Here’s a selection of beautiful work from across the XP Trust from this week. To read about other stories from across the XP Trust, visit xptrust.org.
Know Yourself, Grow Yourself @ Norton Infants
Year 3 Singing with Geoff @ Green Top
Do you want to make a pizza? @ Carcroft School
March against Segregation @ Norton Juniors
Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead
X31 Skipper – Bringing a ‘Storm in a teashop’ to life! @ XP
E30’s Powerful Work on Macbeth @ XP East
We now have a new dedicated news email so that you can send your stories, updates or ideas about potential news articles directly to us in Comms.
It might be something you or your students have achieved, a charity you’re supporting or anything at all that deserves a wider audience.
Write to us at news@xptrust.org – we want to hear about it, write about it and celebrate it!
Tuesday – Girls football practice/Badminton for all year groups
Wednesday – Year 7/8 netball game at home. Pick up at 5pm.
Thursday – Cheerleading practice
This week has seen our teams compete in a number of fixtures. Our Y7/8 girls competed against 6 other schools in a fixture this week. A great evening for all, which saw our girls come 4th winning 2 games along the way. It was great to see some new faces from previous games and showing our character traits throughout.
Our Year 7 boys had their first fixture of this calendar year in the Doncaster cup. Unfortunately, this ended in defeat but on a cold evening, the boys showed real resilience, determination and team work. They look forwards to the upcoming fixtures in March.
In PE, X31 had the opportunity to have a session delivered by two club Doncaster coaches, Mr Sterling and Mr Biggs who were impressed with the attitude and engagement of every single student. One student was selected to receive a Doncaster Rovers shirt, for his outstanding attitude, kindness and stewardship! We look forward to seeing the coaches deliver high quality sessions in the future!
Another fantastic week! Team PE.
This term we have been looking at mental health in our Wise Wednesday sessions in crew. All students have approached this maturely and we have had so really thoughtful and in-depth discussions.
This week crew made posters to round off our topic to display in our crew room.
Fab work from all!
Mrs Barnes
X31 were visited by ‘With Me In Mind’ earlier this week to learn about how to look after their own mental health. This is linked to our Crew Curriculum for this term and helps equip pupils with the skills they need to tackle the challenges of growing up. Here are some of the pupils’ comments on the session:
“I would like to thank ‘With Me in Mind’ for coming into school and explaining in detail how to deal with tough situations and stress. They taught us ways to calm down such as the hand breathing and the four second breathing exercise.”
“We learned that it’s completely normal to worry about things that are small or big. We also learnt the techniques to help us breathe calmly. We loved the fact that you told us some ways to get the worries out of our heads. Thank you so much from crew Zephaniah.”
“If I see another student sad I will go and ask if they are ok. If I ever feel worried I will tell a trusted adult about my worries and do the meditation breathing.”
“It is important for children to look after our mental health because for children to live a happy life a good mindset comes first. A good mindset makes a child willing to try new things and live life to the fullest. In your next presentation I recommend you also talk about people cyber bullying on the internet. Thank you for paying attention and thank you for your work.”
Crew Peake have held their Year 8 SLCs over the past 2 weeks. It’s been wonderful to listen to students articulate their learning – both the successes they’ve achieved and challenges they’ve faced! It’s always nice to catch up with our wonderful parent crew, too – and it’s a bonus when we get to discuss and unpick the abundance of ‘Awesome’ and ‘Great’ grades that are on our crew’s HoWLs snapshots!
We’d also like to appreciate the students who had difficult conversations with parents and with ourselves – we identified areas to focus on for progress to be made, and came up with pledges and action plans. We look forward to reviewing these!
Great work, Crew Peake. Keep being amazing 🫶🏻
Miss Cocliff & Mr Morrison x
In Crew this morning we celebrated and appreciated students who have been attending every day since September or October! As a Crew we have been pushing really hard to improve our attendance and these guys are smashing it!
Leo, Alfie and Poppy have achieved 100% attendance since October half term – well done guys!
Holly has achieved 100% attendance since we started in September!! This is absolutely phenomenal Holly, well done!!
Take a look into X31 Skipper’s classroom, where they have been working hard crafting and practicing their fluency skills in English!
Students have embraced the challenge of building their fluency and comprehension skills through one of our anchor text stories, ‘A Storm in a Teashop‘, focusing on the events during the First World War. It was a brilliant display of reading, with each student nailing key pauses, skilful dramatisation, and the use of clauses and tone pitch. Their interpretations not only shed light on stories of the First World War, but also showed courage and compassion for one another.
Take a look at the attached video to see the magic of X31 Skipper in action!
Don’t miss out on this fantastic opportunity to hear Jeff, a key influence behind the creation of XP, talk about his life, work and Jeff Tech High!
This week, part of Year 7 had the opportunity to showcase their culinary skills during XP Outdoors, an engaging session that combined practical cooking with essential life skills. Students took on the challenge of preparing and making pitta pizzas, reinforcing their understanding of healthy eating while gaining hands-on experience in food preparation.
Throughout the session, students worked collaboratively to assemble their pizzas, selecting a variety of fresh, nutritious ingredients to create a balanced meal. They discussed the importance of key nutrients, such as protein for growth and repair, carbohydrates for energy, and vitamins and minerals for overall well-being. This activity encouraged them to think critically about the food they consume and how to make healthier choices in their daily lives.
Beyond nutrition, the experience also helped develop valuable life skills, including teamwork, food hygiene, and basic cooking techniques. Students demonstrated excellent communication and problem-solving abilities as they followed instructions, managed their cooking stations, and supported one another in the process.
The session not only provided a fun and interactive way to reinforce their learning but also empowered students with skills they can take beyond the classroom, fostering independence and confidence in their ability to prepare simple, nutritious meals.
We even extended this to staff who came along to sample some of their delicious pizza’s.
Crew Pasteur have been busy updating their scrapbook to show their journey through Year 10. Before Christmas they showed kindness by providing a cup of tea and a biscuit to staff, and on the last day we shared sweet treats with our buddy Crews in Years 8 and 9.
