X27 Viking Festival

Save the Date! X27 are delighted to invite you to a Celebration of Learning as the conclusion to their expedition ‘Raiders and Invaders’. The celebration will take place at XP East on Monday 11th December from 5:30pm. We’d love to see you there!

X24 Fundraising

As previously posted. This summer, X24 are taking part in fundraising for the toilet twinning scheme by walking 2 miles with 4 litres of fluid on their back, just a portion of what those we are trying to help do on a daily basis. Here is evidence from one students walk:

This is an opportunity to provide support for countries who don’t have the simple facility to wash their hands, at a time when hand washing is vital. To support please donate money via this link.

X24 Superbug: Toilet twinning Fundraising

Before Christmas, students in X24 were learning about a possible extinction point, that of the Superbug. The Product is to raise money for the toilet twinning scheme. The scheme aims to supply a toilet or a block of toilets to parts of the world who have limited or no access to sanitation.

This charity is even more important under our current circumstances, given that one of the big drives in helping to control coronavirus, is good hygiene.

To raise money for this, students in X24 are going to walk two miles, with 4 litres of water on their back to ‘walk in the footsteps’ of communities where this is the only way of having any hope of hygiene. This will all be done in their own time.

To Sponsor X24, please donate via this link

If you have any further questions about this, please email me: [email protected]

YEAR 9: New birdwatching world record*

We have a new record in Year 9 for the most birds spotted in a single session.

Kyle in X24 spotted an incredible 60 birds from 14 different species, including a sparrow hawk and two herons.

Whilst we have not set any work for students in Year 9 to complete over the two week break we would love it if they continued with their birdwatching, bug hotels and bird boxes. Please remind them to send us lots of photos. We are in competition with XP East for the most birds spotted.

*not verified by Norris McWhirter

X24 – Closing Circle Hangout Meeting

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

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!

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

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

Beautiful work by X24 and E24

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.