UNBELIEVABLE work from KS4!

14th September 2023Melissa Cocliff

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

C27 (Y10!) First Week Back

19th July 2023Melissa Cocliff

🚨Update please can all Y10 parents complete the consent forms below (if you haven’t already done so) by 25th August – this is to allow your child to attend Miller’s Dale Activity day🚨

We are very excited to be able to share with you C27’s First Week Back information, ready for August 2023!

Y10-First-Week-Back-2Download

Key Points:

Tuesday: Please wear comfortable, sports appropriate clothing. We’ll be based in school.

Wednesday: Please wear comfortable, sports & outdoor appropriate clothing. There will be some walking involved and some outdoor work.

Thursday: We will be out on fieldwork – please bring equipment from the kit list linked above.

Friday: We will be school based. Please wear normal school appropriate clothing.

On Monday, Tuesday and Friday, students are all required to be in school 8:30am – 3:15pm. On Thursday, students are required to arrive for 7:30am and will return around 5:15pm. Blogs will be published on the website with any change to timings on the day due to traffic etc. Please also see the below Parent Letter:

C27-XP-Fieldwork-Letter-Millers-DaleDownload

If you have any questions or concerns about our first week back in August, please contact your child’s crew leader in the first instance.

Have a lovely summer; we look forward to the new academic year!

X27 Presentation of Learning

12th December 2022Hayley Ibbotson

Presentation of learning is being held at XP East tomorrow evening. We have a couple of special guests in attendance in the hope of raising awareness about the current housing crisis in the UK.

We have been studying how metaphorical and literal structures have huge impacts on our lives and we are excited to share with you our ideas.

We hope to see you all there – XP East, 4:30-5:30.

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!

Year 8 on a Spanish Adventure with Fairy Tales!

5th November 2021Vicky Collinson

Year 8 kicked off their Spanish sessions this term with immersion, where they looked at cuentos de hadas, or fairy tales, in Spanish. This is in preparation for their work this term on going out, making plans, and saying why they can or can’t do something.

Students used their reading skills and grappled to work out the titles of 9 fairy tales. They looked for cognates and numbers, and used context to translate titles from Spanish into English. From there, students looked at the elements which most fairy tales contained, again translating these into English. Then, students split into groups and created a graphic organiser for their group’s particular fairy tale, which they then presented to the class.

Absolutely fantastic work from Year 8! Excelente!

Fantastic History of Maths Expert for Year 7

By Miss Boon22nd June 2021

Yesterday, X27 had a talk from Dr Fionntan Roukema, a lecturer from the University of Sheffield. He spoke to us about different number systems from Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics to the base-60 system of the Babylonians.

     

Students became historians for the hour, translating the Egyptian Narmer Macehead and a Babylonian clay tablet. We learned about the hieroglyphs for 1, 10, 100, 1000, and so on. Students thought that the symbol for 100,000 looks like a bird and 1000 looks like a ‘pacman plant’! The generally accepted theory is that they are a tadpole and a lotus flower respectively, but it was interesting to learn about how the ability to read hieroglyphics was lost for hundreds of years until the discovery of the Rosetta stone – what knowledge might we lose from our current culture in the future? Students translated the Narmer Macehead and found that it shows Pharoah Narmer being presented with the spoils of a conquest: 400,000 cattle, 1,422,000 goats and 120,000 slaves. Can you spot the numbers?

Students also translated the Babylonian clay tablet and noticed that it is a multiplication table for the multiples of 9. The first six rows show that they used a mark that looks like a ‘V’ to show the digit 1 and a mark that looks like ‘<‘ to show 10. The seventh row shows an unusual feature of Babylonian mathematics. 7 lots of 9 is 63 so we would expect to see 6 of the ‘<‘ mark and 3 of the ‘V’ mark. Instead we see one of the V mark, then a space and then 3 of the V mark. This means that they used the ‘V’ symbol to also represent 60. This is because they used a base-60 system. Fionntan explained that we can see remnants of this system still today with 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour!

I want to echo the students’ appreciations for Fionntan for coming and speaking to us and for inspiring them to follow their passions in life. I also want to appreciate X27 students for their enthusiasm, respect and kindness. I felt so proud of them as they really got involved and I know Fionntan was impressed as well. In particular I want to appreciate Roxy, Callum, Joseph, Charlie, Josh and Jaxon who answered and asked some great questions. This lecture and these activities are normally for final year maths undergraduates (I took this course myself at Uni) so our year 7 students were doing work 9 years above their age level!

Miss Boon

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.

Mr. Wilmot made loads of notes!

Mrs. Marshall was on fire with the anchor charts.

Miss Hickson was busy making notes on the board

Manveer and Maisie shared the notes that they wrote during the hangout.

Keegan even recorded the whole hangout as a voice note on his iPad and sent it to me!

I was so impressed with our Year 7’s. They were respectful and inquisitive. They asked some fantastic questions and wrote brilliant notes.

Well done Y7!

Year 7 students working hard and creating beautiful work

By Miss Jones16th October 2020

Wow! Year 7! What an amazing start to your art sessions at XP. You have all been a pleasure to teach and I am sooo excited to see your skills in art get better and better.

This half term, we have been concentrating on ‘line’ and ‘mark-making’.

I asked pupils to look carefully at this artwork by Olga Gamynina and have a go at re-creating it. Look at this beautiful work!

by Ben (X27 Admiral)

by Lidija (X27 Skipper)

Amazing work Year 7! Well done!