Newsletters

GHS Connect #36 Monday 6 July

From the Head

I’m sure you will have all heard the government guidance around September opening. We will be drawing up plans over this coming week, but some of the work around this will inevitably take place in the holidays, nearer to September. As I said in my staff announcement, I am, as always, more than happy to answer questions or discuss further with anyone at any time, but the key points for now are listed below:

> The Government wish all students to return from September, each day and for the whole day. No rotas are allowed.
> They wish us to keep year groups in 'bubbles' where possible.
> We need to be ready to switch to remote learning at a moment's notice and also provide remote learning for students who are self isolating. 
> Staff will need to be ready to come in every day as normal from September.
> Staff also need to be mindful of the quarantine regulations that are in place following overseas travel and ensure that they will be ready to come into work on 2nd September. If this is likely to be problematic for anyone, it is essential that this is discussed with me.

I will communicate more detail around the re-opening plans once we have had a chance to think things through fully.

Last week I met with Noble and Lisa Panford so that they could feed back on some of the recommendations arising from the Black Lives Matter meeting, which I know a number of staff attended. Some of the things that we have agreed to work on are:

> Providing some training around unconscious bias;
> Consulting more widely around the Black Caribbean project we have begun to be involved in as a school;
> Undertaking an audit of recruitment procedures;
> Reviewing the curriculum;
> Setting up a working party to work around some of these issues.

I have also asked Noble to undertake the role of ‘Whole School Equality Champion’ as part of his wider SLT remit, outside of behaviour, to ensure that this issue remains at the forefront of everyone’s minds and becomes embedded into our leadership plan and direction going forwards. As I said to Lisa and Noble today, it is really important that we have honest conversations around this issue, and any other issue we may feel needs addressing in the school, and I am always happy to receive ideas and feedback where people might feel that things are lacking.

I just want to thank everybody once again for all of your hard work and commitment in these most strange times over the last few months. Many of you have commented on what an odd year it must have been for me in my first year of Headship. It certainly hasn’t been what I was expecting, but as ever, the collective GHS response to all of this has reminded me yet again, of what a wonderful community I have re-joined and how lucky I am to be Headteacher of this amazing school.

Not long to go now until the 17th…. hang in there!

Mia

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

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

> Indy Lall, Ellie Navarro, Jacob Chapman and Hanad Mohamed creating a wonderful supportive environment for Post-16 students in i-Block this week, including enthusiastically  teaching into break times - they just couldn’t stop!

> Hebe Westcott using ‘break out rooms’ in her live Google Meet lessons to allow students to have separate group discussions. 

Hebe even created a short video to show how she prepared for her live and break out sessions.

> Dan Oag using the app Atomi to create pre-recorded lesson material. Screencast O'Matic doesn’t allow you to  cannot capture system audio when making the videos, but this app does and it is therefore much more useful for Music lessons. Dan says it works really well. You can find more details on Atomi here.

Google Classroom at the end of the academic year…

A few colleagues have asked how we plan to manage our Google Classrooms as the academic year draws to a close. 

Some teachers carrying through classes to next year, can just continue with their Google Classroom and pick it up again with students when we return in September. You can just edit the name of the class to accommodate the change of year group by  clicking on the three dots on the corner of the class code.  

Colleagues who will be finishing with classes at the end of term can archive their class as a way of closing it down.

Below, Helen Judson gives us some advice on how to go about this:

There is an option on Google Classroom to archive classes. This puts them in an ‘Archived Folder’ and removes the class from your main page - and more importantly from students’ pages too. It therefore looks like it has gone but if you ever need to refer back to it e.g. to access a resource, students’ work etc, it is there if you need it.  

To archive a class you can click on the three dots in the top right hand corner of the class card and then click on Archive. This means the class is no longer live or active.

If you ever want to find archived classes you just go to the main menu - click on the three lines in the top left hand corner - this lists your 'To do' list, all your classes and at the bottom is a folder showing archived classes. From the archived classes, you have the option to delete them, copy them,  or restore them.

Archiving classes, rather than deleting is sometimes handy if you ever want to reuse resources.  During lockdown I used some old BTEC student work from an archived class to use as exemplars for my current students.   I also reused a post from last year's Year 13 Economics class for revision materials and resources-this posted all the resources and links in this year's classes but saved me having to upload everything and include all the links again.

Helen Judson
 

Inclusion with Lou

Mini-School update

It's been another exciting week in Lockdown Mini-school with the numbers still in double figures every day - Lucy and the team continue to do an amazing job, despite the eclectic mix of kids we have had up in the AF corridor and the LRA, and the challenge to our patience levels at times... We've also had some of those I invited in come back for more sessions voluntarily. My knowledge of KS3 Maths and GCSE French has been tested, but it's been lovely to have a steady trickle of students pop in for a morning or two to try to clear some of the backlog of work. Which in some cases is huge! We will continue to run Mini-school until the end of term, try to ensure that a few more tasks are ticked off here and there, and give the students some space to talk about how they are feeling.

Lockdown experiences & PSHCE

As I mentioned last week, it has also been interesting to build up a picture of our students' experiences of lockdown. I will then look at how we can incorporate some of this in our planning for September. Keely is working on a new PSHCE programme to be launched in the new academic year, we will look at doing some basic training on how to use Google Classroom, especially with Years 7 and 8, the Schools Counselling Partnership will be up and running, and a number of staff have been on Bereavement Training over the last couple of months. I am hoping that these, and other strategies that will develop, will go some way to support our students over the next couple of weeks, and when we return, whatever that may look like in reality.

At some point this week I will be asking staff to feedback to me on our new Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) Policy - the changes in the teaching of RSE were supposed to be statutory from September onwards, but this has been delayed by Covid-19. It would still be good, however, to hear what people think about what we have planned. I'll put a link to the policy out in a VLE announcement in the next couple of days, and if you could find a little bit of time to have a read, that would be fab.

That's it from an Inclusion point of view this week - don't forget to let me know if any of your students have impressed you from a pastoral point of view and I'll get out some shout-outs to them in Community Connect. And, as always, a huge thank you from me!

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.