Sharing our Stories: 02/05/2025

2nd May 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.

Every year, our friends and partners at EL Education invite schools across the world to take part in #BetterWorldWeek – a celebration of student work that makes a meaningful difference in the world.

Just like at EL, at XP this isn’t a one-off event – it’s the work we do every day. But this week gives us a moment to pause, reflect, and share the incredible ways our students have stepped up.

In the last year, they have:

  • Hosted tea parties to tackle loneliness
  • Campaigned for safer streets around their schools
  • Created environmental art with purpose
  • Challenged inequality through powerful public products
  • Brought communities together

…and that’s just the beginning.

You can read all about their beautiful, purposeful work here:

https://xptrust.org/betterworldweek-2025/

Top of the Blogs

Class 8 Monarch Sketches @ Green Top

Self portraits @ Plover

Memory Jars @ Carcroft School

Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead

If you go down in the woods… @ Norton Infants

Magnificent Magma @ Norton Juniors

Cheerleading competition @ XP

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!

Uses of rivers

1st May 2025Kate Thompson

Today, we looked at the different ways in which we use rivers. We first started by exploring the rivers and canals that flow through Doncaster. This included the River Don, Stainforth and Keadby and New Junction Canals. We recognised a couple of the photos which were taken in Doncaster. Then we looked at the uses of rivers and canals. We found that we can use rivers for transportation, leisure, irrigation, hydroelectric power, drinking water, habitats and ecosystems, and fishing. We then matched the use to the impact that it can have on the environment. Some of them had both positive and negative impacts on the environment. For example, people who use rivers for leisure activities such as kayaking and canoeing are improving their physical and mental health but they could pollute the waters and destroy habitats.

Memory Jars

1st May 2025Tracy Haddock

Lovely afternoon making memory jars. The child wrote down 6 memories and then linked each memory to a colour. Next, they put 6 piles of salt on each memory and coloured the salt. They poured it into their jars so that they could keep their memories with them.

Early Conditions in the Mine

1st May 2025Laura Hamill

During today’s lesson, Crew Hamill had the opportunity to experience a mining tunnel for themselves. Using tables and dark material, we recreated what a tunnel might look like. We turned out the lights to make things darker and played a coal mine soundscape to mimic the sounds of the mine. One at a time, we made our way through the tunnel, experiencing the dark, cramped and noisy conditions. We then had a small debrief explaining how we felt – lots of us were claustrophobic! Following this, we played true or false and moved to the side of the room that we felt was appropriate when presented with different facts about mining. If we agreed and thought they were true we went to one side, if we disagreed and thought they were false then we went to the other. To further demonstrate our learning, we read some fact sheets about life in the mine and created chotting sheets in mini crews that detailed the early conditions. 

Tectonic Plates – Chotting

1st May 2025Ruth Shields

Today in writing, we have continued to build our knowledge about tectonic plates in preparation for when we write our next plot point. We watched some videos and chotted down loads of facts to support us in writing.

We then did a shared write which allowed Miss Shields to model how to put the facts into sentences.