Sharing our Stories: 03/10/2025

Beautiful work this week

Here’s a selection of beautiful work from across the XP Trust!

To read about other stories from across the XP Trust, visit xptrust.org.

G29: What makes a great education?

Last term, students in G29 at XPG were challenged to give a keynote at the MTEM conference on what makes a great education. Over a week they drafted and put together an incredible speech which they have now recorded back in school.

Top of the Blogs

Class 8: Martin Luther King research @ Green Top

Decorating cupcakes @ Plover

Fire Fighters @ Carcroft School

Crew Nightingale – Higher Maths @ XP

XP Outdoors – Year 7 take on mighty task of litter picking @ XP East

A visit from Stuart – learning about helping homeless people @ Norton Infants

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!

Incredible Inventions on Roald Dahl Day!

This afternoon for our science lesson, Crew McLoughlin let their imaginations run wild and became inventors to dream up their very own crazy inventions, inspired by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. From zipable chocolate bars to unlimited sweet machines, the ideas were as magical as a Roald Dahl story itself.

Crew McLoughlin worked in mini crews to sketch, design, and name their inventions. Each group was challenged to think not only about what their creation would do, but also why we needed it.

Once the inventions were designed, in true Dragon’s Den style, we presented our designs to the rest of the crew. With confidence and plenty of imagination, the children sold their ideas as if they were about to launch them in the real world. We were all blown away by the originality and enthusiasm of every team, making our decision a very tough one indeed.

At the end, the crew voted for their favourite sales pitch. The winning teams walked away with the sweetest prize of all—chocolate, of course!

Roald Dahl Day: Maths, Mischief & Multiples!

We had so much fun immersing ourselves in all things Roald Dahl. Our lessons were themed around his books, and one of our favourites was the The Twits arithmetic challenge!

We worked in teams to solve tricky riddles based on Mr. and Mrs. Twit’s silly pranks. To crack the codes, we had to use our knowledge of common multiples – it made maths even more exciting!

It was a brilliant way to learn while exploring the weird and wonderful world of Roald Dahl.

Roald Dahl Day

Crew Ramsay have been working in mini crews on their tables, carefully using fine motor skills to create a green paper chain to resemble a crocodile from the linked text “The Enormous Crocodile”. They challenged themselves to see who could create the longest one. Table 2 came out in first place, however, in true crew style we decided to make one enormous crocodile by adding everyone’s together and created a “crew crocodile”.

Roald Dahl in Crew Robson

We have loved taking part in lots of Roald Dahl themed activities today including creating wanted posters for Miss Trunchbull, baking chocolate treats for Bruce Bogtrotter and drawing in the style of Quentin Blake.

Exploring Shadows

Today in case study two we began to explore shadows. We used torches to explore how shadows are formed and how the distance and position of the light source affects the length of the shadows.

Then we learnt how the Romans used shadows to tell the time using sundials. The sun made the gnomon cast a shadow and this told them what time of the day it was. Finally we had a go at making our own sundials. Unfortunately the sun wasn’t shining so we had to test them out inside using the torches.