Parents’ Update – W/C Monday 31st October 2022

By Julie Mosley30th October 2022

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

Hermoso trabajo en Español – Beautiful work in Spanish

By Emily Quested27th October 2022

G28 students have written letters which summarise many of the topics that they have learned in Spanish since the start of Year 7.

To help them to memorise their extensive vocabulary they created mind maps, and then wrote to their pen pals to tell them about themselves.

You can hear some of their beautiful final recordings by clicking here too.

Muy impresionante trabajo G28!

Year 6 Open Evening and Admissions for Sep 2023

By Martin Said20th October 2022

We have put together an Open Evening Website with additional information and videos to accompany our in-person events held last week. This site has been set up to support families with children in Year 6 in making a decision on their choice of secondary school for September 2023.

The Open Evening Website can now be accessed by clicking here.

We have also updated the frequently asked questions section of our website to address the great questions we received on those evenings. We hope that you find the information here useful in helping you to make your decision.

Year 6 Open Evening – UPDATE FOR FAMILIES

By Julie Mosley14th October 2022

We would like to pass on our appreciation to all of the families that came to our events these last two evenings. Over the two evenings we were visited by over 300 people. Our students led the events with presentations on important aspects of our model, as ambassadors taking visitors on tour and answering questions about their school.

We are so proud of the way that our students demonstrated how they can lead their learning with over half of our students involved in the event.

Again thanks to all of the families that attended as this gave our existing students another opportunity to learn that there is ‘more in them than they know’.

We are sorry that given our temporary accommodation we were not able to host more families across the two nights. A reminder that we will be posting a series of associated videos and answering questions from the evening on our website next week.

 

 

Getting Smart at XPG: Beautiful work from Jason

By Emmy Tatters13th October 2022

Here is the perfect example of how we get smart at XPG!

Jason in Y7 received some feedback on a recent assessment and decided to take this away, check the rubric and have another go at it, taking that feedback onboard to ensure he could securely meet the learning target.

Well done for getting smart by taking responsibility for your learning, Jason!

OPEN EVENINGS 2022 – Important Information

By Martin Said12th October 2022

If you are attending our open evenings on Wed 12th and Thu 13th October could we please request that you are considerate of our neighbours when parking. Please make sure you have not parked in front of a drive or a dropped kerb.

Please do not arrive more than 10 minutes before your booked slot – this will help with getting other groups out of the building in an orderly fashion.

We have lists of the families that have signed up. Our temporary accommodation for this year is limited in size. We regret that we could not accommodate more families, but we must stress that we ask you not to turn up if you do not have a booked slot.

We are looking forward to welcoming many families over the next couple of evenings and will be in touch with those other families with information and videos which support the two evenings.

Weekly update for Parents – W/C Monday 10th October 2022

By Julie Mosley9th October 2022

Dear Parents/Carers

Welcome to the final week of this half term! 

It is hard to believe that we have only been together for 6 weeks having achieved so much!

The work of our Comms Team brought this to light last week after installing some new displays. Seeing more beautiful expedition work showcased and more student images has been great and enjoyed by all.

Our weekly community meetings continue to be a highlight of every week. These are a time when each year group comes together to share key messages and make appreciations, apologies, stands and pledges. 

In the G29 community meetings we have continued to ‘tend to’ our new community and students are now confidently using their voice in these sessions. G28 community meeting this week was a special one, students who have been completing a personalised research project during their Common Mission time took the opportunity to present their work to the rest of the year group. Our students showed real courage in doing this and their work was high quality – we learned about subjects such as :

  • The ‘life cycle’ of stars and what evidence there is to support this
  • Forensics and the importance of treating crime scenes very carefully
  • The world of macro photography of the very small
  • The threats faced by curlew and how conservation efforts are helping

Congratulations to all who presented on Friday and a huge appreciation from all staff and students for the new learning you shared.

This week:

G29 fieldwork

As part of their ongoing expedition, ‘From the Ground Up’, G29 students will be carrying out fieldwork at the location of the former Whitburn Colliery and Marsden Village near to Souter Lighthouse in South Tyneside. More details on kit etc. were shared in this post last week. They will be working alongside geological experts and carrying out a historical enquiry at the site of the former pit village, including a visit to Souter Lighthouse to see their exhibition with excerpts from former residents of the village.

Open Evenings

As you know, we are hosting open evening events for Year 6 families on Wednesday 12th and Thursday 13th October. Many of our students are working with us to prepare for these evenings and getting ready to present their school to the wider world. Keep an eye on our website for short films about XP and the work we do here. 

HoWLs

Students will continue to discuss their Habits of Work and Learning in academic crew this week. We are really proud of how honest and reflective our students have been during this process and look forward to sharing some teacher reflections on HOWLs with them after the half term break.

Early closure this Friday

Don’t forget that we will be closing early this Friday at 1.30pm to allow us time to “de-gunge” and set up for the next half term. Please make arrangements to pick up your children at the school gate for 1.30pm this Friday.

Extended Study and Clubs this week

Please note that there are no clubs taking place this week. We ran taster sessions last week so our students got a real flavour of what’s on offer. Clubs will start after the half term break.

Extended study this week will run on Monday and Tuesday only. This is due to our Open Evenings on Wednesday and Thursday. 

 

Thank you for your continued support through this half term and we hope everyone has a good holiday. We are looking forward to the next half term where we will be focussing on our academic work and adding work to our “beautiful” work portfolios. We will also be organising our student-led conferences which will be an opportunity for you to see some of the work your children have been doing – more on this later.

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

XP Gateshead