Newsletters

GHS Connect #35 Monday 29 June

From the Head

Another new chapter in the ‘re-opening saga’ begins this week - the welcome of Year 12. Thank you to everyone involved this coming week. I’m sure that with everyone’s professionalism and commitment to ensuring the best for the students, it will be as successful as our ‘face to face time’ with Year 10.

As communicated last week, we have decided to NOT have Year 10s in for the final week of term to work on optional subjects. This is because Year 9 students remain ineligible for any face to face time, and it seems counterproductive to just see Year 10s in a mixed class of 10s and 9s. Some teachers have asked about whether or not they should set work over the holidays. The short answer is ‘it’s up to you’ but please just be mindful of how much students might get done and be realistic about whether you will get everything back.

Thank you to everyone who completed the i-block survey. Dipesh has communicated the findings to SLT and we will consider these as part of our plans going forwards in September.

I am finally nearing the end of the recruitment process for internal roles. Thank you for your patience with this. Well done to Tom Oseku who was appointed Head of Student Voice last week as well as Karishma Topiwalla who will take over Head of Chemistry for a maternity cover.

Finally, well done to Annji Bashforth and Christabel Haines who were appointed as Deputy Heads of Post 16. While Christabel is on maternity leave, Sarah El-Sockary who is returning to us in September, will take on the maternity cover for Deputy Head of Post 16.

Finally, hopefully you will have seen that as from October 2020, I will be launching a new SLT Associates Development Programme. Full details can be found on the VLE announcement so that anyone who is interested, can begin to mull this over. Due to the Covid-19 situation, we will not be interviewing for these posts until term begins again in September, and successful applicants are likely to take up post just after October half term 2020.
 
Have a great week!

Mia

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

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

> Supritha Rao supporting her students to become finalists in the Longitudinal Explorer Prize with their own invention, the Tomodachi Personal Assistant App. You can read more on this here.

> Rachael Chong experimenting with an electronic mini-whiteboard to model answers to her students during online lessons. 

> Virginie Oulidi and Helen Judson using the  advanced functions of Google Meet so students can do group work in ‘break out rooms’ during a live lesson.

Missing the MWBs?  Try  WHITEBOARD.Fi

If you are looking for something to make live lessons more interactive, Whiteboard.Fi could be for you- it is a really nifty website which allows you to give each student a virtual whiteboard for live teaching. You are able to see the whole class’s whiteboards at the same time and can push images and text to their whiteboards e.g. an exam question. Big thanks to the Business and Economics Department who brought this to our attention and have been using it with their classes.

Start by clicking “new class” – all you need to enter is your name to get started. You will then be given a link to share with your class.

Students will get this screen (right). Remind them to put their full name/ surname initial if you have students with the same name in your class. You can create a waiting room to hold students and control who can get into your classroom, this will also help filter out any silly names!

With lower years it might be easier to use WHITEBOARD.Fi when you also have a live meet happening so you know how many + which student names to expect in your whiteboard classroom.

How it works

Tick the “enable waiting room lobby” box when setting up your classroom – it ensures you can keep control of who is allowed to join the class:

You can design a white board and then “push” it to your students for them to work on individually. For example, you could put graph paper on the background; add a screenshot of an exam question or insert scaffolds such as keywords and sentence starters. 

Below, a teacher has “pushed” an image to students. They have then been able to circle important areas and add annotations. The writing pen is great for circling, highlighting or short answers (students have to use the mouse or their finger to write). The text boxes are better if you want students to write a paragraph or add small labels to their work.

We hope you enjoy using it. Please share any useful ways that you find to use it! 

Staff Shout-outs!

We've got another bumper crop of shout-outs from colleagues this week. Remember, if you want to send a shout-out, send a picture of the post-it to Clare Secombe.

Inclusion with Lou

Mini-School update

This week has been an exciting one in Mini-School up in the LRA as we have had double figures all week. Woooohoooo! At times this has bought its challenges, as we are working with some of the school's most vulnerable students, but there has also been a real sense of the students getting into their work and enjoying the opportunity to see each other while getting some much needed support. We have also started meeting the students who have been invited in because they are not coping with remote learning or are having a particularly tough time. Each student has had a 1-1 check in with me which has given an invaluable insight into what lockdown has been like for some, possibly most, of our kids. As we would have expected, there is a great deal of resilience and optimism along with a sense of isolation and fear. What united them, however, was a real excitement at being back at school, once they had got over the initial shock of getting up early. I will remind them of this at key times in the future...

As well as working with the handful of students who have been coming in, we've also had a team of staff who have continued to reach out to different cohorts of students - our Clinical Psychologist has been in regular contact with her group, our two school counsellors have continued their regular weekly sessions over the phone, Scott Osborne has been phoning and doing door-step visits, the Learning Support Department has ensured that all of our EHCP and ARP students have had regular contact and sessions in school, the Pastoral Team at all key stages have been phoning continuously and visiting houses in some cases, and all our regular statutory child protection and SEND meetings have been expertly managed by a number of staff. And, of course, all of this has been underpinned by a great team of tutors. Thank you!

Mental Heath Trailblazers

I will end this week with news of two new Inclusion initiatives - as a school we have been selected to take part in the Mental Health Trailblazers Programme, which means that we will be getting some extra support in the field of mental health to work with a small number of students who are anxious or of low mood. And, we have been successful in a bid to John Lyons for a more extensive counselling provision run by the School Counselling Partnership. We will have a further two days of counselling, drop in sessions at lunch and break for students, and support for staff too. More info to follow soon!

As always, a huge thank you to everyone for your pastoral love, help and support in these odd times. And, here's to seeing a few more of you, and our students, this week with the return of Year 12.

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.