Newsletters

GHS Connect #20 Monday 22 February

From the Head

A quick message from me this week. There’s not much to say, as we await the news from Boris about the so-called ‘roadmap’ out of lockdown. Needless to say, it looks as if there will be a return to schools in some form or another from the 8th March, and we will hopefully find out more, later on today.

I hope that everybody had a lovely half term break. I know there wasn’t much to do, but I hope you all managed to switch off a bit and relax. I’m sorry that I wasn’t around in school in the last week of the half term - unfortunately I had a track and trace directive that came through the school office, which I obviously had to follow. Everything was fine with me health-wise - I just had a few more enforced days in the house over half term. Fortunately, it coincided with the very cold weather!

I will let you know our plans for the return to school as soon as we have been able to respond to any Government announcements. Do bear with us as it may take us some time to formulate exactly what a return to GHS will look like; we won’t necessarily have things ready and sorted immediately, but we will consult and let you know the direction of travel as soon as we can.

It was lovely to hear about how many staff rallied round and supported Emmet with distributing stationery packs and checking in with PP students just before half term. He has asked me to say a big thank you to the following: Dan Siskin, Adam Hamida, Joe Wilcox, Jesse Mantey, Allison John, Noor Al-Musawi, Helena Hastings-Gayle, Buchi Anyamah, Hanad Mahamed, Amit Pall, Katharine Hobbiger, Mark Harvery, Harpal Sagoo, Dan Oag, Lou Grimley, Adam Bush, Dipesh Patel, Karen Foster, Jayne Ball, Noble Laryea. 

In Emmet’s words, “It was really great to see so many of them in person and hear about how things are going. We also managed to give some remote learning resources to many of the students who needed them most. We may not have had everyone in that we invited, but we certainly had a decent turn-out. Thanks very much once again - I really do appreciate all the effort and support! Emmet.”

Finally, a reminder that we have moved email over to Outlook 365 and you can now download Microsoft 365 apps such as Word and Excel at home. More details on the school website here.

Mia

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

Do let us know if you hear or see any excellent remote teaching and learning in the weeks (?) until we're back in school! Here's one to start the new half-term...
 
> Maya Popovic going the extra mile for her EAL students to get them as much exposure to English as possible, constantly checking in on them and organising telephone lessons if access to the Internet is limited. 

Learning and Teaching: Motivation, Engagement and Resilience with online learning

As we enter the second half term of remote learning, I know I am thinking about how to keep students motivated and engaged in online lessons.   

PIXL have made a CPD video: Supporting Students with their Next Steps.  There is a 2 minute introduction and then Caroline Sidell (who is National Well Being Lead at PIXL) discusses motivating and building resilience in students.

Here is a summary of 5 of Caroline’s top tips:

1) Add some humour, fun, something social at the start of your lessons so students look forward to coming each week for the social interaction as well as the traditional learning and teaching.

E.g. Kelly asked her students to share the funniest thing that ever happened to them in school on their Spiral boards…

2) Include tasks that provide instant feedback as students find seeing their results and progress instantly, more motivating (you could use Google Docs during live lessons; quizzes or spiral.ac for this).

3) Mix it up a bit and provide variety, ensuring challenge to prevent boredom; she suggests incorporating a competitive task sometimes.

4) Give 2 options with tasks as students need to feel a sense of control and authority over their learning to keep them motivated.

5) Provide opportunities for tutorials, check-ins and small group sessions to enable students to work or discuss things in a smaller group setting.  Dr Bashforth has set this up with her Year 12s for the week before their assessment week:

Shout outs!

Thanks to everyone who sent in a shout-out. If you'd like to send one in for a future board, write a post-it note, take a photo and add it to the folder: Staff shout outs 

A plea from me: Please, try to trim the photo so only the post-it can be seen (it saves me so much time!) and do not send them over email. Thank you!

Clare Secombe 

Behaviour for Learning

Each fortnight 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 #9: Expertise and innovation at GHS

We hope you all had a restful and enjoyable half term. Thank you to every member of staff who worked to support remote behaviour for learning last half term. Clearly, the shift to remote teaching has presented new challenges for everyone and teachers, year teams and support staff have been working hard to address them. We hope that some of the tips we’ve put out in Connect have helped. 

This week, we’d really like to hear from as many of you as possible with your “top tips” for behaviour for learning. These can be for remote teaching or for in-school as it looks likely that we will return soon. We would really like to share the wealth of expertise and innovation that exists across the school. Just drop us an email so that we can start collating your ideas ready for future editions of GHS Connect.

Thank you!

Mark and Jo

Inclusion & Pastoral

Welcome back! Hope everyone had a lovely half-term break, and enjoyed the break away from it all…

Not too much to report this week other than to say that we will carry on as before for the next couple of weeks from a pastoral point of view, and then see what Boris has to say this evening. Most of the laptops have now been given out but keep those names coming. And, there were a number of home visits made in that week before half-term to those students with whom we have had no contact at all. Whatever happens in two weeks, we will continue to reach out to as many students as we can and continue to ensure that everyone is able to access their work!

Last thing from me - it’s PSHCE week. It will take place on Friday, P3 and the resources will be ready at the start of the week to have a look at before you post them on your Google Classrooms. If there are any questions, get in touch with either me or Keely!

Have a fab week, everyone. 

Lou Grimley