Newsletters

GHS Connect #12 Monday 30 November

From the Head

I’m afraid that I need to start with some very sad news this week. Towards the end of last week, we heard that one of our Year 8 students, Ram Vohra, has very tragically passed away. Ram had been in Great Ormond Street Hospital for a number of months and had been very sick. I am sorry to only communicate this today, but we only found out informally from our school nurse towards the end of the week, and I wanted to verify this and also make contact with Ram’s parents before sharing this information with staff. We will be running assemblies for Year 8 students over the course of this coming week to share the news with them, and to also give them some time to reflect.

I cannot imagine how Ram’s parents must be feeling. It is terrible to experience the death of anyone close to you, but to lose a child so young, is incomprehensible. No doubt many of our Year 8 students will struggle to process this, so please can we all keep an eye on them and be gentle with them this week?

I hope that everyone had a good day off on Friday. We have all been well overdue a bit of a rest, after a crazy couple of weeks. As I said last week, we are on the home straight now until Christmas and December, for some reason, does always seem to feel better.

I know that staff continue to be concerned about the behaviour of a minority of students. We are dealing with this by taking different approaches to each student in turn, but we are also looking closely at our processes around movement and entry into buildings. Managing behaviour, particularly at the moment with the Covid restrictions we have in place, depends largely on presence, and that has been challenging over the last week or so with so many key staff out. When some return this week, the level of presence will improve. We are also looking at more ways to get duty staff into blocks prior to the students so that they can be moved into lessons more quickly, and we are stepping up the sanctions for those who defy staff or act in inappropriate, physical ways. We have also employed some cover over in KS3 where we are very low on staff, and I have positioned myself over there temporarily. Going forwards, we have advertised for some additional pastoral capacity and will be interviewing for these posts soon.

Please continue to feedback via your HODs /HOYs where you experience patterns of behaviour that are challenging. Can I also thank everyone for continuing to work together, so that we are all showing students that we are determined to insist on good behaviour. Whether that is ensuring that students leave classrooms with face coverings on, actively de-escalating rather than shouting, giving a reminder of our 3 school rules - ready, respect, safe - or issuing achievement points for students who show our character strengths of courage, community or responsibility, thank you - these little things will all make a difference. 

Thank you to everyone who has done such an admirable job in covering absent colleagues over the past few weeks. At KS3, Tara, Noble, Siobhan, Sarah Packman, Tevin and Jesse (who has just joined us) have all been brilliant. At KS4, thank you to everyone who has stepped in to support, with Emmet, Indy and Allison running study club and other aspects of Year 11, and thanks to Dan, Joe, Suzanne, Shem, Allison and Rav who have been doing a great job pastorally, with significantly reduced duty staff out and about in the playground. Thanks also to Harpal who has come out and supported too, and all of those staff who have picked up additional patrol duties - I know that Jeremy and Jo have picked up several and there will be many others who have too. I know that there are plenty of other people who have stepped up and helped out in other ways - thank you and sorry that I am not able to mention everybody.

Have a lovely week,

Mia

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

A round up of some of the great learning and teaching strategies we’ve noticed being used around school recently…

> Rav Dhindsa teaching a tricky class how to use adverbs effectively,  using all the strategies in the toolkit to keep their focus but making it look effortless!

> Phoebe Henderson-Barnes developing students’ independence by getting them to use knowledge organisers on the components of fitness.

> Danielle Fawcett-Walsh using great AFL strategies including MWB to see how well students could apply present tense conjugation rules. 

> Carl Harvey  embedding excellent routines and building students' independence so that they can self-regulate and work independently and in groups throughout the lesson. 

> Sima Bhudia setting clear boundaries and  re-visiting them as needed with a very tricky KS3 class, enabling the class to make progress in terms of their behaviour and academic study.

> Maya Popovitch experimenting with different approaches in her year 8 literacy class to really tailor the curriculum to the needs of the students.

> Katharine Peters setting her Year 12 Historians a mock controlled study to prepare students for their coursework, building their independence and research skills in the process. 

> Phil Crampton fostering a classroom culture where students feel able to ask questions to support their progress and understanding.

> Andrea Hetherington adapting her marking strategies with a weaker literacy class, marking little and often so that students are not overwhelmed.

> Tara Quigley using playdoh with her A Level students to support their understanding of mitosis:

Learning and Teaching: Time-saving tips for marking

In the dark winter days it can be tricky to keep on top of marking, especially when we have had to adapt how we handle student books this year. However, feedback to students remains part of our ‘bread and butter’ and a key way to motivate students and offer guidance on how to progress. 

Consider some of these key tips - shared by colleagues - to make the hours we spend marking books really have impact:

> Make sure students have a clear learner response task (a question, a correction or an instruction) and devote time (classwork or a homework task) to students completing these. Students should be working as hard as their teachers are!

> Consider using pre-made marking grids or statement sheets that can be highlighted, saving time.

> If there are a number of common misconceptions/feedback points for a class, number these and have the students write out the appropriate feedback for whatever number is written on their work. 

> Give students time to organise their folders/books in lesson especially as we can’t keep an eye on things by wandering around. 

Kelly McCarthy

Behaviour for Learning

Each week in Connect, Mark and Jo will be sharing behaviour for learning tips designed to help manage behaviour in the unusual circumstances of Covid-19.

Behaviour for Learning tip #3: De-escalation techniques

Within a classroom
If you are trying to get a class of students to be quiet try to avoid saying, “Ssshhhhh” or “Please be quiet” because this often encourages those students that are being quiet and waiting to start to talk. The quiet students want to move on with the lesson so they begin to say, “Ssshhhhh, Miss/Sir is waiting!” Before you know it, the whole class talking again. Instead, tell the class that in 30 seconds you require their full attention. 

Then start a countdown and state that by the time you get to zero you want students to put their pens 
down and eyes on you to show you that they’re listening. Countdown slowly and assertively from 5-1; do this calmly and don’t shout. If there are still the odd two students talking, calmly and patiently wait. Thank those in the class who are already quiet and then thank the final two students once you have their full attention. 

When dealing with a student that loses their temper
This requires practise. Our natural instinct is to question the student, “What’s happened?” or “Why are you crying/angry?”  The student will not be able to answer this question at this time as they are not thinking with the “logical” part of the brain. We also tend to say “Calm down” which doesn’t work because they will normally respond by saying (or shouting), “I am calm!!!” It is our responsibility to teach our students how to calm down. Firstly, tell the student to breathe calmly. You will need to model a technique with the student so we have included two effective examples below; these work much better than asking them to count to ten. 

Finger and hand breathing: https://youtu.be/yP9cF0NTI2U
Box technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEmt1Znux58

Mark and Jo

Inclusion & Pastoral

The first thing I would like to say this week is a huge, huge thank you to everyone for the double whammy of pastoral bits and pieces. Tutor time on Tuesday and PSHCE on Wednesday probably tested everyone’s reserves of pastoral goodwill, especially in what was a tough week in so many ways, but both were embraced wholeheartedly! That time with your tutees is invaluable and the many different areas that are covered across the year groups in our PSHCE programme fulfil our statutory obligations as well as, hopefully, go some way to developing our students into lovely young adults…

Tutor Time slots, PSHCE dates and the whole PSHCE programme are now on the VLE so that you can have a look. I have also spoken to a number of staff about the logistics of tutor time - many thanks to everyone for maneuvering 1800 students in their bubbles between P3 and P4. In some areas it worked better than others and I will be looking at this for our December session.

Behaviour

For those of you who come along to briefing, Mark and I talked about various interventions being put in place to work with our most challenging students at the moment - we have mentors at both Key Stage 3 and 4, Scott Osborne in for the most problematic, a modified curriculum about to start for a very small cohort in Year 8, our Educational and Clinical Psychologists assessing people across the board, and Michelle Williams, our allocated social worker, now in full-time. We continue to run sessions for those who may need some wellbeing support through our counselling and Rediscover programme, with extra provision due to start next term through the Iheart Resilience programme.

One thing I did want to remind everyone of is that our new counsellors are also there to work with staff. It is a confidential service, and while we work out the best way to organise this logistically, Jo Morgan is happy for people to email her directly, so that you can access the service without having to have a conversation with someone from the CP or Pastoral Team. I will put her details on the VLE this week - please feel free to get in touch with her if you need to. Even though we’ve had a long weekend to recharge to certain extent, it is traditionally a tough time of year, and that is before we factor in any of the other strains and stresses that Covid-19 has brought.

I hope everyone had a good long weekend and is feeling ready for the last few weeks. Not long to go!

Lou Grimley

Character strengths at GHS

It was great to see and hear tutors and tutees discussing our Character Strengths this week in form. 
 
A few highlights that we caught when visiting your tutor sessions…
 
When Hebe Wescott was celebrating Character Strength achievements with 7M1 - they felt more connected to the rest of the school as they could see how other year groups were showing courage, community and responsibility.
 
When Cherish was caught discussing character strengths with 8t3…

...and sending her nominations:

Thank you to Rupinder for sending her nominations:

Thank you to Anneka for sending her nominations:

Jess for getting her students to nominate - see pictures below. Please keep sending your nominations!
 
Also, in your year team meetings, hopefully you got a sticker with Character Strength prompts for your desk or planners. If you still need one, let us know.

Noble and Andrea