Newsletters

GHS Connect #34 Monday 22 June

From the Head

Thank you to everyone who came in to support our opening to some Year 10s last week. The feedback was positive, from both staff and students, with students confirming that they had enjoyed a good, productive morning. On the way out, all those who we asked said that they were glad that they came in and that they intended to return this week. Let’s hope that they do!

Thank you also to everyone who has been tirelessly continuing to work on remote learning for our students. We continue to get good feedback from students and parents about how high quality it is. We are currently looking at ways that we can continue to develop online learning, both in case some element of remote learning continues in September, and also, for the long term, once we are all back in school. In the words of Boris last week, ‘watch this space…...’

Speaking of our ‘wonderful’ government, we are still none the wiser as to how and when we might return fully. We are currently planning around 2 possible scenarios - a) a full return to school in September; b) around 50% of the school in at any one time - on a one-week-on, one- week-off basis. Obviously, if things have to be scaled back further than that, we will move to do that. In both scenarios, (infection levels dependent, of course), we are more likely to be looking at all or most staff being based in school in September, either teaching, or working on remote learning on site, but this will be confirmed once we have further information about how the government wishes us to proceed, and how the national picture is looking. I will, of course, provide more details as soon as we hear more, but I do tend to only obtain information from the news, in the same way that everyone else does.

We now have our plans for the return of Year 12 finalised. This will mark a significant point in our gradual return to school. I know that those of you who came in last week, will agree with me when I say that it has been wonderful and very normalising to have some of our students back.

On a totally different note, Will alerted me to this wonderful obituary in The Guardian about an ex-GHS student, neuroscientist Geoffrey Burnstock . To quote the article, ‘he grew up in Ealing, and during the second world war attended Greenford county grammar school, where he introduced a school-wide craze for table tennis.’  Good to hear that some things about our school haven’t changed!

Have a lovely week, everybody.

Mia

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

A round up of some of the great learning and teaching strategies Greenford staff are using currently…

> Ayan Ali delivering her first face to face session with such enthusiasm that students who were unsure about returning next week have been encouraged to do so!

> Karishma Topiwalla and Savneet Bhadare creating a warm and supportive environment for students’ first lessons back.

> Alistair Newall checking in kindly on the wellbeing of the students in his year 10 bubble.

> Marlene Shaheen breaking down concepts really well for students while remaining calm, smiley and positive.

Remote feedback

During remote teaching, many of us have been experimenting with how we give students feedback: we want it to be useful and manageable, both for us and the students.  We are definitely all keen to ensure feedback enables students to make progress but it should not be overly time consuming for teachers, especially for those colleagues with lots of Key Stage 3 classes!   

Below are some of the strategies GHS staff are implementing to help manage feedback:

1) Model Answers - Using pre-created model answers to reply to submitted work with a quick comment and then attaching the model answers for students to check against.

2) Quizzes - utilising self marking quizzes can be appropriate for some topics.

3) Mote - Using the Chrome Extension ‘Mote’ to give quick personal verbal feedback messages to students.

4) Comments Bank - using a bank of WWWs and EBIs that you can copy and paste - there is a comment bank feature in GC which appears next to students’ submitted work.

5) LR Lesson - using screencast-o-matic (or other screen/voice recording apps/software) to create a lesson  or running a live Google Meet lesson that goes over the common problems/misconceptions, rather than responding to each student individually.

Managing the ‘marking pile’....

Clare Secombe has found that clicking the ‘View All’ button at the left hand side of each Google Classroom Stream allows you to see a list of the assignments that need responding to and you can then move them to "reviewed" once you've given feedback on them. This has helped Clare manage her workload, and prioritise new work but still easily see when a student completes an old piece, rather than trawling through all old assignments.

Georgina Stevens

Inclusion with Lou

As Mia has already said above, it has been lovely this week to have some of our Year 10s back and remember what it is like to see students in classrooms as we wander around the school. It was also fab to see lots of staff in real-life, rather than over a Zoom call! There has also been a slight increase in the number of key students who have been coming in too, which is brilliant. A huge thank you to Lucy and our Learning Support Team who have single-handedly run Mini-School and welcomed a small but very vulnerable group back in...

These numbers will increase even more over the next few weeks as we start meeting with key students from Years 7 - 9 and Year 12 - again, many thanks to everyone for identifying those about whom they are most concerned and to all the staff who will now be involved in doing emotional check-ins and some basic checks. As we wait to see exactly what September will look like for all of us, touching base with those who are our most vulnerable to remind them that we are still here for them is essential.

Community Connect

On that subject, I have been writing to students on a regular basis through Community Connect. In my last letter, I sent out some Pastoral Shout-outs that the Year Teams had told me about. Please let me know if there is anyone you would like me to include in the next edition from your tutor Google Classrooms, someone who has gone above and beyond, or has come up with a good coping strategy while in lockdown, or has just made you smile. The more shout-outs that can fill the newsletter and the less of me wittering, the better.

Last but not least, there will be some more PSHCE bits and pieces coming in the next few weeks, both to continue talking about Black Lives Matter but also to prepare students for the summer break and how to manage that. Watch this space!

Lou Grimley

This week's Speakers for Schools

Speakers for Schools are continuing their programme of virtual talks and have created an online library of previous talks in case you want to set one of these as a lesson or extension activity. 

The video library can be accessed here.

The schedule of talks can be found on the Speakers for Schools website here.