Newsletters

GHS Connect #1 Monday 5 September

Mia's notes

A warm welcome back from me to our first full week.

Thank you all for your engagement and energy on the first two days back. It was lovely to come back to such a positive environment. Thank you to everyone who delivered the INSET, which I thought was great, and thank you to everyone for taking part. This week is all about new beginnings, resetting expectations, ensuring that students know we mean business, and being positive and upbeat about the year ahead. I’d ask you please to continue to be mindful about the key messages from last week:

• Knowing the challenges and knowing our students;
• Making it easier to overcome the challenges,
• Connecting.

Some great ways to start with this is to get those seating plans sorted where you can, ensure that you gather information about students from SIMS and check in on students’ work during the very first lesson. It’s amazing how much we can glean from a quick look at a short paragraph that students might have written (or tried to write!) during their first lessons with us.

Can I also please remind everyone to start as we mean to go on with Meet and Greet and End and Send?  As I said in my talk, this is non-negotiable this year, and we will expect to see everyone standing at the door being present.

Another key thing to remember is the changes to break and lunchtime. Break will now run from 10:35am – 11am.  The sheer number of students we have to get into lessons means that teachers will need to be ready at their doors at 11am. Some students may arrive a little later than this – it’s impossible for them all to arrive at the same time as there are so many trying to go into the buildings at once. 

Lunchtime will run for 40 minutes from 12:40pm to 1:20pm. Again, teachers will need to be at their doors at 1:20pm. Please note that some students may be a little late, for the reasons given above.

• Year 7 teachers will need to escort students to the dining hall at 12:20pm and stay with them until 12:40pm.
• Year 8 teachers will need to escort students to the dining hall at 12:30pm and stay with them until 12:40pm.

Thank you all so much in anticipation of what I am sure will be an excellent start with all our students this week.

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Year 7 induction day (in forms)
Year 12 team building (field)

Tuesday
All students in. Extended form time into P1
Year 13 assembly AM
Meeting: Fire Marshal drop-in 3.15pm (optional - lecture theatre)
Meeting: Department time 3.15pm - 4.30pm

Wednesday 
HODs Meeting & HOY/DHOY Meeting 3.15pm - 4.15pm
Teacher Marking, Planning & Collaboration 3.15pm - 4.15pm 
PSHCE drop-in (optional)

Thursday
Year 11 Expectations Evening 5.30pm - 6.30pm.

Friday
Normal day.

Y7 Induction Day – Monday 5th September

We will be holding our Y7 Induction Day on Monday 5th September. The induction programme consists of an array of activities such as – walking around the site, how to get organised, getting to know the forms and form tutors etc. We hope that this will give the Y7 cohort an opportunity to settle into school and make the transition from primary school as smooth as possible.

A huge thank you to everyone involved including the Y7 pastoral team, the TAs, the form tutors, Harpal, Amandeep, the Computing department and Gurvinder.

Expectations Evenings

We are looking forward to being able to welcome parents into school again. We will be starting off the year with some Expectations Evenings for key year groups, the schedule for these is as follows:

• Y11 Expectations Evening- Thursday 8th September from 5:30 to 6:30pm.
• Y8 Expectations Evening – Tuesday 13th September from 5:30 – 6:15pm.
• Y12 Expectations Evening – Wednesday 14th September from 5:30 – 6:15pm.
• Y9 Expectations Evening – Thursday 15th September from 5:30 – 6:15pm.

The evenings will allow us to continue to build positive relationships with our community again as well as sharing key pieces of information.

Amandip

Learning and teaching

A huge thank you to everyone for bringing their energy to the CPD session on Friday morning (pics below); it was wonderful to see everyone so determined and resilient when faced with a page of unfamiliar Serbian - I’m sure the competition element helped!

As you begin to plan lessons and meet your classes this week, please keep in mind that activity and remember the strategies you can use to ensure all students can ACCESS tasks, especially any reading students need to do:

• Address motivation 
• Activate wider/prior knowledge
• Read aloud to model fluency
• Use dual coding
• Explicitly teach tier 2 and 3 vocabulary

Kelly

Inclusion and Pastoral

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a lovely weekend and that you weren’t too overloaded after the first couple of days…

We have our first PSHCE lesson of the year on Thursday, P1 - Reena, who is now heading up this area, has already put an announcement out. You will find all the resources here so please have a look in advance and if there are any queries or issues, speak to either me or Reena. Hope it goes well!

We also have our first tutor times and assemblies this week - Year 7 and 12 will be meeting their groups today, and everyone else will have their first registration on Tuesday morning, which will extend into P1. This will give everyone a chance to go through all the bits and pieces that your Year Teams will have discussed with you, such as the new planners, the change to our fire procedures and so on.

The assembly rota has changed slightly:
Monday - Year 7
Tuesday - Year 8
Wednesday - Year 9
Thursday - Year 10
Friday - Year 11

This week’s assembly will be delivered by Mia to set our expectations for the year, starting with Year 7 on Monday. Year 8 will NOT have theirs on Tuesday morning, due to extended registration, and instead will have theirs later in the week, details to follow.

Have a fab week, everyone, meeting your tutees and new classes, remembering to connect, know the challenges and make it as easy as possible for our students to settle in. Also, don't forget the Child Protection training and reading Keeping Children Safe in Education!

Lou 

Post-16: Class of 2022

Sometimes, working on the manic conveyer belt that is a school, it feels like no sooner have we bid farewell to a cohort, we welcome straight in a new, fresh-faced bunch, ready to go again! Well, we feel it important to take a brief moment to recognise the ‘old’ that have just left us at Post 16. I, therefore, present to you:

The Class of 2022 (affectionately known as the Covid cohort)

There is no denying that you, as a staff body, have collectively set these young people up for future success. The real show-stopping figure is… *(insert drum roll)*… 218. That is the number of our students that will be starting university this Autumn… and the mix of courses & institutions couldn’t be broader and more beautiful… from Biomedical Engineering at Imperial to Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence at King’s to Fashion Marketing and Consumer Behaviour at University of the Arts, London. Highlights include:

• 2 x University of Oxford - Lilia Khan (English); Najwa Jalrezi (Law)
• 1 x University of Cambridge - Kathryn Welhenage (Economics)
• 1 x Claremont McKenna College, USA - Riya Bhasin
• 6 x Medicine
• 22 x UK Top 10 university
• 51 x Russell Group university (Top 24)

A special mention must be made to our BTEC cohorts who secured some wonderful results and, in turn, paved the way for a number of impressive university offers… and a special tip of the cap to: Fay, Rubina, Helen & the wider team who worked some magic with a challenging cohort.   

Next week is all about the 'new'... the incoming class of 2024.

Richard Lewis

GHS Connect - this year

If you've got any suggestions, requests or content for our staff newsletter this year please send them through to Mia and Will Halsey.