Newsletters

GHS Connect #19 Monday 19th February

Mia's notes

Welcome back and I hope everyone is feeling refreshed and restored.  

Just before half term, I asked everyone to be particularly mindful of the needs of our SEN and PP students at this time.  A reminder that simple things like taking the time to support students in organising books and folders and providing knowledge organisers and/or links to digital resources, can be really powerful. Those students who will be using laptops in exams will also need to be practising their use of them - please ensure you are aware of who should have a laptop in your lessons.

Thank you for some of the events we had just before the holidays - a fabulous careers fair, wonderful reward trips, another chess competition and a table tennis tournament, just to name a few. A reminder that if you are running an event either inside or outside of school, to ensure that it is put on the website calendar (email Manpreet Jass or ‘Helpdesk’), photos are sent to Elaine at egrundy@greenford.ealing.sch.uk and a VLE announcement is put up. That way, we can be sure that everyone hears about all of the amazing things we are doing as a school.

Have a great week.

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day

Tuesday
Department Time - 3.15pm - 4.30pm

Wednesday
Briefing in the library - 8.15am

Thursday
Normal Day

Friday
Normal Day

Notes
Yr 11 Mock Exams start (from Wed)
Yr 9 Interim 2
Yr 12 Interim 2

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...  

Monika Siek and Baljit Jassal have been working incredibly hard with a keen Year 7 cohort to deliver Phonics using the Fresh Start programme. Monika and Baljit deliver this programme each fortnight to help children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language. 
It's a great opportunity to understand how Phonics is taught to all students before they arrive to us in Year 7 and what we are doing to ensure key cohorts are making progress with their reading. 

Ben Dupres supports students to develop effective revision strategies at KS3 by modelling effective note-taking and low stakes retrieval.

Equality and Diversity

The LA has asked all schools to focus on the pastoral and academic needs of students from Black Caribbean, White and Black Caribbean and Somali backgrounds. At GHS, equality and diversity have been at the heart of everything we have been doing for a number of years. We are doing a great number of different things to ensure that all of our students regardless of their background, socioeconomic class and gender have the opportunities to feel a sense of belonging, to make academic progress and develop their character. These are just some of things that we are doing to make sure that our students have a fair and equal experience at GHS:

• In Year 7, we ensure that the information we collect about our students is thorough and robust and where there is potential disadvantage, we put a package into place to support students such as mentoring, an altered curriculum and pastoral support.
• At the very top end of the school, Y13, we send over 225 students to university every year, these students are from a variety of backgrounds.
• Our setting system monitors and tracks students from our most vulnerable cohorts to ensure that they have every opportunity to succeed.
• We monitor and track the progress of our students' very closely to ensure that they are making or exceeding the expected levels of progress and that they are supported where there is a risk of underachievement.
• We prioritise some of our key cohorts for the Y11 achievement intervention programme.
  -   Black Caribbean and Somali students are included in all interventions unless the data suggests otherwise.
  -   Students from Black Caribbean and Somali backgrounds are chosen for the Boys and Girls Achievement forms, where appropriate to ensure that they receive the pastoral care and support they need.
  -   Students from the key cohorts are selected for Studio 11, so that they can benefit from the EMS interventions as well as giving them a space to study.
  -   The students from the key cohorts are given free revision materials. 
• As part of our school assembly programme, we incorporate a range of assemblies to engage and motivate students from a variety of backgrounds. We also ensure that we use positive role models, wherever possible.
• We are fortunate to have a staff body that is diverse, welcoming and understanding of our students' needs and backgrounds.
• We have had a number of parental engagement events including:
  -   Parents evenings
  -   Workshops
  -   Expectations Evenings
  We contact the families of students from the key cohorts directly to inform them about the events but also to encourage them to attend.
• We have had a number of Somali Parents Coffee Workshops this year (thank you to Fuad for his amazing work), covering areas such as expectations, support for students and families and details about the Y11 Achievement programme.

Thank you for everything that everyone does to support all of our learners at GHS. If there is anything you think we can do to improve in relation to equality and diversity, then please drop me a line.

Amandip 

Inclusion Updates 

CP

Please note that after half term we will be making some changes to the CPOMS categories.  The CP team will be coming around to departments to share this information with all staff.  The aim is to ensure tighter reporting of incidents and have a better ability to analyse this information and offer proactive workshops and training for staff and students.

What is Doxing?

What do young people want to be? Well, as I'm sure you're aware, many of your pupils are now aiming to become YouTubers, DJs and TikTok stars. For many these dreams will fade, as they mature into older students and want to break out from beyond the screen into the real world. But all their online activity, from posting video clips to dropping a soundtrack on a Spotify account will remain forever. This opens a vulnerability window that will never close, as the internet is plagued with individuals who will seek to do harm to the media poster in question. 

Whether for financial gain or just because they feel like it, online spectators can easily find out key details about an individual's life. Their place of work, their home address and their identity. But what happens, when these malicious spectators decide to publish this information publicly rather than harvesting it for themselves? Over at the South West Grid for Learning, they've written an article answering that question. If interested, please click this link

Inclusion Heroes

A huge thank you to the TAs who have been supporting the whole school drive to ensure students are given access to devices in the morning and that they are returned and charged ready for the next day.  
The team has also continued to run a bagel club for SEN students every break time.  Speech and Language clubs in the morning with specific groups of students.   This has been hugely beneficial and I would like to thank them for their commitment to our students.

Thank you to you all and here’s hoping you all have a lovely half term break.

Gurvinder

Bright Spots

Adam Bush has nominated Hardeep Brar as this week's Bright Spot. He says:

Her commitment to ensuring that all summer exam entries are completed in good time meant she came into school over the half term holiday. A dedicated professional!