Newsletters

GHS Connect #17 Monday 27th January

Mia's notes

Welcome back to another week.

Thank you very much to the Year 11 team, and of course, all teachers and other staff for your attendance at Parents’ Evening and all of the work that went into organising and ensuring it went well. Attendance was very good and the Year 11s seemed upbeat about next steps.

Interim data is positive but lower than in previous years, but we still have around 4 months to go, to support students in achieving their very best. We recognise that it is crucial that students are developing their independent learning skills to manage their workload in the lead up to exams. Please can everyone focus on the following to support with this:

• Setting clear, regular homework via SMHW that sets out exactly how and what to revise, and provides supportive revision resources. Many of our students will not be able to process what “revise” in itself means, without support and clear direction.
• Regular retrieval practice in lessons to cement key ideas and key words.

Thank you for everything you are doing to support students to achieve great results.

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day

Tuesday
Department Time - 3.15pm - 4.30pm

Wednesday
Briefing in the library - 8.15am
Whole Staff CPD
Pastoral/Behaviour/L&T 3.15pm - 4.15pm

Thursday
Normal Day

Friday
Normal Day

Notes
Year 10 Interim 2 due

Learning and Teaching - Pride in our Routines

“Strategies grounded in disciplinary literacy [are built] on the premise that each subject has its own unique language, ways of knowing, doing and communicating.” – EEF

This week, Avnish Chana shares her top tips for using oracy sentence stems:

• Create a success criteria for talk.
• Ensure sentence stems are always visible during the activity.
• Keep sentence stems simple. This encourages participation and prevents cognitive overload.
• Have tier 3 terms available alongside sentence stems.
• Provide additional scaffolds for SEND students.
• Incentivise high-quality talk through Character Points for the best answers.
• Make any praise visible, e.g. Effort Counts Twice tickets, Character Point tickets.

How does disciplinary talk vary across subjects, and where does it fit with wider literacy approaches? Alex Quigley shares his thoughts here.

Achievement Tips

Year 11

Here are weekly revision tips that we share with students. Students are encouraged to use different strategies and find out which strategies work best for them and for the different subjects.

We send out weekly newsletters to parents. These contain all the Year 11 specific achievement notices that families should use to support their child.

Year 11 Spring Term Ed 1 includes detailed revision strategies

Year 11 Spring Term Ed 2 includes top tips in the run-up to exams.

Edition 3, coming next week, will have some strategies following on from Parents’ evening. 

Phoebe

Post 16

January is when it begins to get very real for our P16 students.

This is a key assessment point. Whether it is the BTEC public exams, Y13 A Level mocks or Y12 assessment week taking place, the focus for all is active, purposeful revision.

All Year 12 and Year 13 students receive guidance on this in: form time, PSHCE & in their Futures lessons. 

So that you are on board with the same messaging, we have been guiding students on 5 note-taking methods to support the creation of their notes (and consolidation of their knowledge):   

Note-taking at KS5:

• The Cornell Method  
• The Outline Method
• The Boxing Method
• The Charting Method
• The Mapping Method

We have modelled these different approaches and the students should be well versed in them.

Please find the Futures lecture on note-taking: here  

We have been doing a lot of work on guiding students to be active when revising. Although there is a place for YouTube videos, TikTok videos and Podcasts, when students are merely just watching/ listening - and not active in their revision - they will make limited progress.

We encourage them to use these online resources as a springboard for more active revision approaches. Please see the Futures lecture here where we share these approaches. In addition, the Futures lecture here focuses on flashcards - one of the methods we encourage our students to use.

I trust/ hope this marries with a lot of the messaging within your subject areas.

Richard

World Book Day 2025

Just a reminder that we’ll be celebrating World Book Day at GHS on Wednesday March 5th (not Thursday as in previous years). Staff at Greenford have been dressing up as book titles or book characters every year in March for many years now, to celebrate the joys and benefits of reading for pleasure. See below for inspiration from last year. 

There will be prizes for staff in the most imaginative costumes and also a prize for the most ‘bookish’ department!  

World Book Day is in 5 weeks time!  

Sarah (WMS) 

SEN Department Updates

Child Protection

Please can I remind all staff to ensure the following online safety:

• Ensuring that computers are not left unattended or unlocked, if not in the room.
• Ensuring that students are not able to use teachers' computers and access confidential materials such as emails etc.
• Ensuring that the white board is frozen or unopened when looking at student/personal information in class

Please click on the link below for further support and guidance on online safety.

https://www.childprotectioncompany.com/general/online-safety-training-tips-for-teachers/

Let’s Be Clear- A very interesting article to support our learners with Autism.

https://senmagazine.co.uk/content/specific-needs/autism-asd/22318/lets-be-clear/

Exams Access Arrangements - Please can I remind all staff that the deadline for exams access arrangements for Year 11 and 13 has now passed.  We are unable to take students forward at this stage. 

Thank you for your support and ongoing work with our vulnerable cohorts.

Gurvinder

Bright Spots

This week's Bright Spots have been nominated by Fraser Kitson who says:

Can I please nominate the Year 8 team for their amazing positivity and dedication to rewards. Muireann for running an attendance rewards afternoon, Umair for organising his first trip for excellent Year 8 students and Tia for regularly issuing postcards to students she identifies when completing ‘rewards learning walks’. Great work team!

If there are any concerns about Equality and Diversity (staff)  at GHS please contact A Johal (DHT)