This Expedition had Carcroft pupils exploring how movement shapes the world around us, starting with understanding the Earth, Moon, and Sun, and how day and night occur. Through hands-on experiments, they learned about forces—like gravity, friction, air, and water resistance—and discovered how simple machines (such as pulleys and gears) can make work easier. By creating their own mechanical systems and prototypes, the children tested their ideas, refined their designs, and connected their science knowledge to real-life situations.

To show what they’d learned, pupils shared their insights in a variety of ways—writing imaginative sci-fi narratives, crafting fact-packed scientific reports, and even presenting biographies of key figures like Isaac Newton. Their presentation of Learning was an Expo at the School, where they proudly showcased their models, experiments, and discoveries to parents and the local community. Through this journey, they not only built up their skills and confidence as young scientists and designers but also sparked greater interest and involvement from the people around them.

Year 6 pupils joined Charles Court care home to spread Christmas cheer and create Christmas flower arrangements with the residents for the residents to keep. The floristry workshop was ran by a local business, Charlotte’s who coached the children to be able to support the residents when creating and designing the flower arrangements.

The children also sang Christmas songs and gifted their care home boxes of biscuits. We are so proud of our children for showing activism and serving our community and cannot wait to continue this relationship with the care home in the future.

In the Autumn of 2024 the EYFS children at Norton Infant School began a Learning Expedition
called ‘Be Kind’, which looked to answer the guiding question ‘How do we show we care?’ – you can watch their story here!

Beautiful Work This Week

Here’s a selection of beautiful work from across the XP Trust over the last two weeks! To read about other stories from across the XP Trust, visit xptrust.org.

Top of the Blogs

Crew Chadwick goes outside! @ Norton Infants

Christmas Card Packs – Crew Council @ Green Top

Be Kind – Celebration of Learning @ Plover

Den building @ Carcroft School

Crew Nightingale engaging with challenges

If I had a hammer! @ Norton Juniors

Real Craftsmanship and Quality from George in Crew Darling @ XP Gateshead

This week in PE @ XP East

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!