Beautiful work in STEAM

By Mr M Said15th May 2020

This week I would like to appreciate a number of students for all sorts of reasons in STEAM.

We have just had our closing circle in a hangout meeting and reminded the students that we appreciate their efforts in such challenging times.

There are a number of challenges that students have been working on, linked to the learning targets of our new expedition:

  • building bug hotels
  • building bird boxes
  • bird spotting
  • doing citizen science research in Zooniverse

We’d love to see more photos from these challenges over the two-week break. But most importantly we want students to stay safe, and where possible to enjoy nature.

Here are my appreciations for the week. More images of beautiful work can be found in our expedition gallery by clicking on this link.

 

Happy Birthday Harrison!

By Melissa Cocliff15th May 2020

Firstly, a huge happy birthday to our newest member of crew – Harrison! We all hope you have a lovely day, even in lockdown! Also, a belated happy birthday to Courtney’s dad, Chris – check out the birthday cake Courtney made for him!

This week also saw the participation in Crew Quiz #2. The winner this week was….

*Drum Roll Please*…

Heather!

Well done everyone! We stuck with the same categories, but Heather reigned supreme with general knowledge, her knowledge of films, music and capital cities!!! Well done Heather!

Imogen this week has blown us away. She has created the most extraordinary bug hotel, and in true Imogen fashion, has named it ‘Bugwarts: School of Wingcraft and Foragery’. Check out some of the amazing work – Imo even provided a step-by-step of how it magically came to life! Hopefully some of the local insects will pass their entrance exams and fly into Bugwarts. They’ll need to work hard to achieve their OWLs, though!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the finished product….

 

Amazing! Great work, Imogen!

I also wanted to showcase something that makes me smile every time i get an email like it. It’s wonderful to receive recognition of crew’s achievements, and it demonstrates how hard they continue to work during these uncertain times!

Another big appreciation goes to Heather this week – you’ve been working really hard following your weekly work plan, and it’s paying off – i was so happy to hear you achieved 100% on one of your Hegarty Maths quizzes! Well done!

It feels weird to be signing off this week, because under normal circumstances, i’d be waving crew off for a 2 week break. Some of my crew still have some outstanding work, so unfortunately this does need to caught up on during your break. Those that need to do this already know who they are, and i’ll send an email to you with outstanding tasks that are compulsory. Please do ensure you are up to date with these, ready and prepared for next term. Staff won’t be setting additional work, so it’s a good opportunity to catch up. I’ll be checking in in a week or so to see where you’re at. 

Over & out for 2 weeks -have a rest, get some sunshine (hopefully), and be kind to yourselves and your family!

Miss C x

X24 – Closing Circle Hangout Meeting

By Mr M Said7th May 2020

This afternoon at 3.00pm we will be hosting a hangout for all of Year 9 across both schools to find out how they have been getting on with their STEAM immersion challenges.

Students can join the meeting by logging into their school account and going to:

http://g.co/meet/c24steam

Attendance for the launch hangout was fantastic. Thanks to all of our families for your continuing support.

#wearecrew

X24 STEAM immersion: CHALLENGE 2 – Powerhouse hunting

By Mr M Said6th May 2020

ETCH A CELL RESEARCH PROJECT

We need our student to help with important medical research!

In this second challenge of the new Year 9 learning expedition: Here Comes the Sun, mitochondria research scientists in London need our students’ help.

Nearly every cell in our body contains hundreds to thousands of mitochondria. These tiny structures are incredibly important. They are often referred to as the ‘powerhouses’ of the cell. This is because they convert the fat, protein and sugar from the food we eat into the energy we need to survive.

We couldn’t live without mitochondria, and if they do not work properly it causes very serious problems.

Students’ job is to identify mitochondria in images of cells at a very high level of magnification.

Volunteers like our students’ work will eventually train AI computers to help analyse new data even faster. This will help the scientists to do their research more quickly and develop new drugs.

More details can be found on Google Classroom or on the immersion section of our expedition website.

 

THIS WORK CAN ALSO COUNT TOWARDS DofE Volunteering during lockdown too!

X24 New STEAM expedition launch: HERE COMES THE SUN

By Mr M Said5th May 2020

Our new Year 9 STEAM expedition is called ‘Here Comes The Sun’. The website for the expedition is live now.

This afternoon we kicked off STEAM immersion week in Year 9 with a huge Google Hangouts Meet.

The meeting was attended by over 60 students from both XP and XP East who met to learn about the challenges we have set for their immersion this week.

One of the main things that we want students to get out of this week, and the whole of this term’s Year 9 STEAM expedition is an appreciation of nature.

 

CHALLENGE 1 – BIRDING

We have asked students to spend at least 30 minutes spotting birds. We have shared a guide and record sheet with them in Google Classroom. Staff have been having a go this week and spoke to the students about how lovely it was to spend time out enjoying nature.

We would love to see lots of photos from students of any birds that they see or just general shots inspired by nature. We are also determined to beat XP East with the number of birds that we spot!

In our meeting we had a massive game of quizlet live to compete with other in identifying 20 of the most common garden birds.

Spoiler alert: Penguins won! 🐧 🏆

 

 

There are also some optional challenges that we would like for the students to try if they can:

OPTIONAL CHALLENGE 1 – BUG HOTEL

If you have a garden or patio space, it would be amazing if students could gather resources to build a bug hotel, these can be as complex or simple as students want to make them.

Students don’t need to complete all of the work on it this week during immersion, as we will revisit it throughout the expedition. Again we would love to see photos of any that students build. Here is mine that I built with my son, we had a great time:

 

OPTIONAL CHALLENGE 2 – NEST BOX

If students have the resources and space they might want to build a small nest box.

This would be a great project to do with family members.

Again students would not need to complete it in this immersion week. It is something we will ask them to return to every week.

 

Details of all of the above are on Google Classroom.

 

There is another important challenge we will be sharing tomorrow, after which I will add a new blog post.

 

GOOGLE HANGOUT CLOSING CIRCLE – THURSDAY AT 3.00pm

It was wonderful to see so many students this afternoon to kick off the new expedition. Charlie even played us out of the meeting with what I believe the young people call ‘The Rave Music’.

On Thursday we will be gathering again on Google hangouts Meet at 3.00pm to see how students have been getting on with their challenges and share the photos that they send to us.

We will also share the guiding question and more exciting details about out new expedition then too.

Please do encourage your son or daughter to get outdoors and enjoy nature wherever possible, get them to send us photos and to join us in the hangout at the end of the week.

Thanks as always for your support.

Have a great week and enjoy VE Day with your family on Friday.

 

#wearecrew

X24 producing beautiful work in HUMAN

By B Batty5th May 2020

As we begin another week at home it felt like a good time to once again highlight the beautiful work students in X24 are producing for their current HUMAN expedition; Empire. Our guiding question is ‘Do we need structure to make society stable?’

We have begun Case Study One and are now starting to consider the actions of the British Empire across the world. Did the British Empire really act as a force for good? Or were the actions taken detrimental to the countries that were colonised? These are the questions that we will be considering over the coming weeks.

At the same time, we are continuing to read Animal Farm, our anchor text. Students have again begun to look at the ideas of power and hierarchical control within the text.

We hope you enjoy just a snapshot of some of the work we have received.

Mrs Batty and Miss Johnson

And the winners are…

By Melissa Cocliff1st May 2020

Archie & Milo!   This morning, Crew Macmillan joined in with our first virtual crew quiz (after moaning from Vinnie!!!). Archie and Vinnie took the top spot with an amazing score of 23.5/25!!!  Well done to everyone for taking part! I can’t wait for our next one in 2 weeks!

Past Winners | Past Recruitment Achievements | Recruiter Awards

This week has seen lots of hard work, as always, from Crew Mac. I wanted to focus on some appreciations this week, though.

  • Firstly, a huge appreciation for Charlie. I know school isn’t always the easiest, but it’s fantastic to see you completing lots of work, and that isn’t going unnoticed:Well done Charlie. Keep up the awesome work!
  • Secondly, an equally huge appreciation for Milo. Milo has managed to keep up with all pieces of work set, and he’s smashing it – in his mum’s words, he’s “making the best of a crazy situation” – and i couldn’t agree more!
  • Thirdly, an appreciation from me to all of Crew Macmillan! Mr Said spent some time creating and sending out postcards to highlight some of the fantastic science work you’ve all been doing. Keep going with this, i look forward to seeing what you do in the next expedition, too! Well done to everyone!

And from students in crew…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wanted to highlight the work that’s going on with some of my crew to ‘catch up’, too. Crew are just getting on with it – they’re completing as much work as they can, to the best of their ability. Brilliant. This week has proven to me just how useful Google Hangouts can be. I’ve spent a lot of time with Ricki this week supporting him to complete tricky work, had a hangout with Courtney to go through where we’re up to, and even caught up with my Y11s (who i’m missing terribly, too!).

Following this, i’ve organised 30 minute tutorials with each individual member of crew, for next week, to discuss progress. We’ll check in, see where we’re at, and if needs be, come up with a strategy to move forward.

Don’t forget, Tuesday at 1pm, you all also need to join a hangout with Mr Said & Mr Smith – it’s the launch of your new STEAM expedition! It all looks very exciting – and chaotic – so please make sure you’re there.

I look forward to setting your crew challenge next week, too… it’ll be an interesting one!!

Thank you all for your work this week. You all make me proud to be your crew leader!

I AM PROUD OF YOU - blue black white: quote, text, humor, funny ...

 

Miss C x

This Week in Crew Macmillan

By Melissa Cocliff24th April 2020

As we end week 5 of school closures, I’d like to showcase some of the amazing things that have been going on in Crew Macmillan – a long post from me today!

Firstly, Thank you to crew – we broke the record for the amount of students checked in to hangout! Alfie and Charlie joined in, too, but left the hangout before i could get them in my picture! Next week, we aim for full attendance!

This week, I challenged crew Mac to bake or cook something. I think we have some future chefs in crew! Check out their solid efforts here:

Isaac’s Fish Cataplana:                                                   Alfie’s Ciabatta:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Courtney’s Chocolate Concrete:                                                   Miss Cocliff’s Oaty Cookies:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finn’s Toastie:                                                                              Archie’s Flapjack:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heather’s Brownies:                                                                       Joe’s Cake:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ricki’s baking:                                                               Milo’s Kebabs (with homemade Tzatsiki!):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A great effort from all involved – Vinnie also made brownies (which must have been too good to wait to take a photo of!)

In Crew Macmillan we like to appreciate people! We know how hard all staff are working, especially whilst at home – so a big thank you! This week, we have a couple of special shout outs:

 

 

 

 

 

I’d also like to highlight some fantastic work from Courtney again this week. Each week, she is going the extra mile and creating some beautiful artwork so we can keep sending some pictures to the care home to cheer residents up. Here’s my favourite from this week:

 

I’d also just like to remind crew that i’m here for any support you may need. This week, I spent an hour on a Google Hangout with Charlie completing some maths work – and did the same again today with Ricki. If you are struggling with any pieces of work, please do let me know, and i’ll try my best to work through it with you (i’m no expert on Atoms, though!)

Final thing from me today is about DofE. Mrs Parker has worked extremely hard (a big thank you!) to explain DofE changes simply. In terms of summarising the changes:

  • If you haven’t completed 12 weeks of physical activity, get in touch with me and we can change your activity to suit your 1 hours daily exercise whilst in Lockdown.
  • Our volunteering  section should now be complete, and hopefully we can sign this off.
  • To complete our bronze award, you have already done 12 weeks of skill  (board games, baking, craft or sports leaders). To extend this, we are asking all y9 students to complete this first aid course. This will take our skill to 6 months, helping us to achieve the award.
  • I’ll be in touch about DofE when we know more.

In the meantime, it’s all explained really well here – Please ensure you read this!

Phew. I think that’s the longest post i’ve ever written! Thanks for sticking with it – some beautiful work going on in Crew Mac. Let’s keep going Crew- we’ve got this, our new normal!

Over & Out. Miss C x

 

Beautiful work by X24 and E24

17th April 2020B Batty

It’s been brilliant over the last 3 weeks to receive daily updates and work from Year 9 in both XP and XP East.

During their time at home students have been immersing themselves into our new expedition entitled ‘Empire’ using the the google site which can be found here https://sites.google.com/xpeast.org/c24-yr9-empire/home

Our guiding question for this expedition will be Do we need structure to make society stable?

Our anchor text is Animal Farm and we will explore the content through one of our three case studies. The other two have yet to be revealed to students…

In this post I’ve tried to capture a snapshot of the great work we have received.

Students have looked at Russia both in its past and present formation. Explored the different ideologies behind Socialism, Communism and Capitalism and how these ideologies were part of the Cold War. Analysed historical sources and the poem Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes As well as created a facebook profile on Ted Hughes using research on him and his life.

A special mention must go out to Theone for creating a facebook profile on Ted Hughes in the first person, Milo who carried out some detailed research and to Noah and Maclaren who thought about the finer details and decided whether they would have befriended him and gave him a specific number of friends.

I hope the slides give a sense of how hard students have been working from home.