Newsletters

GHS Connect #35 Monday 4 July

From the Head

I had the privilege of attending the Descendants Ceremony on Saturday to support Javon Marquis, in Year 11, who was nominated by Dan for his success in being accepted into Sutton United, whilst continuing to focus so well on his academic studies. Although Javon did not win the final award, it was a wonderful evening and lovely to share it with Javon and his family. 

We continue to enjoy a range of events this week, with the Media Awards evening on Tuesday, Spelling Bee and The Greenford Read on Wednesday, International Day on Thursday, a Speaker’s For Schools guest, Lord Burns, and no fewer than 7 trips running this week! Thank you so much to Will, Adam and Will, Amanda, Sarah W, Maya, Helen, Alistair, Christabel, Andrew, Ellie N, Hebe, Aansa, Tracey, Chloe, Adam, Lisa, Katharine, Emmett, Ellie R, Sushila, Rola, Rachael and Dipa for all of this activity! No doubt I will have missed someone in relation to a trip or event, so apologies if that is the case, and thank you to everyone who creates these opportunities for our students.

In relation to International Day, don’t forget to let Maya know what international food you will be bringing in, along with lessons that will be being taught at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0AJ9ZGXDPxazbUk9PVA

Please also note that lunchtime will be extended by 10 minutes for this day as a one-off to enable some of the international day activities to take place.

I also want to thank everyone who was involved in the new staff induction day, particularly Peter, Karen and Dawn and everyone who delivered sessions, and also everyone who was involved in our Year 6 induction day and transition evening last week, particularly Pam, Dan, Gurvinder, Amandip, Adam, Amandeep and everyone who provided lessons and activities for them.  It feels like we have a great new team of staff ready and waiting for September, and a lovely new set of Year 7s!

Enjoy your week,

Mia

Monday
Normal day.

Tuesday
Meeting: Department time 3.15pm - 4.30pm.
Media Awards - the GHS Oscars 6pm - 8pm. All staff welcome!

Wednesday 
No meeting.
ECTs: Reviews of Summer Objectives and setting those for the next term. Mentors MAT/LEA
Ealing Spelling Bee - hosted here at GHS.

Thursday
International Day.
Speakers for Schools talk - Lord Burns P3&4.
KS4&5 Interims deadline.

Friday
Normal day.

Notes
KS4&5 Interims.

Learning and Teaching: Spotted!

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

• Cherish Bristow (below) using Google classroom within lessons to promote the use of Digital literacy and a platform for year 7s music projects. She gave clear explanations on how to log on and access the project online and modelled the project to give students the best chance to access the task in an efficient manner. She then went around and checked there were no login issues so all students could attempt the task. 

• To help her Year 8s prepare for an assessment, Pam Lewis provided vocabulary to help describe the character Brutus from Julius Caesar (below). She scaffolded their learning through the different parts of the play with how the character develops and gave them some vocabulary to get their brains thinking. Pam was superb in asking students to explore their choice of vocabulary by putting them into full sentences verbally to promote the oracy within the classroom. 

• Sarah Williams teaching her Year 7s the importance of teamwork through her balloon game Do Now task, then reinforcing the idea of listening to each other and working together throughout her lesson. 

• Jen Williams teaching her Year 7s about literary devices in Great Expectations. Her use of questioning is amazing! She posed a question, giving students a chance to think about their answers and reminding them that there were no hands up. She thanked those that put up their hands anyway without taking an answer, making sure that students could not opt-out. After a few seconds she gave them a chance to discuss in a pair, every student was engaged and the level of the discussions was really impressive. Finally she shared answers together as a class, always asking probing questions to check their understanding. 

• In his Year 7 science class Andrew Rugg was spotted building students’ engagement. He posed an open-ended question about a burger and the sun and let students discuss the answer before brainstorming as many ideas as possible. He used this starter idea to create a thread of learning for the lesson on food chains, emphasising the key learning point from the lesson right at the beginning and reinforcing it at every step. 

Inclusion and Pastoral

We are nearly there… I hope everyone had a lovely weekend!

Firstly, a couple of PSHCE notices from me - it’s our last lesson of the year on Thursday so have a look at the resources and get in touch with me or Keely if there are any questions. And, don’t forget to fill in the PSHCE Survey by the end of the day on Wednesday so Keely and I can have a look at the results when we meet on Thursday. I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone for delivering the lessons this year and to Keely for overseeing the whole curriculum! 

I have some other thank yous this week - the mainstay of our transition work has now finished, so thank you to everyone who helped out on this front and who welcomed the Year 6s on Friday (along with everyone who accommodated them taking over I-Block). I would also like to say thank you to everyone who has absorbed new students into their classes over the last few weeks, which is not always an easy thing to do. I’ll give an update on our managed moves in Briefing on Wednesday…

Lastly, please don’t forget that when you are emailing the pastoral teams, the address to now use is pastoralteam7@greenford.ealing.sch.uk, pastoralteam8@greenford.ealing.sch.uk, and so on…

Have a good week everyone!

Lou 

Inclusion Heroes!

My Inclusion Hero this week is Ellie Navarro - Ellie has been working incredibly hard on the Inspire Project, linking with St John’s College, Oxford University, with a small but highly aspirational group of students. Ellie will be taking them to Oxford this Thursday to further inspire them. She also took all of Year 7 to Kew Gardens! Thank you for all your hard work, Ellie.

Behaviour for Learning: Lose the “shhhhhhh”

In 2017, Lucy Erickson’s research, Background Noise and Classroom Design, confirmed what many teachers know to be true: that noisy classrooms can distract students attempting complex tasks.

When the buzz of off-task chatter becomes too much, teachers often ask students to “work quietly” or “settle down”. Yet instructions like these, often accompanied by shushing, rarely succeed in bringing about a lasting peace. 

For optimal noise levels, you should have clear expectations: “This activity requires silence” or “using only partner voices…” It is helpful to teach students what silence sounds like, partner/pair work voices, table/group work voices and classroom voices. Some of our staff have found visual volume meters useful as it’s a visual cue for students which shows what the noise level should be like. Again, this needs explicit instruction so students know what each level should be.

So, lose the “shhhh” and teach students what volume of voice to use. We hope you have a wonderful shhhhhh free week!

Mark and Jo