Hi,
I wanted to share the work Harvey in Crew King has been doing over the last two weeks. After struggling to keep on top of work at the start of lockdown he has done brilliantly to catch up.
Look at this work done in the last two weeks!
Well done Harvey! (Also special thanks to Miss Cocliff for her help with this)
In April we told you about changes to our DofE delivery in this blog post.
We now know that students won’t be able to complete the Outdoor Expedition within the original timescales set.
Unfortunately, this means that our Y9 students won’t be awarded the full Bronze Award this academic year.
However, DofE still want to recognise and celebrate participants’ achievements so far – and rightly so! – and will be awarding a Certificate of Achievement to all those who complete the Volunteering, Physical and Skills sections before the end of the year (31/12/20 is the official date but we will be setting our own school deadline, which is likely to be much earlier!)
Students will receive the full Bronze Award once they have completed the Outdoor Expedition, and we already have plans in place to get this done as soon as we can!
It is important to note that students will NOT receive the full Bronze Award if they don’t have the 2020 Certificate of Achievement before the end of the year.
We really hope you continue to support and encourage your child through their DofE journey.
Outdoor Education is a huge part of the XP experience; it starts with Outward Bound and carries on through fieldwork and the DofE Awards we offer from Y9.
Students have completed the Volunteering section. This was done in school with Y9 students becoming Volunteer Reading Mentors for Y7.
We have asked all Y9 students to complete the St John Ambulance First Aid Course. Details have been uploaded onto Crew Classrooms.
I’d like to give a massive appreciation to the the following students who have been working through the weekly First Aid tasks that are being set for them:
Archie N, Imogen T, Alfie L, Freddi N.
Thank you all so much – I’m really impressed with what you’ve all done so far and would definitely feel safe being out on expedition with you guys!
There are still quite a few of students who need to join the classroom, or who have joined but have yet to start – it is really important that they make a start as soon as possible and get these tasks done!
Many students were using out of school activities as evidence for this section. However, once we went into lockdown, these activities were stopped and some students haven’t been able to collect enough evidence to complete this section.
However, students still need to continue with evidencing some form of physical activity and we have made some suggestions of what they could easily be getting on with: walking, running, gardening, Joe Wicks’ daily PE lesson on YouTube to name a few.
These sessions can be added to any which were previously recorded before lockdown (so you don’t have to start the 12 hours again!) but you MUST agree this with your Crew Leader. New evidence sheets are on the DofE Classroom.
All evidence will be submitted via the eDofE mobile app. It’s really easy to use and I’ll be in touch with each Crew to talk them through the process.
Thank you.
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.
This week I would like to appreciate a number of students for all sorts of reasons in STEAM.
We have just had our closing circle in a hangout meeting and reminded the students that we appreciate their efforts in such challenging times.
There are a number of challenges that students have been working on, linked to the learning targets of our new expedition:
We’d love to see more photos from these challenges over the two-week break. But most importantly we want students to stay safe, and where possible to enjoy nature.
Here are my appreciations for the week. More images of beautiful work can be found in our expedition gallery by clicking on this link.
Hello Year 9
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:
Attendance for the launch hangout was fantastic. Thanks to all of our families for your continuing support.
#wearecrew
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.
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
Check this incredible work out by Jayden Waite – aka ‘Farm Manager’.
Jayden’s work ethic on the farm continues to impress those around him. May I remind you that Jayden is in year 9. I think the video and pictures speak for themselves. Well done Jayden!!
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Crew King had a great ‘Hang-Out’ today!
So great to hear from Kai, Bella, Freddi, Callum, Liv and Harvey. We also had a wooden spoon with a moustache, a llama with square glasses, a funky gotcha picture and a 70 year old teddy bear with white knickers.
Callum showed crew Rosie the Bichon Frise, Bella introduced Sebastian the giant (and I mean giant) pink elephant, Liv sat with a small blue furry bear and Freddi wore a sombrero!! Just another normal check in with Crew King.
Wonder what the next check-in will reveal.
Best wishes all,
Mr Campbell
