Celebrating 100% attendance

We had a lovely breakfast this morning, celebrating all those children that achieved 100% attendance for the Autumn term. This is a fantastic achievement, we hope to see even more children achieving this in the spring term.



Geographical Zones 🌎🗺

This afternoon, we continued our expeditionary learning by looking how the earth is split into 7 geographical zones. We found out the 7 zones are: Equator, North Pole, South Pole, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere. With our new found knowledge, we labelled a map with the zones.

Yorkshire Water Lego workshop 🧱

Last week, year 5 took part in a fantastic workshop which consolidated their learning on their autumn expedition and also their expedition around the water cycle last year. The children then worked in groups to create a Lego bot which they then programmed using a computer so it would move on its own to deliver much needed water supplies. The children really enjoyed this but it was also great to see them all grappling and working collaboratively.

Building Our Geography Knowlege 🌍

Today, Crew Hamill continued with their expedition by looking at Doncaster and other cities around the United Kingdom, learning more about their human and physical characteristics. We focused on how some of these aspects have changed over time, looking at images of Doncaster and organising them into “old” and “new”. It was so interesting to see how our city has changed over time! Do you recognise some of the older buildings?

How many people in Doncaster?

We continued with our expedition where we looked at a topography maps and what they can show. We learned that Doncaster is between approximately 8-24m above sea level whereas the Peak district is around 400m above sea level.

We estimated the population of the world. Most of us estimated around 7-8 billion.

Next we considered the estimation of London based on the size and population of the other capital cities but unfortunately we were nowhere near for this one. We could imagine there were over 7million people in London.

We looked at different areas around the UK and the population of these areas. To help with our estimation for Doncaster we looked at areas similar in size to this area so we could make realistic estimations. Some great estimations.

Finally, we looked at a range of photos from the past and present of Doncaster. It was interesting to see how much Doncaster has changed over time. There has certainly been an increase in the amount of human features in our local area over the years.

If it’s good enough for our children…..

Staff do crew too! At XP, we always say, if it’s good enough for the children, it’s good enough for us.  

Therefore, just like our pupils, staff also take part in staff crew events. Yesterday staff had to work with small crews they don’t often work with to complete the ‘Great British Bake Off’. The challenge was to produce Mary Berry standards cakes whilst also decorating and presenting their beautiful work. It was a challenge in just 60 minutes!

I’m sure you’ll agree that there were some wonderful creations which the children enjoyed exploring too!


In 1st place was ‘The Gruffalo’ followed by ‘Wonka’ in second place and in third, ‘Mary Beary’.

Reading in MI

We enjoyed finding our new vocabulary today whilst reading outloud 🙂 We used a read around the robin and a partner read today whilst reading. Mrs McClare then timed us to see how far we could read in 1 minute but still ensuring we were reading accurately. We discussed the story as we read thinking about our thoughts on the characters and what was happening. We tried to empathise with some of the characters, putting ourselves in their position. We tried to text mark some ideas as we read then shared this with another group. We then explored some questions as a group and even unpicked our green challenge question. We showed a great understanding today 🙂