kicked off Case Study 2 in our final week of last half-term with some fieldwork to Marsden and Whitburn – this gave students important insights and background knowledge to help them to study the growth and decline of Whitburn Colliery as a practice historical enquiry in readiness for writing about Northumberland pits for their final product. Students are also going on to study the rock cycle and how Britain came to be a place of mineral wealth, and the associated challenges with taking coal from the strata beneath our feet.

In the coming weeks G29 will also start to interview experts from the Northumberland mining community, with a particular focus on the 1984 miners’ strike.

This week: 

Getting organised

Daily kit list – As always, students need to bring a school bag with:

• A filled water bottle
• Pencil case including: pens, pencils, ruler, eraser and pencil sharpener
• A fully charged iPad 
• Headphones – ideally not expensive ones
• A healthy snack for break (no confectionery (sweets), fizzy drinks or energy drinks, nut products)
• A notebook
• A reading book (e-reader book, school library book or book from home)

PE sessions

As usual G28 students (Y8) will need a PE kit for Tuesday, G29 students (Y7) will need a PE kit on Wednesday.

Extended Study and Clubs

Our clubs will all run this week (see schedule below) along with extended study sessions every day except Friday. If a student attends an after school club or extended study session they must attend the full sessions until 4:30pm.

Thank you as always for your ongoing support. 

As usual if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact your children’s crew leader in the first instance.

Julie Mosley

Co-Principal