X24 Fundraising

As previously posted. This summer, X24 are taking part in fundraising for the toilet twinning scheme by walking 2 miles with 4 litres of fluid on their back, just a portion of what those we are trying to help do on a daily basis. Here is evidence from one students walk:

This is an opportunity to provide support for countries who don’t have the simple facility to wash their hands, at a time when hand washing is vital. To support please donate money via this link.

YEAR 9: New birdwatching world record*

We have a new record in Year 9 for the most birds spotted in a single session.

Kyle in X24 spotted an incredible 60 birds from 14 different species, including a sparrow hawk and two herons.

Whilst we have not set any work for students in Year 9 to complete over the two week break we would love it if they continued with their birdwatching, bug hotels and bird boxes. Please remind them to send us lots of photos. We are in competition with XP East for the most birds spotted.

*not verified by Norris McWhirter

Beautiful work in STEAM

This week I would like to appreciate a number of students for all sorts of reasons in STEAM.

We have just had our closing circle in a hangout meeting and reminded the students that we appreciate their efforts in such challenging times.

There are a number of challenges that students have been working on, linked to the learning targets of our new expedition:

  • building bug hotels
  • building bird boxes
  • bird spotting
  • doing citizen science research in Zooniverse

We’d love to see more photos from these challenges over the two-week break. But most importantly we want students to stay safe, and where possible to enjoy nature.

Here are my appreciations for the week. More images of beautiful work can be found in our expedition gallery by clicking on this link.

 

X24 – Closing Circle Hangout Meeting

This afternoon at 3.00pm we will be hosting a hangout for all of Year 9 across both schools to find out how they have been getting on with their STEAM immersion challenges.

Students can join the meeting by logging into their school account and going to:

http://g.co/meet/c24steam

Attendance for the launch hangout was fantastic. Thanks to all of our families for your continuing support.

#wearecrew

ETCH A CELL RESEARCH PROJECT

We need our student to help with important medical research!

In this second challenge of the new Year 9 learning expedition: Here Comes the Sun, mitochondria research scientists in London need our students’ help.

Nearly every cell in our body contains hundreds to thousands of mitochondria. These tiny structures are incredibly important. They are often referred to as the ‘powerhouses’ of the cell. This is because they convert the fat, protein and sugar from the food we eat into the energy we need to survive.

We couldn’t live without mitochondria, and if they do not work properly it causes very serious problems.

Students’ job is to identify mitochondria in images of cells at a very high level of magnification.

Volunteers like our students’ work will eventually train AI computers to help analyse new data even faster. This will help the scientists to do their research more quickly and develop new drugs.

More details can be found on Google Classroom or on the immersion section of our expedition website.

 

THIS WORK CAN ALSO COUNT TOWARDS DofE Volunteering during lockdown too!

Our new Year 9 STEAM expedition is called ‘Here Comes The Sun’. The website for the expedition is live now.

This afternoon we kicked off STEAM immersion week in Year 9 with a huge Google Hangouts Meet.

The meeting was attended by over 60 students from both XP and XP East who met to learn about the challenges we have set for their immersion this week.

One of the main things that we want students to get out of this week, and the whole of this term’s Year 9 STEAM expedition is an appreciation of nature.

 

CHALLENGE 1 – BIRDING

We have asked students to spend at least 30 minutes spotting birds. We have shared a guide and record sheet with them in Google Classroom. Staff have been having a go this week and spoke to the students about how lovely it was to spend time out enjoying nature.

We would love to see lots of photos from students of any birds that they see or just general shots inspired by nature. We are also determined to beat XP East with the number of birds that we spot!

In our meeting we had a massive game of quizlet live to compete with other in identifying 20 of the most common garden birds.

Spoiler alert: Penguins won! 🐧 🏆

 

 

There are also some optional challenges that we would like for the students to try if they can:

OPTIONAL CHALLENGE 1 – BUG HOTEL

If you have a garden or patio space, it would be amazing if students could gather resources to build a bug hotel, these can be as complex or simple as students want to make them.

Students don’t need to complete all of the work on it this week during immersion, as we will revisit it throughout the expedition. Again we would love to see photos of any that students build. Here is mine that I built with my son, we had a great time:

 

OPTIONAL CHALLENGE 2 – NEST BOX

If students have the resources and space they might want to build a small nest box.

This would be a great project to do with family members.

Again students would not need to complete it in this immersion week. It is something we will ask them to return to every week.

 

Details of all of the above are on Google Classroom.

 

There is another important challenge we will be sharing tomorrow, after which I will add a new blog post.

 

GOOGLE HANGOUT CLOSING CIRCLE – THURSDAY AT 3.00pm

It was wonderful to see so many students this afternoon to kick off the new expedition. Charlie even played us out of the meeting with what I believe the young people call ‘The Rave Music’.

On Thursday we will be gathering again on Google hangouts Meet at 3.00pm to see how students have been getting on with their challenges and share the photos that they send to us.

We will also share the guiding question and more exciting details about out new expedition then too.

Please do encourage your son or daughter to get outdoors and enjoy nature wherever possible, get them to send us photos and to join us in the hangout at the end of the week.

Thanks as always for your support.

Have a great week and enjoy VE Day with your family on Friday.

 

#wearecrew

As part of their expedition “Sagas, Sailing and Steel” X24 students will be carrying out fieldwork at Sheffield Hallam University on Thursday 26th March.

Students will be testing the strength of different materials to help them gain a deeper understanding of how Viking swords were strengthened with materials from ancestral bones.

We will be leaving school by coach at 9.00am. We expect to return at around 3.00pm.

Students will need to bring their regular stationary: pen, pencil, ruler, eraser, pencil sharpener.

They will also need to bring a pack-up lunch.

We do not expect to be outdoors for any great length of time so no specialist clothing is required.

Thanks as always for your continued support.

X24 Superbug! STEAM POL 9th December

Students from both Admiral and Skipper will be presenting this terms learning to parents on 9th December. This will consist of two parts that link the final question of “Why should world poverty matter to us in Doncaster?”, We hope to see all X24 parents here to support such an awesome cause.

As an adjustment to the above, X24 Admiral will be presenting at XP East and X24 Skipper will be presenting at XP

X24 Beautiful work

So far this term, X24 have collected data from countries around the world, considered if they are comparable with each other and if not how they could change the format, discussed what type of data it is, starting to consider what type of sampling method would be best for this type of data and are now learning about the different averages we could use to analyse the data. Overall it has been a successful start to Year 9. Keep it up!

There are some examples of their beautiful work below: