On Thursday 1st July, Crew Macmillan (and the rest of C24!) took part in fieldwork to Shrewsbury Prison, to support their current expedition ‘Karma Police!’ – and to focus on their guiding question of ‘have we got justice right?”.
Category : x24
Student Led Conferences are vital to our work. They put our students in charge of sharing information about their academic progress with their families. In the words of expeditionary learning guru Ron Berger, “Student Led Conferences require and empower students to take the lead role in communicating their learning” – in other words, our students know they have to be responsible for their learning and progress, and they must be able to explain to their families where they are at, and where they are heading!
SLC’s obviously looked a little different this year. They were online; students had 25 minutes to speak about a range of things, including their HoWLs data, Academic progress, how they have found working from home, and the pledges they made at the start of the year. Crew Macmillan continue to surprise me daily; and once again, they absolutely SMASHED it! They each spoke confidently and maturely, could analyse their own data in terms of GCSE grades (which is a vital skill as we head into Y11) and they were all able to share examples of beautiful work with their families. As such, i wanted to share some of the amazing work with you!
Firstly, Crew were asked to reflect on their attendance across the year. Although we haven’t physically been in school THAT much in Y10 (Thanks, COVID!) – online attendance is still absolutely vital, and it is still monitored. Some great reflections in crew; here is Imogen’s! Imogen spoke through how ‘blue’ means ‘Awesome’ – in terms of our narrative for success, this means Imo is exceeding expectations!
Students were then asked to reflect on their Work Hard, Get Smart, and Be Kind attributes in sessions. Archie and Joe provided really detailed analysis for each HoWL!
Year 10 started this expedition with an immersion task practising their skills on digital design apps. Students worked on a range of devices and using different apps which allowed them to edit and filter images that they’d chosen. We grappled with the apps and started off by creating a horror film poster.
We also looked at the principles of good design, and then started to create our own posters for the fictional movie – Emerald Bay. Miss Taylor and Mr. Jackson were really pleased with the work that everyone managed to produce – especially considering the wide range of skills and experience that the classes started out with. Well done year 10!
This week in Crew Mac!
Crew Macmillan have had another cracking week this week! I am constantly blown away by how hard they work, how smart they get, and how kind they are.
Our Mindful Mondays this week focused around our weekends. We spent our crew session catching up, speaking about positives and negatives to our weekend. Most of Archie’s weekends now are taken up by his new puppy, Ralph – and Milo can’t go football training at the minute now we’re back in lockdown! What a funny old year!
Tranquil Tuesdays in Crew Mac saw students get to grips with our new E-Library. We explored the selection of books available, and we’re impressed with the new system! Hopefully this will allow us to expand our vocabulary, and our love of reading – some of crew struggle with this, but it’s something we are working on, together! I can’t wait to settle down to a good book from the library now!!!
In crew on Wednesday, we had the pleasure of Tristan and Loris joining us from Crew Webb! Our Wise Wednesday session focused on paying our respects to mark Remembrance Day. We spoke about the sacrifices made by the heroes of our country in the wars, and we also spoke about the sacrifices our key workers have made during this pandemic. We marked Remembrance Day by creating poppies with messages of remembrance on the back, and sorted these out to make our Crew door reflect the thanks we have for the servicemen and women who gave their lives for our freedom.
Our Thoughful Thursday Y10 community meeting was a great one facilitated by Mr V. We spoke about the characteristics we need to embed to be successful, and the ones that stood out were grit, determination, and being persistent! There are examples of Crew Mac doing this every day, and I’m absolutely sure that if we continue to work as a crew, this grit will definitely pay off in terms of GCSE results next year.
This morning we began to analyse our HoWLs for this term; I’m going to keep this short as it’s a work in progress, and there will be more to come on this next week… but for now, just check out how impressive this snapshot of Crew Mac’s HoWLs is!!!
Finally, I’d like to say a big thank you to Crew Macmillan this week. I didn’t have the best time on Tuesday and Wednesday and compassion and respect was shown in abundance. It’s unbelievable how lucky I am to be in the position of Crew Leader for such fantastic, kind hearted human beings. I’ll leave you with this gorgeous piece of artwork Courtney has created for our crew wall – she’s absolutely right, we really are crew!
Crew Macmillan: Spotlight
This week has been really successful for Crew Macmillan!
Crew have, once again, worked really hard in crew and in sessions, and have received tonnes of praise from staff! See some examples below:
Miss Johnson: Ricki & others in his group: “brilliant team effort on their work around ACC plot. Worked together well as a team and proved me and RJO wrong!”
Miss Taylor: Alfie, Milo, Ricki & Charlie: “Worked hard, created lovely paintings!”
Miss Johnson: All of Crew Mac! “Fantastic start to English GCSE. Focused and keen to get on. Brilliant HoWLS- Well done! Keep it up!”
Mrs Sprakes: Alfie – “Detailed responses in writing, well done.”
Mrs Batty: Vinnie –“Excellent recall of knowledge in quick fire test“
I absolutely love reading through the praise entries for crew and seeing how excellent you guys really are in sessions!
This week we also focused both Wise Wednesdays and Thoughtful Thursdays on some revision materials – we know that in Y10&11, we need to be organised and consistent with revision.
So far, we’ve looked at Procrastination (and the dangers of it – we learned that Crew don’t like tidying bedrooms, or adding pots to the dishwasher!!) – then we’ve seen what makes an effective flashcard, and put that into practice in preparation for a history assessment.
Members of crew were focused and engaged, which resulted in some beautiful examples of flashcards created, and some brilliant teamwork in Crew Macmillan.
Keep up the brilliant work guys!
Miss C x
Crew Macmillan have been plugging away at their academic work again this week, still adjusting to our “new normal”.
Earlier in the week, i received a lovely email from Mr Pearson about Milo. Milo has been a superstar with his Spanish work:
Brilliant work, Milo. Keep this up – you’re developing into a fantastic linguist!
I’ve also seen some fantastic efforts towards HUMS work this week. EMPIRE! looks like a fantastic expedition, but also looks quite tricky! Here are some examples of crew’s beautiful work, summarising some of their learning about Socialism,Capitalism and Communism:
Well done to Milo, Archie, Finn, Isaac, Imogen & Alfie (Top left to bottom right) – amazing work!
Finally, this week I set Crew a more creative challenge. Mrs Pulham’s mum works in a care home where elderly residents aren’t getting visitors at the moment. I asked crew to create something – this could be a letter, a note, a picture – that we could pass on to make the residents smile. Alfie and Courtney have created some gorgeous artwork – early – the deadline is next Friday. Alfie created some watercolour flowers to bring Spring indoors, and Courtney has been learning how to use the digital art app, ProCreate, to create some sunsets – and some of our Disney favourites!
Hopefully this will spread a little happiness – some great talent in Crew Macmillan!
Keep up the fantastic work, Crew. No matter how long this goes on, you’re making me proud to be your Crew Leader. I love seeing the work you do – it blows me away every time!
Stay safe, and enjoy the Easter Weekend. I look forward to our check-ins next week!
Miss C x
As part of their immersion tasks this week, Admiral will be using aluminium drinks cans as a material for some art work. If you have any undented, rinsed drinks cans at home it would be helpful if you could bring some in for your sessions on Monday and Thursday
Staff and students at XP came out in force sporting their Christmas jumpers today to raise money for ‘Save the Children’.
Pupils were in good spirits as you can see from the photos taken at this mornings community meeting.
I will announce the total amount of money raised when it has been counted.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for joining in and raising money for a very worthy cause.
Well done XP!
X24 Skipper and Admiral did brilliantly this evening at their POL. It was lovely to see them presenting their work so confidently.
Well done!
A number of students from X24 have been working extremely hard both in lesson and also in the completion of their extended study. They have completed these tasks to a high standard and also made sure that they have been handed in on time.
The students that I would like to give a special mention to are Alfie Lockey (X24 Admiral), Bella Herring (X24 Skipper) and Amber Clark (X24 Skipper) who have all finished the two studies (paper cut and sharpie block design) in class and also their extended study (Artist research).
All three of these students are now well on the way to creating a lovely charcoal study for their developing and exciting art portfolio.
Alfie Lockey:
Amber Clark:
Bella Herring:
Well done Alfie, Amber and Bella! Keep up the good work!