Good morning, just to let parents and carers know that X23 have arrived in a sunny Barcelona! Updates and photographs to follow.
The X22 Presentation of learning will take place on the following evenings :-
Wednesday 5th June for Admiral
Thursday 6th June for Skipper
The evening will be a focus on students preparation and revision for the upcoming Year 10 exams on the WC 17th June, and will be in a carousel format between five subjects
Maths
Science
History
Spanish
English
With the Students answering the guiding question of
“How do I lead my own Learning?”
Best wishes and Thank you for your continued support
The XP X21 team.
Science intervention will change slightly to be the night before the exam.
Biology Intervention will be on Monday 13th (the day before the Biology exam).
Physics intervention will be on the Tuesday 21st with RCA and MVO.
Thanks
Mr Campbell
Day one – Year 9 Spanish Trip
An early start for Year 9 students, many hours travelling and passing through many checkpoints to get here, however I am pleased to say we all arrived safely in Barcelona. The way the students conducted themselves through what could of been a very stressful process was highly commendable and appreciated by all staff. Although very tired, the sun was shining and we were ready for the day.
Once we arrived we checked our bags in at the hostel and headed straight out to see all that Barcelona has to offer. First up we headed to a local shopping centre where the students were allowed to shop, explore and most importantly grab some food to fuel them for the day. Then to the Estadio Nou Camp (Barcelona Football Studium) for a tour around the stadium.
Following this, our tour guide Sunny took us to the bustling street of Las Ramblas and to the world famous food market La Boqueria. The students throughly enjoyed tasting the many Spanish delicacies that the market had to offer.
With tired eyes and tired feet we headed back to the hostel to enjoy a meal together and get some rest before another action packed day tomorrow.
Crew Hahn and Crew Nightingale had a brilliant Friday afternoon playing rounders. Well done to our champions team ‘A’ who won by a mile! Great fun had by all!
One thing we love to do in crew Macmillan is talk to each other about our interests. Last Friday, Vinnie enthralled us all with a presentation on Alcatraz, the island prison just off the coast of San Francisco.
We were amazed by his knowledge and understanding of the history and geography of Alcatraz, which is a topic he’s been researching for only the past few months. Most of all, though, we were all hugely impressed by his professional style of presentation – a sincere well done to our Vinnie!
Dear Parents.
We feel that it is only right that we share and remind all parents of the schools Credit Control Policy.
If there is an outstanding balance on your account at present can you please bring it up to date asap. We will be implementing the policy wherever it is required and contacting parents over this coming week where necessary.
The policy is as follows:
Credit Control at XP Trust
Students School Meals
School meals are priced at £2.50 per student which is the price that the school pays to Doncaster Schools Catering. This is charged at cost, with no profit to the school, through ParentPay.
When a child’s account is in arrears the school makes contact with the parent(s) to ask for the outstanding balance to be brought up to date. There may be exceptional circumstances as to why there is an outstanding balance, in which case the school will work with parents to put in place a payment schedule. If parents fail to bring the balance up to date the following process will be followed on a weekly basis.
- If the balance exceeds one week’s lunch costs (£12.50) a text will be sent to the ParentPay payer.
- If the balance exceeds three week’s lunch costs (£37.50) the payer will be contacted by phone call. A voicemail will be left if necessary. At this stage we will ask parents to send their child in with a packed lunch until the debt has been cleared. The child’s Crew Leader is expected to monitor if the child is expecting a school lunch, and contacting the parent themselves as necessary.
- If the balance exceeds four week’s lunch costs (£50.00) a letter will be sent to the payer from the Principal. This will advise parents of a meeting date and time they must attend in order to resolve their ongoing failure to pay for their child’s lunches. This meeting will be with the Principal. A payment schedule will be agreed and failure to comply will result in further action.
- If, following the above meeting, the balance remains outstanding the school will seek legal advice and any necessary action will be taken.
Music Lessons
XP believes that music should be made accessible for all and has decided to subsidise the cost of music lessons for parents. Each hour of music lessons costs the school £36.00, but we charge parents £22.50 for an individual lesson and £16.50 for a group lesson. This is a saving for parents of at least £135.00 over an Academic Year.
As a result we ask that parents commit to lessons for the whole year in the form of a signed letter agreement, as the school must commit to the Music Service provision for the whole year.
Cancellation of lessons mid year will still require payment in full to avoid any further cost to the school.
Payments are required in 3 installments as per the ‘traditional’ school terms. One payment is expected in September, one in January and the final payment in April.
- If the payment is not settled by October (first payment), February (second payment) or May (final payment) a text will be sent to the ParentPay payer.
- If the payment is still not settled by November (first payment), March (second payment) or June (final payment) the payer will be contacted by phone call. A voicemail will be left if necessary and Crew Leader will also be notified.
- If the payment is still not settled by December (first payment), April (second payment) or July (final payment) a letter will be sent to the payer from the Principal. This will advise parents of a meeting date and time they must attend in order to resolve their ongoing failure to pay for their child’s music lessons. This meeting will be with the Principal. A payment schedule will be agreed and failure to comply will result in further action.
- If, following the above meeting, the balance remains outstanding the school will seek legal advice and any necessary action will be taken.
Fieldwork and Visits
XP does not normally charge parents for the cost of fieldwork as part of the curriculum. We do ask parents to pay in full for non-essential visits due to the higher costs eg Visit to Spain.
Parents are also notified that payment of the initial, non-refundable deposit is their acceptance of the liability for the costs to the school incurred through pre-booking.
The school will issue a payment schedule to parents in advance. Failure to pay in a timely manner will result in the following process.
- As per the payment schedule, a text will be sent to all payers who have not settled the amount due by the installment deadline date.
- If the payment is still not settled one week after the payment deadline the payer will be contacted by phone call. A voicemail will be left if necessary and the trip leader will also be notified.
- If the payment is still not settled two weeks after the payment deadline a letter will be sent to the payer from the Principal. This will advise parents on a meeting date and time they must attend in order to resolve their ongoing failure to pay in advance of the next installment due date. This meeting will be with the Principal and trip leader. A payment schedule for the outstanding amount will be agreed and failure to comply will result in further action.
- If, following the above meeting, the balance remains outstanding the school will seek legal advice and any necessary action will be taken.
This is a video put together for a celebratory Community Meeting by way of thanks for their hard work and leading the way in establishing our culture over the last five years.
As Mr Sprakes said, “It’s been a blast”.
This week in crew we have been working really hard on unpicking our HOWLs and reflecting on why we think we received the grades and what we can do to improve next term. So Friday afternoon we decided to make the most of the sunshine with a few outdoor games. Great work this term…enjoy the holidays!!
Year 7 students have been working on statistics during the start of their new expedition: “Wild Wild Life“.
They have learned how to find the mean, median, mode and range in a set of data, and will use these to interpret the data they have been collecting on dandelion populations around the school site.
This work will help them for the learning target:
I can use statistical methods to analyse observational data.
TASK 1
Over the two week break students need to return the 4 HegartyMaths exercises set on mean, median, mode and range.
They also have a quiz set for them on frogplay. We are currently trialling frogplay which allows students to quiz themselves whilst playing age appropriate games. The quiz that has been set is intended to be used as retrieval practice so that students retain the vocabulary and algorithms they have learned over the two week break.
If students need any advice, they can email me, watch the videos on HegartyMaths or there are some useful videos posted on the bottom of this page on the expedition website.
https://sites.google.com/xpschool.org/y7-x25-7-6-wild-wild-life/cs1-dandelion
TASK 2
Students should complete the frogplay quiz regularly over the two week break until they consistently get over 90%. Ideally students should return to the quiz every couple of days if possible, it takes around ten minutes to complete.
Student have been given a knowledge organiser to help them with this work, this is also posted on Google Classroom.
To log in to frogplay students should go to:
frogplay.net
The school id is:
XPACAD
Students saved their usernames and passwords in their browsers but can email me if they need help.
The deadline for completion is when we return from the two week break on Monday 3rd June.
Thanks for you support as always.
As we are now coming to the end of our expedition ‘Are we really free to choose?‘ students have once again being applying their knowledge and practising answering exam questions. It’s been really pleasing to see so many students Working Hard and Getting Smart when attempting source and interpretation questions. Students have really risen to the challenge with these tricky questions! Here are just a few examples of their hard work from this week.
With only a few days to go before our visit to Barcelona I’d like to issue a few final reminders.
Following a request from our coach company to ensure a slightly earlier departure, please ensure that your child arrives on site at 1.30 a.m. to allow us time to register students, load luggage and collect any medication. We must leave promptly at 2.00 a.m.
Medication should be in its original container, with name and dosage instructions clearly legible. Once your child has been registered with Mr Pearson, all medication must be handed over to Mr Jackson who will assume responsibility for its safe administration throughout our visit. Miss Robinson will issue each student with their work journal, an A4-sized notebook, that needs to be placed in their luggage. Students are responsible for their journals, and these will form the basis of a Presentation of Learning later next term.
Students are permitted to bring one small personal bag (max 40cm x 20cm x 25cm), and one item of luggage (55cm x 40cm x 20cm) weighing no more than 10kg into the cabin. When passing through airport security screening each liquid they carry must be in its own container of no more than 100ml. All liquids should be carried in a single, transparent, re-sealable plastic bag of up to 20cm x 20cm (8in x 8in) with a total capacity of up to a litre.
We are staying at the Pere Tarres Hostel on a half-board basis, so students need to bring approximately £50.00 – £60.00 in Euros, and £15.00 – £20.00 in pounds sterling to purchase food and drink during the day and whilst we are in transit. Once we arrive in Barcelona we will follow our agreed itinerary.
Mobile phones will be collected in during the evening and students will be given opportunities to make brief contact with home when time allows.
A massive well done to all the students that took part in the practice DofE expeditions last week. For the hikers it was a rather challenging couple of days but it ended very positively.
The practice expedition is a time for students to be able to make mistakes and then learn from them so that they are able to complete a successful qualifying expedition.
Students are expected to work in teams making choices for their expeditions. This isn’t easy and mistakes will inevitably happen. However each group is supported by an expedition supervisor who will guide, support and challenge them throughout their preparations. This includes allowing them to make mistakes!
‘It’s not the mistake that matters, it’s how you deal with it, what you learn from it, and how you apply that lesson to your life’.
After the practice expedition students debrief their experience with their expedition supervisor and discuss what they did well and what they could have done better in all aspects of the expedition process. These points are then actioned before the qualifying expedition so hopefully when it counts mistakes are avoided.
I am really looking forward to the qualifying expedition in July.
As always if you have any concerns or worries please email me.
Kate
kapharri@xpschool.org
