Thursday 7th September 2023 – Stay and engage in FS1
What a fantastic day!
Crew Dorman had a wonderful time making Gruffalo crumble, bird feeders, exploring the wood at school and taking part in a nature treasure hunt! Thank you to everyone who made it a day to remember!
Crew Hamill have worked REALLY hard to master our maths this week. Today, we were learning how to partition numbers to 100. We started with numbers in their expanded form, partitioning them into tens and ones and then we stretched ourselves to think of different ways of partitioning. Did you know 35 can be split into 30 + 5, 20 + 15 and 10 + 25? We used base 10 to support our learning, giving a visual representation of what our numbers look like partitioned.
In Year 1 this week, we began our musical journey by looking at our first unit of work – The Menu Song. We warmed our bodies up by using big gestures and actions to act out baking a cake! We then listened to the song we are going to be learning during this unit. It is a cumulative song which refers back to past lines throughout resulting in verses that get longer each time. This particular song also helps us to remember the days of the week, as well as practise our sequencing skills. We began to learn the lyrics and we will continue to build up our confidence as the weeks go on.
In Year 2, we started work on our first unit – Tony Chestnut. We began by using call-and-response style 4-beat action games. This really got us thinking and we had to concentrate to make sure we were listening to and then repeating back the correct pattern. Tony Chestnut is an action song and we looked at the words to add actions to. We practised the actions in the correct order whilst trying to keep in time to the beat. We then challenged ourselves by trying to add the vocals in whilst doing the actions! It was a little tricky but with further practise over the coming weeks we will soon be ready to showcase what we have achieved!
Today, we were learning the basic beliefs of three main religions: Christianity, Hinduism and Islam. We researched the main beliefs of each religion and then had our memories tested by having to match the key beliefs to the correct religion. Once we’d matched them, we used them to create an informative poster. We did really well gathering facts on our whiteboards to help us with this.
As part of our final product artwork, we have each created an image of a tree. Between us we have added leaves and colour to our trees to represent the four seasons of the year; Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. We can’t wait to see what will happen next to our pictures – how will they come together to make our final product?! Watch this space!
It was lovely to see some of our grown ups in this afternoon to participate in an activity with the children. You’ll have seen previously that we have been making knucklebones this week so it was time to teach the parents how to make them. The children led the activity with their parent and between them they decided on some rules for their knucklebones. Thankfully, the children brought along the ones they’d made earlier so they could play a few games. We look forward to seeing more parents joining us next time.
Last week our new Year 7s were the 9th cohort of students from XP to head off to the Aberdovey Outward Bound centre to answer the guiding question ‘What does it mean to be Crew?’. These are their reflections after just three days of their secondary school journey…
XP is now the official new home of the Doncaster Youth Jazz Association.
Fifty years ago John Ellis MBE created the Doncaster Youth Jazz Association (DYJA).
Over the next half century, with three bands and a fourth ensemble made up of alumni, the organisation was to become internationally renowned.
The Doncaster Youth Jazz Orchestra has played at some of the awesome venues in the world, from the Royal Albert Hall to Buckingham Palace, the United Nations in New York to Ronnie Scott’s in London. Always delighting audiences and showcasing the young people of Doncaster’s talent and virtuosity.
Now, after many years at Beckett Road, DYJA are moving into our XP school, which will become their base. Their office, rehearsal and teaching rooms and music library – as well as full band rehearsal space will be here with us at Middle Bank.
Andy, our Chief Academic officer commented:
“We are absolutely delighted, across the XP Trust, that the Doncaster Youth Jazz Association is now based at our founding school, XP.
To support and be associated with an organisation that has travelled the world, sharing its music and the amazing talent of Doncaster’s young musicians, is very exciting and part of our ongoing commitment to the local community.
As we look forward to celebrating 10 years of XP in 2024, this feels like another landmark moment in our story – and we hope this is so for DYJA too as they continue their decades-long journey.”
Charlotte Arrowsmith, Chair of the Board of Trustees added:
“This feels like a new and exciting chapter for us at DYJA as we enter our 51st year. We’re delighted to have moved into XP School – and we’re looking forward to working and creating here, in such an inspiring place.”
BBK/Chotting @ Carcroft School
Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead
Student Ambassadors – First meeting of the year @ Plover
Stay and Challenge @ Norton Infants
Class 12: Crew Reading @ Green Top
Act of Kindness @ Norton Juniors
We have loved basketball club today!
In writing, we have been using our reading text to help us build background knowledge and start chotting some ideas to support our writing. Each group had a small amount of text to read and then they had to summarise for the rest of the crew. We have discovered that summarising is a skill that we will need to develop during our time in year 4.
It was lovely to see our parents at our reading cafe, join us every Thursday at 3pm 📖 📕 📚
