Enrichment Timetable – October – December 2021

Due to the fantastic efforts of our incredible staff, we are delighted to be able to offer so many extra curricular opportunities to our wonderful students!

Please see attached an updated version of our enrichment timetable. On here, you’ll find sports clubs/fixtures, Arts clubs (including our new Vocaleles!) and KS4 Revision sessions with staff. We would encourage our students to attend as many of these sessions as possible to secure their GCSE grades and achieve their potential!



I can also share with you that D6 will begin again this coming Saturday, November 13th. D6 is our Saturday provision where students are able to come and work with coaches in school from 9am – 12:30pm. For the time being, D6 is open to year 11 only.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the staff running any extra-curricular activities, or myself at [email protected].

Thank you for your continued support – we look forward to seeing many of our students in these sessions!

Mel Cocliff
XP Y11 Phase Lead
Crew Macmillan Crew Leader

Vaccination – Covid Vaccine Forms

12-15 year olds will be offered the vaccine via the school-based programme.

Students in Years 10 and Year 11 have been given their consent forms. Check with your son/daughter that they have taken their form. The school vaccination nurses are in school on 10th November. If your son/daughter are currently in year 8 and 9 and did not attend school on their designated covid vaccine day and so missed their chance, then you can fill in the consent form and return to the school office to be added to the list. Please read the letter that goes with consenting and return the consent form to the school office by the end of this week (15th October 2021).  (A reminder if any student has tested positive for Covid 30 days before the vaccine date they cannot have the covid vaccine).

X24 History, getting started with revision!

Students this week have been given their own copy of the revision guide for our History exam board OCR B SHP History. All students should have named their copy so that if they are misplaced they can be returned. Students are encouraged to annotate and highlight the guide as they carry out their revision.

The revision guide has a number of different topics, however, students will need to focus on the following sections for revision:

  • The Elizabethans 
  • The People’s Heath 
  • Living under Nazi Rule 

The locations of these topics can be found in the contents page. We would recommend in general students start by revising The People’s Health as well as focusing on page 88 in order to prepare for the upcoming assessment in lessons. 

If any student has been absent when these revision guides were handed out, they can see myself or Mrs Hannam directly and we will make sure they get their copy.

 

A further revision guide focusing on the Viking Expansion will be issued to students in the coming weeks.

 

 

We are super excited to be taking C24 out on fieldwork on Thursday, 1st July.

We have arranged to take the whole of Y10 to Shrewsbury Prison, to support our final expedition of the year: Karma Police – have we got justice right?

Shrewsbury Prison was decommissioned in 2013 and now provides an “interactive prison experience” for visitors. It was also recently used as the location for BBC’s drama ‘Time’, which gave a harrowing picture of prison life.

We’re not giving too much away about the activities we’ve got planned for students, but we promise not to leave any of them locked in the cells 😉

We are booked in at the prison at 9.30am meaning that we do have to set off between 6.45am-7am at the latest.  If this is a problem for anyone, please let your Crew Leader know as soon as possible.

We will be leaving the prison at approx 1pm, so hope to be back at school between 3.30-4pm, traffic dependant. We will update socials on the day.

Please make sure students wear comfortable clothes and take a jacket as it can become cold in the prison and sensible shoes. Students will also need a packed lunch and sufficient water for the day. Please don’t pack any products containing nuts in packed lunches as we are a nut-free school!  If your child is in receipt of free school meals, a packed lunch will be provided for them.

X24/Y10 Mock Exams

Year 10 will begin their first set of GCSE mock exams from the week commencing 10th of May over the following two weeks. This first round of mocks will be over two weeks to all the students’ time between exams to ease students back into the formal examination process, but it also helps us to maintain our current CV-19 adjustments in school. 

 

The following exams will be taken by students in X24/Y10:

AQA citizenship (Cit students only)

AQA Spanish Writing (GCSE Spanish students only) 

AQA Spanish Speaking (GCSE Spanish students only) 

OCR B SHP History The People’s Health / Living under Nazi Rule 

AQA Geography Paper 2 (Common Mission students only) 

Eduqas English Language Component 1

Eduqas English Language Component 2

Eduqas English Literature XP made paper from a combination of Comp1 and 2 

AQA Business Paper 1 (Common Mission students only)

AQA Maths Paper 1 Non Calculator

AQA Maths Paper 2 Calculator

AQA Science Paper 1 – Communicable and non Communicable diseases

AQA Science Paper 2 – Mag/electro mag/Hydrocarbons/alternative sources energy

 

All exams will take place during a normal school day, and will take place in the sports hall with appropriate CV-19 safety adjustments in school.

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.

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

Crew Catch-ups!

Fridays, at 11am, are becoming my favourite time of the week. Why? That’s when Crew Macmillan’s Google Hangouts are! We broke our record this week, with the most crew members joining so far – with the addition of Mrs Robins, too – who it was lovely to catch up with! We’re glad to say, this will be a weekly invite – you’re officially part of Crew Macmillan!

Crew seem to be adjusting well to their new routines at home – so much so, that only a couple had a few things to catch up on academically. It’s lovely to hear crew supporting each other, offering help if it’s needed.

Keep doing what you’re doing Crew Macmillan, because you’re smashing it!

During our hangout, we had a real mix of conversations. I’m a little dumbfounded at the fact that i’ve been their crew leader since September and only NOW have some of them told me about (and proceeded to show me) their DOGS! It’s really made my week seeing Max the border collie – who can high five Courtney?! – and Dotty, Mr & Mrs Robins’ Lakeland terrier x border terrier, who loves to give cuddles!

I got a reminder of how random crew really are, too. Heather updated us on her Gratitude Jar – and read us a lovely entry. Frankie gave me goosebumps by drinking a glass of milk (i thought she said it was from a camel!). Isaac said his favourite celebrations were twix (REALLY?). Alfie doesn’t have a dog, so showed us his cactus instead (Mr Robins asked if he cuddles it?!) Imogen is also to create an instructional video on how to cook scrambled eggs in a microwave (who knew?!) so i look forward to that!

I asked some of crew to share with me work they are proud of this week. Check out some beautiful work by Milo, analysing the GCSE poem Hawk Roosting:

I hope i receive some more pieces crew are proud of so i can share them!

Courtney and Heather have also shared some more beautiful artwork for us to pass to Mrs Pulham for the residents in the care home where her mum works. This is an ongoing thing, and hopefully we’ll be able to send lots of colourful pieces for everyone to see.

Courtney blew me away yesterday, too, by sending me a video of her singing Valerie by Amy Winehouse for the residents – i’m sure that will make them smile. We have such talent in Crew Macmillan!!

As always, i’ve set Crew Macmillan a weekly challenge. This one could be yummy, though – their challenge is to bake/cook something, and send me some pictures if it’s not all gone straight away. They needed a gentle reminder, though, that TOAST DOESN’T COUNT.

I look forward to seeing what they come up with. Keep working hard crew – i can’t wait to see you all.

Miss C x

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.