Building our own castles

We became designers in our expedition lesson. We followed Miss Marsh’s instructions carefully to make our castles, then once they were finished we tested their strength using tennis balls.

We came to the conclusion that paper is not a suitable material for a castle and that stone is better because it is much stronger to withstand an attack from an enemy.

School Dinners

We’d like all parent/carers opinions on school dinners, including those who’s children have packed lunches. XP Trust would like as many children as we can having delicious healthy meals so your and your child’s opinions are important to us. Children will be asked about their dinners at school but it would be good to have parent/carer opinions too.

Please complete the below form:

Sharing our Stories: 20/09/2024

Beautiful Work This Week

Yorkshire Sport Foundation – Opening School Facilities at Plover

Check out this actively awesome video courtesy of Yorkshire Sport Foundation. The children and staff at Plover were superstars in explaining their positive experiences regarding the OSF funding they secured last year, to provide after school and community clubs! Plover have been lucky enough to secure some OSF funding this year too, so watch this space for Community Clubs starting in October! #LovePlover

Beautiful Curation!

We don’t just ensure our work is made public – it needs to live inside our school communities, too! More beautiful work has been curated at Plover School, celebrating their ‘Pride of Plover’ award winners and recent Expedition products!

‘If we get staff Crew right, we get everything right…’

One of our great friends and mentors, Ron Berger, once said to us that ‘staff culture can never outpace student culture.’ With this firmly at the forefront of our minds we set out last week on our bi-annual outdoor staff induction process with a group of educators from across our Trust. 

We headed out into the wilderness to answer the guiding question, ‘What does it mean to be Crew?’ through a number of shared experiences and activities our Crew formed very quickly. We explored the purpose of Crew deeply and considered how we could make Crew even stronger on our return to our respective schools so that we continue to create the culture in which our students grow their character and make our community and the world a better place for everyone.

Below is an immediate reflection from one of our XP educators:

‘This experience has helped me to understand the building of community. The support that other members of our Crew showed this week has been immense. There have been some activities that have been challenging but everybody has been supportive whilst giving positive challenge so that everybody has been able to push themselves in a safe environment where everybody trusts each other and it’s lifted me and made me feel that I can achieve anything I put my mind to with the support of other people.’  – Louise

It was an honour and privilege to support and challenge our adults to reflect on the imperative we all have at XP to become and create great learners and even better human beings!

We are Crew!

Andy Sprakes and Kate ap Harri

Student Showcase for Year 6 at XP Doncaster

We’re got vacancies across XP Trust!

Find out more and apply here to #JoinOurCrew

LKS2 Teacher at Plover School

Year 5 Teacher/Leader at Carcroft School

F2 Teacher/Leader at Carcroft School

Top of the Blogs

EYFS Community Meeting @ Norton Infants

Class 7 eBook day! @ Green Top

Fun Family Learning @ Plover

Hooking in to Expedition @ Carcroft School

Crew Pasteur Check In! @ XP School

Fieldwork @ Norton Juniors

Weekly Update for Families @ XP Gateshead

Share your stories with us!

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 [email protected] –  we want to hear about it, write about it and celebrate it!

Hooking in to expedition!

This morning, something had left some footprints in our classroom when we came into school… We looked closely to investigate what it might have been. Lots of us thought that it might have been a bear, some of us thought a dog, and others thought a dinosaur!

After we had investigated the footprints in the room, Miss Welburn showed us different types of footprints. We practiced talking to our partner to say what we thought the footprints belonged to. We had lots of ideas like dogs, humans, and lions and tigers because of the sharp claws on the end! We’ve asked Miss Welburn to check the cameras to see what it was that was in our classroom and we can’t wait to investigate on Tuesday!