WOW! What fine heads of hair we’ve grown…

Nursery have been mini scientists recently growing cress heads to help them learn about nurturing and tending to plants to understand what they need to grow. The children have been watering them and observing the shoots over the past week. They will be thrilled to see the huge growth over the weekend! Beautiful Work!!

Nursery’s Celebration of Learning!

What a beautiful day Nursery have had sharing all of their learning about our current expedition titled, “Once Upon a Time”. They have been exploring various texts to answer our guiding question “Who is hiding in the pages of this book?”

The children performed both of the songs that they have learned during this expedition; “Trip, Trip Trap” and “The Gingerbread Man Song”. One of which will be embedded within a QR code that will live inside storybooks gifted to the children and the local Askern Medical Practices as a legacy to our expedition. These books will be available for children to use and read for pleasure with their parents whilst waiting for their appointment at either surgery.

The children then shared their Learning Journeys with their parents and carers, who were encouraged to have a stay and play. We enjoyed buns and biscuits to celebrate all of our hard work and our parents and the children were very proud of their achievements. Well Done Nursery! Next stop…. Summer Expedition! Exciting times.

Sharing our Stories: 15/03/2024

Beautiful Work This Week

For the love of reading: curation at Green Top!

As part of their Expedition ‘Once Upon a Time’ Green Top have had some beautiful displays created for their reading areas in Nursery and Reception!

Staff Days across the XP Trust

All our staff were getting their heads together and planning for next term’s Expeditions last Friday and Monday – lots of exciting learning and products are on the horizon for students in term 3!

As with all of our Expeditions, students will work within one of our three curriculum seams and staff will do the project first! If it’s good enough for our kids, it’s good enough for us!

Passage Presentations at XP Gateshead

This week, G28 were the first year at XPG to complete their ‘Passage’ – these are presentations to a panel where they reflect on their learning journey, discuss examples of their work, and talk about how they are prepared for next steps in learning and GCSEs.

Top of the Blogs

Beautiful Work from Winnie and Evan @ XP Gateshead

We are sprouting scientists @ Norton Infants

Year 6 Learning Club @ Green Top

Crew Ardern DofE Volunteer Work @ XP

We are Activists! @ Plover

Raising money for the British Heart Foundation @ XP East

Creating confidence in Crew @ Carcroft School

Scientific Discoveries @ 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!

We are “Sprouting Scientists!”

This week Nursery have been learning about growing and caring for plants through our story “Christopher Nibble in the Dandelion Derring Doo!” By Charlotte Middleton. In the text Christopher and the other Guinea Pigs eat all of the dandelions in Dandeville and are forced to eat cabbage as a result. The guinea pigs don’t really like cabbage, so we thought we would offer help by growing them some Cress Heads!

The children enjoyed scooping the compost and sprinkling the seeds into their pots, before using the watering can to water their seeds.

Some of the earliest planters cress from during the week have already began to sprout! The children will continue to care and nurture their plants in Nursery until the end of the term, watering them and changing their position for the most sunlight. Hopefully they will grow into big cress heads, fit enough for the Guinea Pigs to eat (or humans 😉), be lovely on a Dandelion Salad!

Once Upon a Time…

During the spring term children in the EYFS took part in a learning expedition titled ‘Once Upon a Time’ answering the question ‘Who is hiding in the pages of this book?’ The children explored many traditional fairy tales and completed activities all about the characters and events in the books.

Yesterday the children presented their learning to their parents and carers. They explained the key learning that took place, shared photographs of the activities they took part in and sang songs about the stories. We also shared the children’s learning journals looking at the beautiful work they had created.

Finally, the children were presented with a story book to take home that they will keep as a lasting legacy of this expedition. Inside the book is a QR code that leads to a video of our EYFS children performing a song titled ‘Watch Out for the Troll‘. Well done Class 2, you are working so hard and getting so smart!

Class 1 – Celebration of Learning 🌟📚

In the Spring of 2024, EYFS pupils studied a cross-curricular expedition titled ‘Once Upon a Time’’ looking to answer the guiding question ‘Who is hiding in the pages of this book?’  The expedition moved through three case studies each focussing on key events within traditional fairy tales.

Today the children got to share their learning with their grown ups in our celebration of learning event. We sang ‘watch out for the troll’ and ‘Gingerbread man on the run’, the children performed them beautifully! We also got to share what our favourite fairytale over the expedition has been. Finally, the children were presented with a story book that they will keep as a lasting reminder of our ‘Once upon a time’ expedition. In the book is a QR code that leads to a video of our EYFS children singing a fairytale song. We hope you enjoy watching this performance 🌟

A huge well done to all the children for working so hard and putting on a great presentation. Also a big thank you to our families for coming along. It really was a lovely event 😊

Sharing our Stories 11/03/2024

Beautiful Work This Week

Expedition Stories: UKS2 @ Plover

This week we’re proud to share the beautiful story of UKS2s Expedition from last term ‘Earth Emergency’. The carefully designed planters and greenhouse will surely be a catalyst for Plover growing its own produce for generations to come!

Beautiful Curation at XP Doncaster

XP on the TV!

For anyone who missed it – XP Doncaster has been featured in a BBC Two documentary which aired on the 7th March. All episodes are available on BBC iPlayer now.

We’d like to thank everyone who has got in touch or left a comment about the programme – we are so proud of our students and how eloquently they expressed how they feel about their school.

If you’d like to learn more about our schools and how you can do what we do too, you can get a copy of our book How We XP here.

Top of the Blogs

Just another day… @ XP Trust

Beautiful Work from Reuben @ XP Gateshead

World Book Day @ Norton Infants

Class 8 Story Writing @ Green Top

FXP Tuck Shop @ XP

Save our Seas! @ Plover

Crew Da Vinci SLCs @ XP East

Magnets @ Carcroft School

Lowry inspired artwork @ Norton Juniors

We’re looking for a Cleaning Lead at XP Doncaster

Find out more about the role and apply here to #JoinOurCrew

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!

What a page turner World Book Day was!

Nursery had the most wonderfully fun Wonka themed World Book Day! There were visits from Willy Wonka himself, who sang and dished out chocolate bars to all! Two lucky children even won a golden ticket to choose a prize from Wonka’s Chocolate factory. The children arrived in their beautiful story inspired costumes and what a range we had! A fantastic effort from everyone.

Nursery explored and played with special book themed play trays, including popular stories and nursery rhymes. They also coloured traditional tale colouring sheets of some familiar characters from our recent expedition.

Nursery also had lots of DEAR (Drop everything and read) time with grown ups sharing our favourite stories that children had brought in and some of our own, including two special stories from “Mystery Masked Readers”. The children listened carefully and had to guess who was hiding behind the masks?

We really did have the best World Book Day yet!

World Book Day 📕🍫

We had the most amazing time on World Book Day and there was laughter and smiles all round all day! The children looked fantastic in their costumes and they loved taking part in so many fun activities. It was very exciting for all children to receive a Wonka Bar from Willy Wonka himself. The lucky golden ticket winners got the chance to visit his pop-up toy shop to choose a gift to take home.

A huge thank you to the Friends of Norton Campus Association for organising such a wonderful event for the children! And a big shout out to Mr Carr for embracing the opportunity to create some magic for the day!