Pulling Apart Written Comprehension

14th February 2025Laura Hamill

This week, Crew Hamill have looked in depth at their written comprehension answers, pulling apart the questions and identifying the steps needed in order to answer them correctly. We have identified as a crew that we are much stronger at answering comprehension questions on texts that we are familiar with so we have been challenged over the last two weeks to complete our written comprehensions on unseen texts. These have been much trickier as we have no awareness of the text before we answer questions on it, similar to how it will be in our SATs and assessments. We worked as a crew to discuss how we identify question types from the wording of the question and then how we use the information within the question to find the answer in the text. For any questions we got wrong, we purple penned our answers.

We are Scientists – Series Circuits

14th February 2025Ruth Shields

In expedition we have continued to be scientist by starting to learn about electricity. Children were given some equipment in small groups and they had to problem solve together to create a working circuit. This was a chance for children to demonstrate their resilience as they’d only been given the equipment and no further instructions. It was great hearing the children talk through what they’d done already and what they could try next. The majority of the groups managed to construct a working circuit and either make the bulb light up or the buzzer work.

Working on our Heat Maps

14th February 2025Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill were inspired by last week’s TTRS battle for NSPCC in which they came first in the school and earned themselves some scooter reward time. Since then, we’ve worked hard to improve our times tables and have tried our best to improve our heat maps. We’re excited to see if we can use our new times table knowledge to beat Mrs Ibbotson in today’s times table battle!

Silent Line up

14th February 2025Ruth Shields

This morning in Crew we were set a challenge to line up with a predetermined characteristic but we weren’t allowed to speak. We had to order ourselves in height, shoe size and hair length. We worked in 2 groups which worked very differently. One group had 2 children who took a lead and directed the rest of the children with hand signals or guiding them to where they needed to be. The other group figured it out between them and didn’t have anyone that appeared to be leading the rest of them, however, both groups were successful.

Reading Prosody

14th February 2025Ruth Shields

In reading yesterday, we focused on our reading fluency and reading with expression. Miss Shields did an echo read to model how to read with expression then the children worked in small groups to work on a small section together. They had some time to practice before performing to the rest of the class. I was very impressed with how quickly they picked it up.

Sharing our Stories: 14/02/2025

14th February 2025Geoff Hewitt

Beautiful Work This Week

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.

Top of the Blogs

Play is the work of childhood @ Norton Infants

Class 12: working on conjuctions @ Green Top

Great Maths Learning @ Plover

Bob Marley is 80 @ Carcroft School

Celebrating Rosa Parks @ Norton Juniors

Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead

A star in the making in Crew Pasteur @ XP

What a treat! @ XP East

Share your stories with us!

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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!

RE – What is a soul and does everyone have one?

12th February 2025Ruth Shields

This was a lovely session as it was great to hear the children discussing their views on a soul and what they think it is responsible for. One child was a little shy about sharing how they believe God is responsible for our soul but we encouraged them to be proud of their beliefs. Children then drew what they thought a soul looked like which was really interesting.

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