Cereal Box-athon

Good morning!

Gold Corn Flakes | Nestlé Cereals

Students are currently working on creating scale models of designs for a landscape which will become the base for their wire soldier sculptures.

We need as many empty cereal boxes as we can get our hands on please. If your child can bring some into school before Thursday of next week, we would really appreciate it.

Enjoy your Frosties! (other frosted flake brands are available)

Dear Parents/Guardians

Welcome to another exciting week at XP Gateshead

I hope everyone has enjoyed the bank holiday weekend.

This week we will be revealing our very exciting next expedition which students will be working on up to the end of the Summer term – this was slightly delayed from last week as we wanted to make sure our food boxes were delivered to Edberts house.

Food/recipe boxes were successfully delivered to Edberts house and students presented their learning and also learnt a little about the work Edberts house do in the community.

New Staff appointments Learning Coaches and Crew Leaders

We successfully appointed two new members of staff as learning Coaches and crew leaders for next year. They are Saorise Blain and Kati Donlan and we are looking forward to both joining our “crew”. They will start with 5 weeks of induction alongside other new staff on June 6th.

This week we will be holding interviews for a full time administrator post to begin next year.

PE lessons

Apologies for the short notice, but due to a staff absence and interviews for the admin+ role, PE will now need to be on Wednesday of this week for both classes.

Lateral Flow Testing

Please complete a Lateral Flow Test with your child on Monday evening (tonight), and again on Wednesday evening and complete our website with the results before sending your child to school.

Covid infections are decreasing, but given the size of our setting this really helps us to keep everyone safe and for our school to remain open.

We really do appreciate your support.

Now that the government has decided to remove the wearing of face coverings as one of the mitigation measures in schools, we are happy for students (and staff) to continue wearing masks if they feel more comfortable doing so. 

If you require any extra LFT kits please let us know. 

We will continue to keep doors and windows open for ventilation so students are advised to bring multiple layers to school to keep warm. This is how we look after each other – #wearecrew

Guidance for isolation following a positive test

Any student who has a positive Covid-19 test result should stay at home and avoid contact with people for 3 days. As long as they are well they may return to school following the three days. There is no longer a requirement for students to test negative on the day when they return to school.

As usual if you have any questions please contact crew leaders in the first instance.

Kind regards

Mark Lovatt

Principal

Beautiful work from Isabelle

Isabelle has also been trying out recipes before they were gathered in our food boxes.

Here is Isabelle working on Jack Munroe’s beetburgers, and the final product looks straight out of a serving suggestion photograph!

Absolutely fantastic work Isabelle.

Beautiful work from all of our G28 students

Today our students delivered their food boxes to our partners Edberts House.

As you have seen students have been trying out recipes and Crews have paired up to plan a menu of meals for a week. We have created two food boxes with ingredients for recipes from Cooking on a Bootstrap by Jack Munroe. These food boxes will provide food security to two families for this coming week.

This is really important work. We ask our students to work hard, and to get smart, so they can go out into the world and be kind by making a positive difference to their community. What an incredible thing that they have done, with our families’ help in donating this food.

A really proud moment for us all, and a special appreciation to Ruby, Lucy, Isla, Maddie who presented their learning using extracts from their answers to our guiding question “Is survival sufficient?”

Beautiful work from Liam

To those that have visited Gateshead in the last couple of week from other areas of the country, they might well have wondered why the place smells of pizza toast!?! Look no further it’s our G28 students.

This is important and beautiful work that Liam and his peers have been doing though.

A reminder that students have been trying out the recipes ahead of us putting together food boxes with food for a whole week’s worth of Jack Munroe’s recipes. These food boxes were then donated to families through our partners Edberts House.

This was part of our STEAM learning expedition, Staying Alive.

Fantastic work Liam!

Beautiful work from Betsy*

Betsy has also been cooking again, here is her berry smoothie and a return of her pizza toast – this is fast becoming a favourite among G28.

Beautiful work Betsy.

*and great hand modelling too (Joey Tribbiani would be proud)

Beautiful work from Isla and Freya

Isla and Freya just can’t stop cooking. In their second appearance in beautiful work in the last couple of weeks Freya has also been cooking roast carrot and chickpea soup with flatbread and Isla has cooked up a treat with lentil bean pasta.

I hear they’ll be listed on JustEat very soon as a side hustle.

Great work girls!

Beautiful work from Katie W

Students have been working on their answers to the guiding question for our expedition Staying Alive where the GQ was: Is survival sufficient?

Here is an extract from Katie’s work which is brimming with scientific knowledge, strong writing, textual references but above all… compassion.

Beautiful work Katie! Simply stunning in fact.

Our final case study was access to clean water. There were 2 different methods we looked at such as filtration and distillation. Filtration can separate an insoluble from a solid such as sand. The method for distillation is evaporating the water and then condensing it into a separate container and from this you can separate soluble solids like salt. We in the Uk are very lucky as almost all of us have access to clean filtered water straight from our tap. The reason why we were lucky is we read a text about 2 girls in Africa and how far they have to travel for water. One child had a water kiosk in their village, whilst the other had to walk miles everyday for water even if it wasn’t clean. The child that had access to the water kiosk was able to help out with family on the farm and grow their business, good health, wouldn’t miss out on education and able to spend time with friends. On the other hand the child who had to walk miles everyday would become very poorly as the water would be clean and not have a good education as they would be walking for miles. This links back to our immersion when we watched a video of a woman walking for hours to receive water and this just shows how much people around the world walk for water and aren’t able to get filtered water. In my opinion the countries that have access to clean water should help out with the other ones that don’t as it’s unfair how long they travel for and what they miss out on. And we all have to ensure everyone is lucky enough to have water that’s fresh. 
My answer to the guiding question is no. I don’t believe survival is sufficient. You also need to enjoy it as life is much more than surviving. Like the actors in station 11, I want everyone to make sure they explore the world and how beautiful the world is, new foods, different cultures, how the world works, good education and healthy growth. For our final product in science we had put together a food box from the cookbook Cooking on a bootstrap from Jack Munroe. Her cookbook includes healthy and cheap meals for you and your families to cook! These food boxes will be donated to a family through Edberts House, a charity in Gateshead. My part in the final product was Sunday night tea. I had made socca gluten free frying pan pizza base and cookies since I had some free time. These were delicious and I hope the families will appreciate this as it will definitely help out and give them a big smile on their faces!”

iPad Scheme – Important Update

A high number of student iPads are being returned to the Edutech workshop with damaged screens. Our insurers are now implementing a £50 excess to any claims for broken screens where a screen protector is not applied to the device. 

Families will be liable to pay this excess if screen protectors are not applied. 

If you have a device from the school scheme and do not yet have a screen protector please ask your child to speak to their Crew Leader and we will provide one. 

Screen protectors and devices form part of our crew equipment check process so this is the responsibility of staff, students and parents to ensure devices are appropriately protected.