In Crew Godley, we continued our computing work and discussed what decomposition was. The children enjoyed explaining what they had already learnt about computers.
We first drew pictures using 2D shapes and discussed how we could break this down for someone to follow. We then created step by step instructions for our partners to follow.
We discussed that we have to break down big tasks into small chunks to make it easier to complete.
This week in nursery, we have been finishing our sorting topic in Maths. Some of the children practiced sorting the different chameleon pictures into their colours and sizes. The children enjoyed looking at the chameleon pictures and wanted to create some of their own. They enjoyed learning that chameleons change different colours and created lots of rainbow chameleons to show this.
We also are having lots of fun in our mini beach role play area with the different resources to play with including our ice cream shop and our sandy paddling pool.
Crew Hamill have really enjoyed this week’s book – The very dangerous dinosaur. We have lots of dinosaur fans in our reading group and they loved discovering the mischief that the dangerous dinosaur got up to. We spent the beginning of the week predicting what we thought might happen in the story based on a few pictures from the text and a brief introduction to the story. This allowed us to make notices and wonders about the story, using evidence from what we had read and seen to support our learning. We then unpicked some of the more difficult vocabulary in the story, allowing us to improve our fluency when echo reading, reading in pairs and reading independently. Following this, during our book talk question lesson, we were able to use Fastest Finger and Have a Think skills to accurately find the answers to questions about the story. Finally, we worked in mini crews to focus on inference questions within a demo comprehension lesson. We developed our skills from last week in which we found the key information in the question to find the key information in the text. This information gave us clues that enabled us to come up with a sensible answer to the questions, using the clue to support our ideas. We will then be able to apply these skills to our independent learning during our independent comprehension.
Today we set up are reading challenge and the children love it. They have to read 10 times to get a golden ticket and the person who gets the most golden tickets by the end of Friday gets a prize
In computing today, we have looked at decomposition and how we break up a job into smaller achievable steps.
We then looked at debugging, this is where we look at if the algorithm has a problem and reason why it does not work and then re write the algorithm. We used a map to do this.
This week in expedition, we have been looking at what seasides used to be like in the past. We’ve explored lots of photographs and pictures and talked about what we could see in each one that tells us about the past. Then we looked at a mix of photographs and pictures and tried to work out which were old and which were new using the clues in the pictures and our own experiences. We found out that not all black and white photographs are old! Next week, when we have been on our trip, we will begin to compare seasides in the past and seasides now after we have all experienced the beach!
A few months ago, Jake in Year 6 approached the school and his Crew with wanting to raise awareness around Motor Neurone Disease. Being a big fan of Leeds Rhinos, he has been inspired by Rob Burrows’ bravery and the superb effort of his ex-team mate, Kevin Sinfield.
Last week, Jake and his Mum organised a coffee morning fundraiser – including a bake sale, raffle and more! With the help of the Green Top Community, they have raised over £2600.
You can donate here: xptrust.info/MND – please leave a note to say ‘care of Jake at Green Top School’!
We would also like to give a massive shout out to Elsie from Class 6 and her family, who raised an outstanding £275 to buy raffle tickets. This is a cause very close to their hearts as they sadly lost Elsie’s Grandad to the disease in 2011. You can read more about it here.
Once again the generosity of the Green Top community has blown us away. We are Crew!
A remarkable new exhibition about Sir NIgel Gresley has opened at the Danum Gallery in Doncaster – and our XP Schools Trust is playing its part! Our Rail City book, which is on sale in the gift shop at the gallery, was one of the catalysts for the invitation to contribute to this important collection of work – and the inspiration for the brochure which has been delivered by our Comms Crew. Our students’ study of our city’s rail story has given them a real overview of how important the work of Sir Nigel Gresley, who created Flying Scotsman and Mallard at the Plant, is in the history of steam and speed.
Letters and personal objects such as his hat and portrait are part of the exhibition, which has been curated with the collaboration of the Gresley Society, the Doncaster Grammar School Railways Archive and Doncaster City Council. Students from XPD are creating an audio experience for exhibition visitors and our Primary School Pupils are being invited to create rail related illustrations for colouring books that will be part of the gallery’s summer holiday resources for children across Doncaster.
Seb, who joined us at the launch said: “Going to the private viewing of the exhibition was great. It is important that young people carry on the legacy of our ancestors!”
Mel Cocliff added: “It was a privilege to be invited to the launch of the Sir Nigel Gresley exhibition at the Danum Gallery. To watch students from XP interact with people involved, including our Civic Mayor, was truly heartwarming. It’s vital that young people in our communities continue to appreciate the rail heritage of Doncaster, and pass on that baton as they grow up, too!”
The exhibition runs until September.
Following the playhouse being removed from the Reception outdoor area, it was in need of a revamp so the children decided to create a sandpit in this space! What a perfect opportunity to work collaboratively to create a purposeful learning space for their Summer term expedition ‘What happens where the sea meets the shore?’ The children designed the space and made a list of resources and jobs – beautiful work!
Beautiful displays were installed this week at Carcroft School – a culmination of last term’s Expedition ‘There is no Planet B’.
Today in maths, Crew MW have looked at what happens when we take away from a number. We did lots of practising with our tens frames and counters, and we worked out that when we take away, the number gets smaller! We started by making a number that Miss Welburn had given us on our tens frames, then taking away the amount that Miss Welburn said. We were all really good at using our subitising and number bond facts to say how many were left!
Next, we practised choosing our own numbers and making these using our treasure! Then our partners closed their eyes and we stole some of the treasure! Our partner had to work out how much of the treasure had been stolen using our number bonds facts.
In today’s experience lesson we explored inside the tree, we swung on ropes, hopped on spots and crawled under leaves. We loved this new purple magical world!
In crew we like to do magic maths on the screen. The children really enjoy doing this as it gets a brain and legs moving.
