Forest School Fun!

Today in Crew MW, we had a walk round to forest school to take part in some outdoor learning. We took some clay out with us and used rolling pins to roll it out flat. We then collected an interesting object like a leaf or a branch and rolled this into the clay to make a print. We were really excited with how our prints came out and we can’t wait to paint them and have a look at them all once they’ve dried!

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

Today in Crew MW, we hooked into our first story – The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We found a map in our classroom with a red X on it and some words explaining that we needed to ‘trip trap over’…After lots of discussion and a closer look at the map, we worked out that the map was showing our outdoor area, and that we needed to trip trap over the bridge! We had lots of feelings in our classroom before going outside. Some of us felt scared, worried and nervous, and some of us felt really excited! As we trip trapped over the bridge as a crew, we suddenly heard a big, scary voice from under the bridge shouting, ‘Who’s that trip trapping over my bridge?’ It was a TROLL!! We quickly ran inside to safety where we found a story had been left for us. It was The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We read through the story together and decided that the troll was very scary indeed! I wonder what we will get up to next week…

Crew MW’s hook into expedition

Crew MW began their new expedition this week – Who is hiding in the pages of this book? We hooked into the expedition by reading a story called ‘The Great Fairytale Disaster’. The story told us all about the Big Bad Wolf from the Three Little Pigs, and how he got bored of his own story so he went in search of a new fairytale to be in. We loved finding all of the different characters throughout the story and matching them to their fairytales. After that, we went on a character hunt around school to see who we could find. When we got back, we looked at the different characters and predicted that we would be looking at three stories throughout our expedition. We sorted the characters into ‘The Gingerbread Man’, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’, and ‘the Three Billy Goats Gruff’. We’re very excited to get started!

Polar Bear Reading Challenge 🐻‍❄️

Crew Hamill have been set a brand new reading challenge!! Each member of our crew has their own polar bear that they need to try and save from sinking on the disappearing iceberg 🧊 Every time they read at home, their polar bear takes one footstep closer to the safety of shore! The first person to the safe iceberg wins a prize! And every polar bear that doesn’t suffer the dreadful fate of many polar bears by making it onto a paw print will also be rewarded! 🐻‍❄️🧊🎁 Who will be first to the top?! 👀

Hook Week in nursery!

We have started our Spring expedition here in nursery. It is called “Once Upon a Time” and our guiding question is “Who is hiding in the pages of this book?” During hook week we have read the story ‘The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster’ and explored the different nursery rhymes in the book. We made a list of nursery rhymes we liked, sung nursery rhymes in class and acted out nursery rhymes in our nursery puppet theatre. Our parents came in to share a story or rhyme with us this Friday and we have had lots of fun making ‘Rhyming stones’ for our outdoor area. Phew! We have even met lots of new friends that started nursery this week and have helped them to settle in.

Well done FS1!

Sharing our Stories: 12/01/2024

Beautiful Work This Week

Another brick in the wall: Beautiful Work from XP Gateshead

In Autumn 2023, students in Year 9 studied a joint HUMAN and STEAM expedition called ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ where students had to answer the guiding question: ‘How are structures important in helping us to explain our world?’ 

For the final product, students used plaster to create sculptures in the brutalist aesthetic. The Presentation of Learning (PoL) was an unveiling of an installation to the community and dedicated to the people of Gateshead, who have suffered due to the Covid pandemic and the cost of living crisis; both examples of failings of societal structures. Experts, including architects from SOS-UK and Ryder Architecture, whom the students had worked alongside throughout the learning expedition, came along to speak at the PoL at the Farrell Centre, Newcastle University.

The work will be on display there for the foreseeable future!

We Are Artists at Plover

Mel from the XP Trust Comms Crew visited Plover as an Expert Artist – showing Year 5 how to draw trains and teach them about perspective and the vanishing point. The children enjoyed seeing her amazing drawings and made a great start on having a go at their own drawings.

Carcroft’s Fabulous Foyer!

Whilst making an impromptu visit to Carcroft Primary in December, we noticed this! We simply had to get the phone out and take some photos of the wonderful displays on show in the Carcroft foyer area. The array of work exhibited was interesting, engaging and of high quality; and was curated impeccably by the staff – beautiful work!

Top of the Blogs

Who’s hiding in the pages of this book? @ Norton Infants

Crew Jackson – Science Investigations @ Green Top

Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead

Crew Pasteur @ XP

Working Hard @ Plover

C30 – HSBC Money Management @ XP East

Amazing Fieldwork at YWP! @ Carcroft School

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!