C26 Celebrations – WOW!!!!

What. A. Morning!!!!! We had the pleasure this morning of sharing over 40 praise postcards for our wonderful Y11s, written by staff. We also had in-person appreciations from crew leaders and teachers who had made themselves available to join us!

As you read the postcards, you’ll get a feel for how hard Y11 are working, and how impressed we really are. As phase leads, these brought us to tears, actually – we are so proud of C26 and of how far they’ve come.

There’s also a really powerful message at the end from Jurgen Klopp – take this away from football, and apply it to Y11. We’ll get through the tough times together, as crew! ❤️

Keep going, Y11. You’ll achieve amazing things!

X26’s Visit to Huddersfield University

No punchy title this time… but it was an awesome day out at Huddersfield University!

On Friday, we had the opportunity to take our incredible Y11’s to visit the campus at Huddersfield. During the visit, we were greeted with a number of smiley student ambassadors who had given up their time to work with us and share their stories, we took part in an ‘A-Z of courses’ quiz (although, as a team, staff were cheated out of the prizes… it was definitely a fix!!!). There was some surprise at finding there are over 40,000 higher education courses to choose from, and most people thought the accommodation with free gym membership and transport looked like a bargain!

Following this, an informative lecture about Nazi Germany gave pupils the opportunity to interact with an expert about a key element of their GCSE study. Their history teacher would have been very proud to hear the pupils forming convincing arguments about Nazi propaganda and the other factors that played a part in Hitler’s rise to power. Their ability to confidently draw on their background knowledge to deal with new source material was impressive.

We then spent some time in a workshop on budgeting (I think I learned the most here!!) and after lunch, we were taken on a tour of campus and saw some mind-blowing facilities. Here, we saw a state of the art Gym (Kolby was super impressed!), tech-y biomedical science labs, a HUGE library, an old mill conversion, a 350-seat lecture theatre, and a ‘hospital set up’ where student nurses were expected to take care of £45,000 mannequins – who acted as if they were real hospital patients. What a night shift that would be!

Pupils also had plenty of opportunity to quiz the student ambassadors about student life. Questions such as “‘what happens if you fail or don’t do well in a module, can you resit?” and “how many lectures do you have each week?” kept the ambassadors on their toes… they all expected questions about how often they could party! Everyone was very impressed with the facilities and one person said they were ‘mesmerised’ by the scenic working canal and locks running through the middle of campus. We even rated them 4.8/5 stars for the day overall!

All in all, each member of Y11 needs to be appreciated for their impeccable conduct throughout the day. Ambassadors commented on how ‘down to earth’ and respectful our students were during the day. We hope you all got a lot out of the visit – we certainly LOVED the day with X26. What phenomenal humans you really are!

Miss Cocliff, Ms. Cross, Mrs Burnitt & Mr Elliott x

A ‘Wheel-y’ good time at Wabtec for Y11!

…get it? Train wheels?!

This week saw Y11 visit WABTEC Rail, the former site of the Doncaster Plant Works. As part of component 2 for their exam (History Around Us), students have been studying The Doncaster Plant Works.

We got to see the work shops where the famous ‘Flying Scotsman’ was built as well as the ‘Mallard’, which still holds the world record for the fastest steam locomotive. We got to see some original workshops, some new workshops… and some that have changed, but the structures still remain as they are listed buildings! The visit also helped us to understand the significance of the site, not only locally, but also nationally – Doncaster was put on the map because of it’s rich coal seams, and perfect geographical location to ship this out country-wide!

We discussed how the site has changed over time and why; the sites turning points in history; its significance both locally; nationally and internationally; as well as looking for historical evidence. We noticed the HUGE windows to let in natural light, the tall workshops to allow locomotives to be brought in, and lots of suspended cranes to work on the top of the locomotives! The workers were so knowledgable about the site over time, too, which will really support Y11’s studies!

X26’s conduct was impeccable, with workers at WABTEC commenting on how impressed they were with student’s knowledge, respect, and questioning!

Ben and Alex even got to have a go at tightening up some huge ‘bogeys’ (where axels attach on the underneath of a train)… maybe an apprenticeship is on the cards! Awesome work, Y11. We’re super impressed!

Miss Cocliff, Mrs Hannam, Mrs Batty, Mrs Burnitt & Mrs Pulham x

XP and XP East meet with Rav from ‘A little History of the Sikhs’

As part of our expedition Do your bit! students have been learning about the role of propaganda in WW1 and how people from across the British Empire answered the ‘call to arms’. We welcomed Rav Singh, the founder of ‘A little History of the Sikhs’, to XP. Rav spoke us about the role of Sikhi soldiers in WW1, how soldiers carried out their beliefs and practices on the battlefield and helped us to understand the experience of Sikhi soldiers. https://alittlehistoryofthesikhs.org/

As we work towards answering our HUMAN expedition exploring the guiding question: ‘Why do we need to honour all those who made sacrifices during WWI?’

A big thank you to Rav for taking time to speak to us.

Christmas Jumper Day – Thursday 7th December

I know it’s November – but I wanted to let you know so you have the time to get organised (and buy a Christmas jumper if you wanted to)

XP & XPE will be celebrating Christmas Jumper Day on Thursday 7th December and asking pupils to bring in a donation that will go to the charity ‘Save the Children’

Christmas dinner will also be served at both schools on this day.

Thanks

Miss Jones

Celebrations in X26 (Y11) & X27 (Y10)

We had SO many things to celebrate in our final KS4 community meeting of this half term!

From incredible amounts of praise points, to students identifying others working hard across sessions… and outstanding acts of kindness, we had SO many postcards to share from staff too!

See below some of the awesome things happening this term in Y10 & 11 – they’ve come back with a bang and done themselves SO proud!

Have a fabulous half term,

Miss Cocliff x

C26 (Y11) Weekly Planner

Please see this week’s weekly planner for Y11. All learning labs are on as normal this week.

On this week’s planner you’ll find the mock exam timetable – Y11 mocks kick off on Friday, 6th October.

Please also see attached a fieldwork letter for Thursday, 12th October 2023.

Miss Cocliff & Mrs Parker x

KS4 are SMASHING it!!!!

We had the opportunity to hold a Y10 & Y11 community meeting this morning to celebrate all the amazing stuff going on in each year group!

Take a look at the sheer amount of praise postcards from staff for our wonderful Key Stage 4 students. They shared their notices, praises and wonders; and also their own apologies, appreciations and stands.

Some awesome work going on at this point – keep being amazing!!!

Miss Cocliff x

UNBELIEVABLE work from KS4!

I’ve had the pleasure of spending a little more time in sessions this week with Y10 & Y11 – and I’ve seen some absolutely phenomenal work from X26 & X27!

X26 have had an amazing week across all sessions. Admiral smashed it out of the park in Miss Buckley’s English session – some incredible contributions from Max, and who knew Kolby could analyse poetry in so much detail?! Skipper have been brilliant this week too, especially in history – I’m hearing SO many positive comments about Y11 and their hard work!

We’ve launched Learning Labs this week, too – attendance at this has blown us away – I think for English, 80/100 students attended. These run on a 5 week cycle, so every session will help Y11 to get smart and achieve their potential. AMAZING!

In science this week, you could hear a pin drop as X27 Skipper focused so much with Mr Morrison on the work they were completing about atomic structure – not an easy topic – but every single student in there showed incredible respect – for each other and their learning environment! A special shout out this week to Noah, Billy and Nadia B – who have been absolutely brilliant in EVERY. SINGLE. SESSION. Keep it up!

With so much fantastic work going on, it’s no wonder X26 have earned a collective 226 praise points this term… but X27 are racing ahead with a collective 561 praise points. WOW!!!!

Keep showing everyone how wonderful we really are in Y10 & 11!!!

Miss Cocliff x