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GHS Connect #5 Monday 9 October

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GHS Connect #5 Monday 9 October

Mia's notes

Welcome back to another week - not too long now until half term!

Just to say from me, a really massive thank you again to everyone who was involved in open evening last week. Meticulous planning, positive faces from staff and outstanding preparation in displays and classrooms all made for a wonderful evening.  As I said on Friday, there was a real buzz and lovely atmosphere.

Thank you to Kathy and team for the D of E trip to Swanage - it’s brilliant to have this up and running in the school once again. As I’m writing this, I’m hoping that everything has gone to plan - what could possibly go wrong with a group of teenagers navigating their way across the countryside without the use of their phones?!!

Finally, another thank you to everyone involved in the INSET day on Friday - it was great to have some reminders about our L&T priorities, and also some info about our EAL students. It was also brilliant to hear about some of the ‘wins’ we have made since the beginning of term in relation to attendance and punctuality in particular.  Thank you, as ever, for your continued support in helping to make this happen. Keep logging those lates!

Have a great week,
Mia

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The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day

Tuesday
Year Team Meeting/Pastoral Time 3.15pm - 4.30pm

Wednesday
Briefing in the library - 8.15am
Action Research CPD 1 - 3.15pm -4.15pm. See VLE for further details.

Thursday
Normal Day

Friday
Normal Day

Notes
Year 12 Attitude to Learning Interim due
Year 13 Interim 1 due

Character

Teacher Character Champions (accurate as of Wednesday 4th October 2023)

Thank you to all staff for diligently logging character points at the start of this academic year. I would like to take this opportunity to celebrate five staff members who have supported this initiative wonderfully. Their character points account to around 30% of the whole-school total. Don’t miss briefing for your prize next week.

Finola Doyle - 3149 character points
Rosalie Read - 2597 character points
Dan Oag -1693 character points
Neha Palta -1313 character points
Pam Lewis - 1151 character points

 

21 members of staff are yet to log a single character point this academic year. 
Are you in this camp?

How can I support character?

  • Make reference to character traits throughout different tasks in your lesson to enable positive behaviour. 
  • Use Satchel One to log character points.
  • Praise students in public and use the whiteboard for recognition. 
  • Send postcards home for students who excel brilliantly in lessons. 
  • While on duty, recognise and log character points for students who are being helpful or displaying excellent manners on the school site. 
  • Nominate students for SLT celebration by using the Character Champion box in your departmental workroom.

VIDEO GUIDE: Logging Character Points (N.B. Video has no sound).

As a form tutor, encourage students to work on their actions for the character badge.

  • Year 7 - Courage Badge. (p.7) 
  • Year 8 - Compassion Badge. (p.9) 
  • Year 9 - Community Badge. (p.8) 
  • Year 10 - Responsibility Badge. (p.10) 
  • Year 11 - Resilience Badge.  (p.11)

Rav

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Learning and teaching: Embedding Excellence

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

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Kiran Thandi going through exam papers and getting students to share their responses. Kiran got students to peer assess the responses and used her expertise to guide them so they understood why a student got a certain mark and what they would need to do to improve.

Abigail Schmidt was spotted using small chunked learning tasks to get her Year 8s to apply their knowledge, giving her the opportunity to check their understanding and challenge any misconceptions. She circulated the room to make sure students could access their learning and offered hints to those who needed them to bridge to independence.

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Peter Mather giving Year 13s exam feedback that enabled every student in the class to improve in future exams. He broke down all the "general" pointers for each exam question, such as missing key terms, but then circulated to make sure each student specifically knew what to focus on in their revision, for each question type.

Zainab Mughal using the visualiser to show students how to complete the questions they were set. She used questioning to draw out the best possible responses and focused on the key words and phrases needed to answer the questions.

Thank you from Teach First trainees

A lovely thank you from our Teach First trainees who were part of the School Centred Learning between 26 - 29 September:

To the team at Greenford High School,

"We cannot thank you enough for all of the time, support and resources you have poured into our trainees this last week.

The feedback we have received from trainees and our Teach First staff has been hugely positive. The trainees have been made to feel so welcome and gained such invaluable learning. They will be with their own classes straight after half term, and being able to truly immerse themselves in school life beforehand has a huge impact on both the experience of the trainees and their pupils.

We hope you have enjoyed hosting our trainees and that you have a restful weekend ahead of you. Please do forward to all your colleagues that have been supporting us this week.

All the best,

Kirsty Berry 
Development Lead. Programme Support"

Thank you video

Inclusion Updates

Mental Health 

Please find some useful apps from Stem4 to signpost to students to support their mental well-being.  

There is also a link to support staff well-being here 

CPOMS: 

Please can all staff ensure that when using CPOMS to continue to follow the guidance below: 

  • Use student initials. 
  • Use professional language, as often external agencies will view these files. 
  • Please enter all the information regarding student incidents and actions.  

Therefore, if contact has been made home add this into your incident, so we have a full picture of the situation and the actions completed.  This will hopefully minimise the communication on CPOMS. 

 Thanks so much for all your continued support. 

Gurvinder 

For the latest X/Twitter feed from @ghsofficial, click here

For the latest Instagram feed from @greenford_high_official, click here

08 Oct 2023
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