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This is also what I do. It works very well. Make sure you have a looting sword if you want more mob drops and XP.I usually set up a complex piston/water thing that involves suffocating the mob to a certain number of hearts. I use Redstone repeaters to determine that number of hearts then I push them all to one area where I can one shot them with anything.
Coal, Redstone, Lapis, Diamonds, gold, and iron are all good XP sources.. Just use a fortune pickaxe. You will get some must XPI find coal and red stone mining to be fantastic sources of Xp