What is the crust made of?

In our second Hook week lesson, we explored what the crust of the earth is made up of. We learned that the crust is made of 5 different layers which are called the organic material, topsoil, subsoil, parent material and bedrock. Children matched each layer to their description after we’d watched some videos to help us understand about what each of the layers were made of.

Experience day

In writing, it was a perfect opportunity to complete a recount after our visit to Magna. To help us prepare for the writing day, we spent some time ordering the events in chronological order. While the children completed the activity, I could hear the children starting to use time adverbials as they ordering them which will be one of our focus areas for writing.


Once we were happy the events were in order, we used our fronted adverbials word mats to start thinking about the ones that would be most appropriate for our writing. We then shared these back and created a bank of fronted adverbials that could be used when we write our recount.

Strike, strike, strike!!

Crew Hamill and Crew Wilkinson had so much fun causing a little mischief on the streets of Carcroft whilst taking part in our very own strike. We showed a united front whilst fighting for what we believe in – a school with no uniform and a 4 day school week (no Fridays!!).

Thank you to everyone who cheered us on when they saw us and to those who gave us a beep of their horn!

Magnificent Magna

On Tuesday, we were able to explore science at Magna. This was extremely interactive and allowed children to experience lots of new things. We completed a workshop where we could investigate different types of rocks before creating a volcanic eruption. Then we built up the volcano using play dough which helped us understand the different layers. When we had finished, we took a sample just like a scientist so we could see how scientists study volcanoes and how they know how many times they’ve erupted. There was lots of walking so lots of tired legs when we returned to the coach. A great trip out to help us learn.

Composition of the Earth

To kick start Hook week, we started learning about the composition of the Earth. We learned that Earth is made of layers called the crust, the mantle and the core. We then learned about what each layer is like before completing our own learning to demonstrate what we had learned.

Crew Building

Following on from our staff crew building activity, we thought the children in Crew Marsh would enjoy it too. They have now added their own masterpieces to make a beautiful collaborative piece of art work. A lovely activity outside painting, drawing and colouring real life flowers under the lovely sunshine! What a gorgeous way to celebrate Spring and Crew!

Sharing our Stories: 17/04/2025

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

Year 3 Family Learning @ Green Top

We’re going on an egg hunt @ Plover

Tectonic Plates @ Carcroft School

Crew Brunel @ XP School

G31 Year 7 POL – Tonight! @ XP Gateshead

Eggsellent Effort Class 6 @ Norton Infants

Digging into our New Expedition @ Norton Juniors

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!

Tectonic plates!

Today, we dived deeper into the layers of the earth and focused on the crust. We discovered that the crust is broken up into smaller pieces called tectonic plates. These tectonic plates are constantly moving but they move very slowly. We discussed how these plates used to be one and this was called Pangea but over around 350 million years it has moved and become what we know today. The 7 major tectonic plates are Pacific Plate, North American Plate, Eurasian Plate, African Plate, Antarctic Plate, Indo-Australian Plate, and South American Plate.