Newsletters

GHS Connect #27 Monday 28th April

Mia's notes

A great first week back everyone, and thanks yet again for such a strong team effort in relation to so many things. Our first metal detector event went really well and we had a wonderful 2 day UCAS event. Thank you so much to everyone who has been involved.

It’s full steam ahead now in preparation for exams. A reminder to please not spill the beans about when study leave will commence, as we do find that the longer we hold off telling students, the more likely they are to remain in school for lessons, especially the more anxious students who otherwise tend to retreat and become more stressed.  

Thank you to everyone who is continuing with last minute interventions. It will have real impact and is very much appreciated.

Have a lovely week everyone,

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day

Tuesday
Whole Staff Meeting/Training - 3.15pm - 4.30pm

Wednesday
CPD - See VLE for further details

Thursday
Normal Day

Friday
Normal Day

Learning and Teaching - Pride in our Classrooms

This week, a 60 second strategy to try: Micro & Macro Listeners.

This strategy further develops listening skills, both thinking about content and how it is expressed.

1. Split students into trios and allocate roles: The Speaker talks about a topic. The Micro-listener focuses on what the speaker is saying and the Macro listener explores how it is being said.
2. Display key questions on the board so probe students to think about what they are listening out for.
3. Provide an opportunity to reflect and share what they have found. Repeat the activity with a new question and roles rotated.

Learn more about this strategy here.

PSHCE Top Tips

Thank you for your continued support in delivering PSHCE to your forms. As we move into this summer term, please see some “top tips” from Neha on how to get the most out of your lesson:

Neha Palta:

• I would suggest the most basic thing is going through the slides before the morning of the lesson. 
• Know the students in your form, and in particular make sure your quiet students participate with some questions, or prepping the student beforehand to answer a questions 
• Oracy - ensure students respond with the oracy hint given on the slides- I find this really useful and enforce this with my students and “sweat the small stuff” if they are not using the sentence starters too.
• Modelling - in some activities - making sure as a class you have summarised key points on the board so students can refer back to these and use them in their booklets.

Trish

The Final Countdown - Year 11 & 13

Year 11

Thank you for colleagues for their assiduous work with Year 11s.

Easter revision and this weekend's Saturday session were focused and well attended. We have another Saturday session booked in for Saturday 10th May, and the 27th and 28th of May half-term. Please add your requests to the KS4 achievement calendar, should you wish to attend.

As we enter the final two weeks before external exams, please could I ask colleagues to continue to do the following:

• Keep revision lessons well structured: walking talking mocks/ questions, active recall and by student request, ‘ games for do now’ activities where appropriate.
• Continue to praise the effort ( Effort Counts Twice tickets.)
• Continue to build students’ confidence about how ready they are for the exams.

This week, we do have external exams starting for MFL and PE, so please be mindful that there may be some disruption. Please continue to use Google Classroom for the sharing of independent resources that may be useful to students’ revision, should this effect any students in your classes.

Once again, thank you for all your efforts with Year 11!

Phoebe

Year 13 

Year 13 (A Level) students have just two weeks remaining with us - their final day is Friday 9th May.

On this day, students will have regular lessons during P1-2 & then their final assembly in the Lecture Theatre during P3-4. If you are free, you are very welcome to pop in for this celebration event. The first A Level exam commences on Monday 12th May.

Regarding the final two weeks of lessons, as all content is covered, the focus will naturally be on: 

• honing exam strategy (and timings);
• modelling example answers;
• providing feedback on the specific areas/ topics that students are struggling with the most. 

A key part of this final period with the students is reminding the students of what they can - and must - be doing when they leave us. Please ensure that all students have access to suitable revision resources and are clear about how best to use their time. 

Finally, I am sure that you will join us in trying to make the final fortnight a very positive experience. Like every year, we, naturally, have shared anxieties about how they will perform/ how much work they will do independently, but it is crucial that we all model - and project - positivity. We will look to strike that perfect balance of encouragement and expectation.

Thank you all for the monumental team-push with this cohort. And just a reminder that all of our Y13 BTEC students will remain in school and lessons until they have been signed off by their course leaders. We ask that you please liaise closely with the year team if there are any students that we need to support over the finish line.  

Richard

Inclusion Updates

Safeguarding Updates

• Please can I ask that as part of our wider safeguarding responsibilities, we continue to report children missing from our lessons.  You can email missingchild@greenford.ealing.sch.uk and reception, patrol and attendance will be alerted to look for the student
• Please direct students to their personal emails (where I have shared internal and external organisations) that are available to offer students support.  Especially important to the Year 11 and 13 cohort that will be going on study leave.  (See below the external support)

SEN Updates

• Just a reminder that when students receive an Educational Psychologist report or any external reports from CAMHS, Clinical Psychologists etc, we will be organising short focus groups with staff to relay information and share best practice to support our students and improve their behaviour and attitude to learning.
• As we embark on our exams, please note that TAs will be supporting these in the form of invigilation, scribe and acting as readers and therefore there may be changes to the support you receive in lessons.

Gurvinder

Raspberry Pi Competition

I’m pleased to share that our team (R2-Pi2) has made it to the finals of the Raspberry Pi Competition!

This achievement reflects the outstanding effort and commitment of the students involved. They put in many hours, including a full day working together off-site, to bring their project to life. Developing both voice and face recognition features was a significant challenge, and it required a steep learning curve — particularly for Daksan, who took on the lead programming role with great focus and resilience.

The final event will take place at Google London on the 1st of May, which is a great experience for them, and we’re really proud to be part of it. 

The link below is the video we submitted to present our product.

Tom

Raspberry Pi video
 

Bright Spots

The first of this week's Bright Spots has been nominated by Amandeep Phull who says:

Please can you mention the year teams, Suzanne, Phoebe and a special mention for Alan and Kiran (repro) for all their hard work regarding RAD. 

The work Alan and Kiran do in the background is absolutely phenomenal. 

This is a huge event to prepare for, and it all went smoothly due to everyone working together. Great teamwork!

The next Bright Spot goes to Sara Djilali who has been nominated by Ellie Williams:

Sara has created this lovely shout out for one of her y8 students whose dystopia work stood out in her class. A great model for showing pride in a student's work.

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