Mindful colouring in MI

4th March 2025Stacey McClare

In our crew session we continued with our discussions on mental and physical health. We talked about how mental health allows us to feel good about ourselves and also cope with challenges. It allows us to build strong relationships, enjoy life and be more resilient. We discussed that we care for our physical health by eating well and exercising, and how we need to do the same with our mental well-being in the same way. We then listened to some mindful music whilst completing some mindful colouring.

Crew in MI

4th March 2025Stacey McClare

Today in crew we started to explore the significance of being mentally healthy alongside physically healthy. We thought about what it means to be happy, activities that help us to feel good and why we think our feelings are important. We then completed a fitness circuit 🙂 Our debrief allowed to explore what mental health is and reasons why it is important to take care of it. The circuit really did set us up for the day 🙂

Maths in MI

3rd March 2025Stacey McClare

Today our magic maths consolidated our knowledge on factors and we also explored tally charts. The activate for our main maths lesson was a recap on equivalent fractions. This really challenged our thinking and there was a lot of great collaborative working where children we really explaining their thought process and how they got their answers. We then moved onto looking at fractions on a number line which we will continue to explore in our next maths lesson.

RE in MI

3rd March 2025Stacey McClare

Today we started to think about how and why some Buddhists meditate relating our discussions back to all our work on spirituality. We listened to part of a clip where we listened to the music. We closed our eyes and sat very still and quiet. We discussed what we thought about whilst listening. We then found out that the clip was called ‘meditation’. We discussed what we already knew about meditation and then children were introduced to the fact that Buddhists use meditation as part of their spirituality. We then watched a clip on Buddhist meditation where we wrote facts onto our white boards then created an anchor chart as a whole crew. We then listened to a variety of Buddhists speaking about a range of different things. We thought about when and how some Buddhists meditate, why they meditate, what might be hard about meditating and what the benefits may be. We then demonstrated our knowledge through an independent activity.

Sharing our Stories: 28/02/2025

3rd March 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.

Top of the Blogs

Crew Outdoors @ Norton Infants

Geography Club @ Green Top

Karate Community Clubs @ Plover

Challenge Crew – putting our memory through its paces @ Carcroft School

A Visit from Rt Hon Ed Miliband @ Norton Juniors

Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead

Year 11 Historians Explore Industrial Heritage @ XP

Another ace week in PE @ XP East

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!

Challenge crew – putting our memory through its paces

28th February 2025Hannah McLoughlin

The children worked in mini crews to go next door and look at certain items placed on a desk, they had to then memorise this as the next time they looked at the desk of items, things had changed. The challenge was to work out what had changed. It’s safe to say we have not got a photographic memory just yet, but we love a good challenge to activate our brains on a morning.

Crew McLoughlin or mini Jonathan Yeos?

28th February 2025Hannah McLoughlin

In Case Study 2, we have been studying the artist Jonathan Yeo- a British artist known for his contemporary portraits of famous people. We have delved into his artwork and analysed his use of colours, tone and highlight with use of shadows. We learnt some new sketching techniques to reflect the direction of a light source on an object. We analysed use of colour- why has the author used certain colour choice, linking our knowledge of warm and cool colours. We have chosen an inspirational individual we have studied about in history and reading and started to sketch an outline. Our first drafts look pretty impressive!

Spirituality

28th February 2025Kate Thompson

In RE this week, we explored the meaning of spirituality to different people. We first discussed what spirituality means – the connection with inner self, immaterial or no physical things and belief of something beyond yourself – and how that might look for us individually. We then sorted out what we thought were essential and non essential for humans to have. This included things such as a heart, personality, hair, beliefs, love, lungs, feelings, inner self and emotions. This provided a great conversation about where children placed these things and why. We then looked at what spirituality to ourselves. This provided lots of great ideas such as feeling calm, energised, peaceful as well as taking time to go for a walk, do some yoga, focus on our breathing and connecting with friends.