Expeditionary Arts

Year 9 (X27) Skipper working hard in art

2nd October 2022Miss Jones

I wanted to share some of the beautiful work that 9 Skipper has been producing in their art sessions.

I am so impressed with the craftmanship and quality.

Year 9’s first expedition of the year is called ‘Another Brick in the wall’ which has the guiding question ‘How are our lives affected by structures?’

They have created their own expedition title pages:

They have been looking at the street artist Phlegm and reproducing their own work in his style as well as an artist research page.

As you can see – it’s looking great!

Crew Kahlo at the end of Year 9

9th June 2022Miss Jones

As they are coming to the end of Year 9, crew has been reflecting on their year. When thinking about their journey throughout the year, here are some of their highlights.

They have been looking at their HoWLs and AP grades from the last data drop. They have then made pledges each week to focus on small changes they can make to try and improve. Crew holds each other to account during this process, discussing whether they think they have been successful in achieving their pledges.

They have finished their second expedition of the year called ‘Every Picture Tells a Story’ by creating beautiful work. They looked at Islamic tiles and then used rotational symmetry to design their own patterns to paint with acrylic paint.

Here are some examples from Crew Kahlo:

Crew also chose their options for ‘Leading Our Own Learning’ that they will be studying next year. The crew has picked a range of options such as Engineering, Citizenship, Psychology, Further maths, ICT / Computing as well as some members of the crew decided to take up the opportunity to join the ‘pushing for 4’ group that will support them with Maths, English, and Science leading up to their exams.

They cant really believe that they are coming to the end of Year 9 and going into Year 10!

War landscapes in the style of Van Gogh

By Katherine Taylor12th November 2021

Y10 (X25/E25) have been looking at war landscapes for their expedition this term with the guiding question “are we really free to choose?”

This task fell in time perfectly for remembrance day (11/11/21) where the students finished off their Van Gogh samples.

I’m incredibly proud of their work and their efforts with this technique. Well done year 10!!!

A busy couple of weeks for crew Kahlo

By Miss Jones3rd May 2021

Well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks in crew. We have been working hard and cracking on.

This week, crew Kahlo has been looking at ‘British Values’ as part of our crew curriculum. We have been learning about how British Values teach us tolerance and respect for others.

We even made a display in our crew room.

We then moved onto looking at the difference between weather and climate. Pupils carried out research into causes of climate change.

I wanted to highlight this beautiful work by Bryan and Jessy. For our current Y8 expedition ‘Wherever I Lay my Hat’ where we have been looking at the artist Luke Dixon for inspiration. Pupils have practiced adding lines and patterns to simplified copies of his work and also using a viewfinder to zoom in on details. I don’t know about you, but I think Jessy’s pencil-tone portrait is absolutely amazing! I only asked for a line drawing – but she went for it! We didn’t want to add any lines (like Luke Dixon does) over this drawing – so we have photocopied her work and she is adding lines to a copy so she has not one but two beautiful pieces of work!

On Thursdays, crew Kahlo has started to think about the HoWLs grades that they would give themselves for that week in each subject area and crew. Pupils critiqued each other’s grades and commented on whether they agreed with them or not. This led to loads of discussion about what ‘work hard’ looks like and how they could try and improve their own ‘get smart’ in lessons. It has been really great to have Mr. Challen in crew with us as he has been able to comment on pupils’ work in their maths lessons.

A very productive couple of weeks crew! Keep up the good work.

X27 and E27 and their first art expert!

By Miss Jones28th March 2021

On Thursday, all our Year 7 students had a hangout with their first art expert.

Their expert was called Derek Robertson who was speaking to our pupils about his ‘Migrations‘ exhibition.

These pieces of artwork that Derek created fitted in perfectly with Y7’s current expedition called ‘Wherever I lay my hat’ where they are answering the guiding question of ‘Is migration worth the risk?’

Our expert was able to give our students information about his experiences when visiting refugee camps around the world and insights into the lives of the people he met.