ETCH A CELL RESEARCH PROJECT

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.

 

THIS WORK CAN ALSO COUNT TOWARDS DofE Volunteering during lockdown too!

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

Extended Study / Home Learning for X24 STEAM

I have asked all students join a class in Seneca to help with extended study and home learning in addition to the resources on our expedition website here:

https://sites.google.com/xpschool.org/c24-year9-sagas-2020/cs4

 

 

Joining Seneca

Students have been sent a link on Google Classroom. They must first make sure they are logged into their school account …@xpschool.org.

Students should then go the google classroom https://classroom.google.com/ and click on the link that I have shared.

X24 / Y9 GCSE Spanish Extended Study

This week’s X24/ Y9 GCSE Spanish Extended Study is centred on learning the irregular verbs “tener” (“to have”) and “estar” (“to be”), currently being used to describe ailments and injuries. Vocabulary retrieval, i.e. a test on these two verbs, will take place in session on Friday 17th January. Relevant slides will be shared with students.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you.

X24 Skipper – STEAM Extended Study – Tassomai

Students in X24 Skipper have now all been introduced to Tassomai. We’ve had a great session today!

Tassomai is a quizzing app which tracks student progress and builds the level of challenge over time. It will also return to previously studied questions automatically to check that new knowledge is being retained over time.

This will be an ongoing extended study for every week. This week students need to complete their daily goals for at least 4 out of the next 7 days.

There is a Tassomai app which can be downloaded from the app store or google play.

I will check that students have been completing this each every Tuesday.

Any questions or problems, please contact me:

[email protected]

Tassomai: Continuing Extended Study

A polite reminder that ALL C21 and C22 students have the ongoing compulsory extended study task of completing 10 minutes of daily quizzing on Tassomai. This must be kept up throughout the half term and beyond if it is to have to impact on student’s recall of key science information.

Please remind your sons and daughters of the need to keep this up!

Thanks again for the continued support.