I am so proud of our phonics group today. They worked so hard on sitting properly, holding their pencils, sitting their letters on the lines and starting from the right place. They even spelled some words correctly and wrote them beautifully! They have been working hard and getting smart!
Sharing our Stories 28/06/2024
Beautiful Work This Week
Visitors from around the world…
In 2023, XP had over 1000 visitors from all over the world – including India, Australia, America, Israel, Norway and Spain, just to name a few! As we continue to welcome more visitors, here’s what they’ve said about our students…
Exciting plans for Green Top – watch this space!
Friends of Norton Campus Summer Fair
This week we held our second Friends of Norton Campus Association Summer Fair. We were joined by members of our local community to raise funds for our schools. There were bouncy castles, penalty shoot outs, welly wanging and face painting.
Askern Community Brass Band provided the music – and there were plenty of sweet treats and snacks to enjoy too. Children were spending their pocket money on the hit the teacher coconut shy and sponge the teacher! Not forgetting we were joined by our special VIP’s Lenny and Alan (the alpacas!) We’re already looking forward to next year.
We’re got vacancies across XP Trust!

We’re looking for:
Learning Coaches at Carcroft School
An EYFS/KS1 Specialist SEND Teacher at Carcroft School
A Leading Learning Coach (HLTA) at Plover School
A Learning Coach/Crew Leader at XP Gateshead
Top of the Blogs
Year 9 Sports Leaders @ XP School
Share your stories with us!
Time to read crew- reading for pleasure!
In crew, our UKS2 children have been enjoying reading their books outside with their friends. They discussed which books they have read this week. They shared the author of the books, the genre and a summary of the texts so far. The children then each made a pledge to read a recommend text next. We have been able to build on our ‘texts we have read’ displays and we have nearly met our class targets!
We love to read in UKS2! 🙂
-Miss Blackham
LovePlover
3SG We are scientists
Today we conducted an experiment to test the melting rates of chocolate.
We placed a chocolate button in different locations and timed how long it took to melt. We took the temperature at the same time.
We had some interesting findings, that really made us think and draw conclusions – why did the chocolate in the Bubble not melt at all, even though the temperature reading was very similar to outside – where the chocolate melted in 2 minutes? We had a discussion, and decided that there was a variable – the concrete on the playground was very warm, but the carpet in the bubble was not.
We have loved doing the experiment and next we will put our findings down on paper in a scientific report.
Mrs Graves
#LovePlover
We’re looking for an amazing Leading Learning Coach (HLTA) at Plover!
Mermaid maths
In our story this week, the mermaid was running out of time. It started with ten minutes and on each page a minute passed. We used our cubes on the carpet to represent the minutes passing. We could see the minutes that had passed on the floor and the minutes that were left in our hands. We saw our number bonds to ten and the subtraction facts that go with it. We loved seeing the patterns and some of us knew the numbers because we can remember our number bonds to ten, without having to count. After that, in provision, some awesome mathematicians wrote down what we had found out.
Terrific Thomas!
At the weekend, Thomas ran 3km! We are all so proud of him, We will put his picture in the sports hall of fame for all to see.

Doncaster Storytelling Festival
I was so proud to take the Year 5 book club to the Doncaster Storytelling Festival at the Dome on Tuesday.
We have been reading and reviewing books all this year and the Festival was the culmination of all that work.

Mrs Graves
#LovePlover
Continue readingSporting Success!
Congratulations to all footballers across school whose clubs have had their presentation evenings. Crew Haycock are extremely proud of their players, here are a couple of them with their awards.
Shout out to Kodish who won keeper of the season!
Good luck next season, everyone!
Mrs Haycock
#LovePlover
We can plan and carry out a fair test!
Over the last couple of weeks, Years 3 and 4 have been working as scientists and experimenting with states of matter: trying to find out if temperature affects the rate at which matter changes state. Our final task was to investigate the quickest way for Mr Wonka to create his chocolate river if all of the chocolate he has only exists in solid form.
Here we are, trying to think of different ways Mr Wonka could try to melt his chocolate…I wonder which location or method worked the best and melted the chocolate the quickest?
Now to consider our findings and draw conclusions for Mr Wonka!
Mrs Haycock
#LovePlover