Newsletters

GHS Connect #22 Monday 7 March

From the Head

It really does feel as if the gloom is lifting a little, not only in relation to the days getting longer and lighter, but also in terms of what we are managing to do as a school. There has been so much going on and I want to thank Will Halsey and Will Harrison for putting lots of this together in our latest Community Connect Newsletter which has been sent out to parents.  Of course, none of this would be possible without those people who are running all of these exciting things in school, and I want to thank everyone who has been involved in all of these activities. Well done to Fuad, Carol and everyone else who was involved for our Somali coffee morning which was a huge success. World Book Day along with the Macbeth performance also seemed to go brilliantly, so thank you again to Sarah and everyone else involved in this. 

We have agreed the dates for the Year 11 Prom, the Summer drama performance and the Easter musical concert, so it really does feel as if the school is beginning to return to normal. We are also planning on returning to some kind of normality around Raising Achievement Day, and Amandip has shared some information about this further down in Connect. Please do have a read.

Thank you to those people who have shared their views about briefing. If you haven’t yet completed the consultation on Staff Briefing, please do so.

Finally, with it being International Women’s Day on Tuesday, it’s a good time to remind ourselves of all of the great work being done by the Girls’ Achievement Group.  Do have a look at the item put together by Chloe and Naomi below. There are some great top tips to take note of.

Have a great week,

Mia

Monday
Teach First Termly Reviews (MAT/mentors).

Tuesday
Meeting: Year Team meeting 3.15pm - 4.30pm.

Wednesday 
No meeting.

Wednesday New Staff (ECTs only) CPD: ECF Module 4 Seminar 1 (virtual event from 4pm).

Thursday
PSHCE P1: resources here.
Year 12 Parents' Evening 4pm - 6.30pm.

Friday
Normal day.

Community Connect newsletter

Our latest parent and carer newsletter, Community Connect, went out on Friday. It's packed full of lovely stories and pictures from around the school - thank you to everyone who contributed. You'll also find a feature on our Pastoral Support Workers and a round-up of recent GHS sports news.

Take a look when you get a moment - it's a great reminder of the brilliant work going on around school day in, day out.

You can find the Community Connect newsletter on this link. 

Raising Achievement Day

Raising Achievement Day is on Friday 1st April, from 8:30am to 3:00pm (staff are of course able to start earlier if they would prefer to).

As Covid restrictions have been lifted and, in a bid to connect more closely with our community, we are going to have a hybrid version this year. There will be an opportunity for parents to come into school for a face-to-face meeting in the morning from 8:30am to 12:30pm. We also realise that for our staff and lots of parents, School Cloud has been an effective option, so the afternoon appointments will take place online.  All the appointments can be arranged through School Cloud. We are planning for meetings to last no longer than 10 min; year teams and PSWs will support with appointments to ease the burden on tutors. Further details about RAD will be given at year team meetings.

Thank you in advance for your support with RAD.

Amandip Johal

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

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

• Adam Hamida helping students to “bounce back” by recapping prior learning with his Y11 class. As it had been a year since they last looked at A Christmas Carol, he used the Do Now-a summary clip and a gap fill-to check students really remembered the plot. When Adam moved onto the more complicated task, his students felt confident and could access it well. 

• Clare Secombe using images and a gap fill to support students in identifying the names of various forces. Students were returning to the topic in preparation for the end of KS3 exams so using these prompts helped students to access the topic and gave them confidence when revising. 

Learning and Teaching: Staffroom noticeboards

The staff room notice boards have had a long overdue refresh! 

By the photocopiers you will find the new Teaching and Learning board, with lots of tips on how to make your questioning, bounce back strategies and SEND teaching more effective. There are also some examples of great teaching we have spotted around school - more on the way soon! 

There is a newly created Staff Notices board, ready and waiting for any exciting information you would like to share with colleagues.  

Perhaps most excitingly of all, the ever popular Shout Out board makes a comeback! Now in a new (white board) format! Next time you’re in the staff room, why not leave a little message to let a colleague know how much you appreciate them - there’s a pack of coloured pens ready to use. We’ll share a picture of all the messages at the end of the half term, before starting a fresh board after Easter. 

Extra special thanks to Jonny Edmonson for his decoration skills!

Kelly McCarthy

Inclusion and Pastoral

Last week was one of mixed emotions for me - there were some fabulous things going on in school along with the sadness of what is happening in the world around us. Hope everyone is ok! 

Thank you to everyone for supporting with the various interventions that are running, as I talked about last week, and to everyone who supported with Chelsea’s Story. It’s not Chelsea’s Choice anymore, the important update to the title reflecting the fact that our young people at risk of being exploited may not be in a position to make choices. That certainly made me think as the actors corrected me - they also said that they thought the students were great so thank you to everyone who worked hard to contain Year 9 on the day!

A reminder to everyone that this week is Year Team meetings on Tuesday afternoon, where information about Raising Achievement Day will be discussed, along with other key pastoral bits and pieces. It is also PSHCE on Thursday (resources here) - Keely is not in at the moment so direct any PSHCEy questions my way, and I will do my best. Last reminder is to keep repeating to students that they can no longer use the back of blocks to enter C and D blocks.

I have had lots of discussions this week with staff and students, along with my own children, about what is going on in Ukraine and what we can and can’t say. I have also had some questions about discussions that may or may not have happened about international issues in the past - if anyone is worried about how to structure these conversations, or has any concerns, please feel free to come and see me and refer to these two documents. This is what I circulated last week (the official government guidance) and this one is a far more digestible version passed to me by a member of staff.

Have a good week everyone!

Lou 

Inclusion Heroes!

Huge thank you this week to Fuad Mohamed and Sarah Williams who both organised events that brought our community together (see pictures below), both externally and internally, and brought a lot of joy to many parents, students and staff. Here’s to many more events just like these!

Girls Achievement group and International Women's Day

As you know, this year we have two Girls’ Achievement groups: 10W4 and 11W4 comprising a total of 38 students. With Tuesday 8th March being International Women’s Day, it feels like a good time to give these students the spotlight. Members of the groups were selected for various reasons, but all of them may need a little extra support and recognition in lessons to encourage them to participate and achieve their potential.

A reminder of the students in each form:

Above all, we want these students to feel valued and have something to look forward to each day.

Top Tips for Raising Girls’ Achievement in lessons:

1. Identify – highlight these students on your seating plan and markbook, and bear them in mind during mocks and exam season
2. Encourage – to reduce anxiety, give discussion time before cold calling and prompts for independent work
3. Reward and celebrate – praise, CPs, stickers, postcards, and calls home all go a long way, especially for those girls who are consistently fantastic, but can sometimes go unnoticed. Please pass on any positive messages to us and their D/HOYs
4. Check in – sometimes girls can appear to understand the task and be “working well” but are struggling in silence. Give them plenty of opportunities to ask you questions privately and check in on them regularly. Again, please pass on any concerns to us - big or small!

Character strengths at GHS

This week we want to celebrate our COMMUNITY. 

Some of our year 7s students have been attending Bagel Club Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings (see pictures right and below).

Jess and Tara have invited students who aren’t getting enough breakfast in the morning before school. The club is helping make sure that our students start the day right so they can focus on their learning. 

This club is such a success because of teaching assistants,  form tutors, year teams and SLT.

Thank you for all your support!

Andrea and Noble