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GHS Connect #11 Monday 27th November

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GHS Connect #11 Monday 27th November

Mia's notes

I hope everyone has had a lovely, long weekend hopefully resting and recuperating.

This week will obviously feel like a bit of shock - any change in routine does tend to have that effect, I feel, but we’re on the home-straight now, albeit with lots to do, of course!

Year 11 mocks will continue this week and we have Year 8 parents’ evening on Thursday. Thank you to everyone who is involved in these things and thanks also to the Geography team for a Year 13 trip on Wednesday and the Drama team for the Year 10 mock performance after school on Wednesday - remember to pop along to watch if you can.

Further thanks to Will and Noor for the amazing chess tournament last week - if you didn’t manage to see what was happening, imagine life with teenagers before phones and video games (if you can!) and cast your mind back to good, old-fashioned face to face strategy.  It was wonderful to see so many bright young minds enjoying the challenge of chess so much and I believe we had 2 out of our 3 teams qualify for the regional stage.

Final thanks to everyone involved in the Jack Petchey workshops last week - it was another wonderful thing to see taking place.

Have a good week,

Mia


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The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day

Tuesday
No meeting - subject evening

Wednesday
Briefing 8.15am in the library.

Thursday
Year 8 Subject Evening - Check your appointments here

Friday
Normal Day

Notes
Year 12  Interim 1 Due
Year 11 Mock Exams (Ebacc)


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...  

Sarah Williams engages and motivates students by active practice for speaking mock exams.

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Noor Al-Musawi motivates students by posing challenging questions for group discussion, and prompting students to “agree or disagree” with responses.

Waris Ahmed uses written positive praise to encourage students to take pride in their workbooks.

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The Sociology team provides scaffolded questions on Google Classroom which students download on chromebooks in class and complete. This supports the development of digital literacy.

Anneka Mehta uses the desks in her classroom to help students work out and discuss algebraic proof - whilst circulating, she uses her red pen to add prompts, stretch and challenge students or scaffold their work.

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Will Hirtzel provides his Year 11 students with a PPE prediction sheet to prepare them for their PPE Maths mock which aims to increase student motivation, so he can understand what topics and support they need before the exam.

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Finola Doyle engaging her students in the Geo Challenge. A great activity that motivates her students to move around the room to collect all relevant facts in relation to the rainforest. The facts were stuck up on the wall, allowing students to move around. An excellent way to break up the lesson and continue to engage all students. A choice of extension tasks were available on the board to encourage some autonomy with their learning.


Student Voice Feedback

Since the start of this academic year, I have been meeting students during PSHCE lessons to talk to them about different aspects of school life, and to get some Student Voice feedback on a whole range of topics. And, the Lead Practitioner Team has also run a number of sessions around the Teaching and Learning experience in the classroom.

So far, students have talked about the start of the new school year, digital learning from a SEND point of view, attendance, rewards, and how work can be made more accessible in lessons. All the students involved have been brilliant and have given some interesting feedback, ranging from the impact of our new punctuality and uniform systems (or the ‘oppressive regime’ as one student described it!) to the power of a postcard that is sent home, what style of marking is most effective and how useful a Google Classroom that recommends how to prepare for a key assessment is…

We will continue to talk to our students regularly about how they are finding the school experience, and try to cover as many different angles as possible - if there is anything in particular you would like some feedback on, please let us know and we will get a session sorted!

A massive thank you to 52 form groups of 63 in Year 7 to Year 11 for completing the Student Voice Questionnaire. 

Responses were truthful and headline responses, representative of our student body, are displayed below. When our new Junior Leadership Team is established, the intention is to amplify Student Voice across our school - incorporating more activities such as this questionnaire to interact, gauge and make relevant changes we are able to. 

You can view a summary of student responses by clicking on the link here

A sneak peek preview of what you’ll be able to see when you click the link

Lou and Rav

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Inclusion Updates

SEN Updates

In order to process the exams access applications for our Year 11 students, we are required to complete evidence from staff. Please can I kindly remind you to complete the paperwork (sent as a Google form by Naz B) so we can process this as quickly as possible.

We also have a legal obligation to complete all Year 11 EHCP annual reviews before December 2023. Therefore, please can staff complete the information to support those meetings.

We are very aware of the amount of information being requested and have tried to minimise this and make this as user-friendly as possible. But all information has to be legally documented.

Mental Health Updates

Just a reminder to all staff that Ms Adhami runs mental health check-ins with students on Tuesday lunchtimes (and is happy to see students at alternative times) as well as staff.


Inclusion Heroes:  

A huge thank you to the Deputy SENCO’s Monika Siek and Christie Tremain for leading the TAs and processing a large amount of paperwork to help ensure our students can best access their exams and lessons.

A huge thank you to you all, and I hope you had a lovely long weekend.

Gurvinder  


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Attendance Tracker

To view the attendance tracker, click here

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

For the latest Instagram feed from @greenford_high_official, click here


23 Nov 2023
Pay Day Tomorrow
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