Newsletters

GHS Connect #26 Tuesday 22nd April

Mia's notes

Welcome back and I hope everyone has had a lovely break.  We have a short half term this time, with only 5 weeks to go until the next half term break, so it will be all systems go in prepping our young people for exams, and a key time for us in terms of recruitment.

At this time of year, many people begin to think about internal opportunities that may arise in the school and we will begin to advertise these later on in the Summer. If you are interested in discussing your career more generally, then do always feel free to book a time to see me.  

Thank you, as ever, for everything that everyone is doing to support our young people and to also support one another!

Have a lovely first week everyone,

Mia

The week ahead

Tuesday
Department Time 3.15pm - 4.30pm

Wednesday
Briefing in the library 8.15am

Thursday
Normal Day

Friday
Normal Day

Notes
Year 9 Assessment Week (in class)

Learning and Teaching - Pride in our Classrooms

This term, we will be sharing top tips and strategies on oracy. This week:

3 golden rules to implement Think-Pair-Share ‘The Greenford Way’:

• Ensure every student speaks and listens – how? First talk in pairs, turn and talk, eye contact, both students need to contribute. Time sensitive.
• Ensure all students can access the knowledge to think with – how? Give students resources they can use to discuss: facts and quotes, exemplars, a diagram, a photo, the text – something that gives the tools they need to work and inform their thinking.
• Structure the question to scaffold for access and depth – how? Give three adjectives, give three reasons, give one advantage/disadvantage. Answer in a complete sentence.

Keen to think deeper? Tom Sherrington explores here.

Behaviour Follow Up

I hope you had a wonderful Easter break and are excited for summer. A few key items from me regarding our school culture and systems.

Metal detectors in schools:

As per my announcement in the all staff meeting, we will be adopting what other Ealing secondary schools are doing and working with the police to run random screenings at school. I appreciate this is a big culture shift and change. 
The intention and objective is not to find anything, but to significantly deter students from considering the possibility of bringing a banned item into school. I have written to parents three times about this, and all students have been informed about this during assemblies/other year group gatherings.
Dates of the screening are determined by a range of factors, but mainly around police availability. We have completed a run through of the process with the police already, and for obvious reasons we will not be sharing the date of the screening. If you have any specific questions, feel free to reach out to me.

Behaviour Working Party (BWP) and follow up from meeting:

Thank you for all your contributions in the staff meeting. It is great to see all the excellent strategies that staff are using to manage low level disruption in lessons, but also the range of consequences that are used for more sustainable behaviour management.
I will be working with the BWP to amalgamate all your notes to develop a much clearer distinction between classroom chances, choices and consequences. Our first project will be looking at re-levelling our new behaviour types and then after May we will be looking to review some of our behaviour thresholds. I will keep you updated about developments through Connect, briefings and meetings.

Ajay

Inclusion Updates

Safeguarding Updates

Understanding the Intimate Behaviour of Teens - Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Every child will develop in their own way. During their teenage years, most children will go through puberty, start to have sexual feelings, form different types of relationships and look for sexual experiences. As a parent or a teacher charged with their education, it can feel uncomfortable to think about this and to know how to help for them. Teens get information and ideas about sex and relationships from the media, social media and friends. Needless to say, this is not particularly conducive to a good knowledge transfer. Indeed, learning in this manner can expose them to unnecessary risks. The Lucy Faithfull Foundation has published an article on these issues over on their website. If you’re interested, please follow the link below.

Supporting teenage children

SEN Updates

Exams Access Reminders

• Please do not make exams access referrals for Year 11 and Year 13 students
• The SEN department will be testing all Year 10 pupils, so no referrals necessary
• Please complete the desktop exam as referrals for any year 12 students.

Assembly Follow Up

I have shared with all students key safeguarding information and have also emailed both students and parents information around the safeguarding team, support services available both in and outside of school. 

Please ensure students are aware of the CP team in form time, and you remind them of the letter in their inbox.

Hope you all had a restful holiday.

Gurvinder

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