Today I had the pleasure of visiting XP and XP East to complete English walk throughs and review our students’ books.

Across year 7, with both Mrs Poncia and Miss Johnson, I was able to see some beautiful narratives being carefully crafted. Students were incorporating a range of tier 2 vocabulary and were redrafting key paragraphs based on specific feedback from their teacher. It was fantastic to see the students so engaged and working so meticulously.

In year 8, Mr Wilmot’s Explorer class showed superb recall of key details from their anchor text. They were all working diligently and offering wonderful contributions and ideas. Their books were also very good and showed some high levels of productivity.

In year 9, Miss Wilkinson and her Pioneer class were considering how the character of Jack had changed from the beginning of Lord of the Flies to chapter 8. They could clearly recall key events and were curious when asking clarifying questions about key vocabulary. They then used this vocabulary to support their choices about the character. Additionally, the maps they have created of the island are fantastic!

Finally in year 10, both Ms Cross and Miss Buckley’s Skipper and Explorer classes were grappling with annotating a key poem from their GCSE anthologies. In Skipper students offered some stunning inferences carefully considering the context and motivations of the poets. Whereas in Explorer students summarised key contextual information on the background of Wilfred Owen and practiced their subject terminology skills.

All in all it was a pleasure to be in all these classrooms. In every room the atmosphere was positive and enthusiastic and students were engaged.

Well done Team English from Mrs Desborough (Trust Leader of English)