Newsletters

GHS Connect #32 Monday 9th June

Mia's notes

I hope everyone has had a good return to school. It was sad to say goodbye to Marline in briefing last week but also a lovely reminder of what she has given to the students and the school over so many years, and I know that so many other people have also given years of dedication to the community. It can feel tough at times, but we are all ultimately working towards a common goal of supporting the life chances of all of our students, whatever their strengths, challenges or backgrounds.  Thank you for being such a great team who all work on together on this.

I hope that everyone who has been celebrating Eid with their families has had a lovely time together. 

 Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day

Tuesday
No meeting - Subject Evening prep

Wednesday
Briefing in the library - 8.15am

Thursday
Year 7 Subject evening. Check your appointments on the school cloud here
Pizza, coffee & chat in the library from 3.15pm

Friday
Normal Day

Notes
Year 8 assessment week (in class)

Learning and Teaching - Pride in our Classrooms

This week’s 60-second strategy to try: Talk Tokens

Talk Tokens support equitable participation in classrooms and empower those who are less confident.

Strategy:

1. Find paper, cubes, coins, or other items that can serve as physical tokens.
2. Set up your discussion and establish the talk guidelines.
3. Provide students with tokens. You can either: 

           i) Hand these out as contributions are made, or

          ii) Provide them at the start and remove them as contributions are made.

        4. One token = one contribution.

Top tips:

• Differentiate talk tokens:

i) For quieter students, start with a ‘one token’ challenge and increase this as their confidence grows.

ii) Reduce the number of contributions allowed for students who tend to dominate conversation, encouraging them to consider the timing and quality of their input.

• Pair this strategy with Talk Tactics by assigning different coloured tokens for different types of contributions. This supports students to vary their contributions.
• Align with a rewards system by trading tokens for character points.

Learn about this strategy here.

GHS Vision Moving Forwards

Many of you will be aware that the school Mission Statement was put together almost 15 years ago. While the sentiments still certainly reflect an awful lot about the school, and what we try to achieve together, we will all acknowledge that there are many things that have changed in the school, nationally in education policy, in our community and in the way that we do things. We have also introduced lots of really exciting new initiatives such as work experience, and we also have a much more diverse body of staff.

It’s important that we have a mission statement and clearly communicated vision about who we are and who we continue to want to become, and we are therefore going to be doing some work around this, to help understand what GHS means to various different stakeholders.

As part of this, we will be running a very small focus group and will be looking for a small number of staff to join this and contribute. Staff will need to be from different stages of their careers, and we will have to select accordingly, so there is appropriate representation from staff at various career stages. If you are interested in this possibility, please email Mia at mpye@greenford.ealing.sch.uk to express initial interest.

Mia

Inclusion Updates

Safeguarding Updates

Advice for Dealing with Nudes – Think Before You Share

School-aged males and females are engaged in sharing intimate materials. This is a by product of the internet age. Educational professionals have a strong role to play in keeping children safe online and making sure they’re aware of the associated dangers. However, speaking to secondary age pupils about this issue can be a difficult affair. The personal nature and potentially embarrassing subject matter can make it hard to know what to say. This can be particularly tricky since this behaviour can be transmitted through social media programmes and personal messaging acts. This can lead to bullying, inter-personal issues and general harms. Think Before You Share has written excellent guidance on dealing with this problem. If interested, please follow the link below.

Think Before You Share

SEN Updates

Please complete the Google Form Questionnaires sent out by HUD, highlighting the areas that you would like more support and training with.  Your feedback is highly valued.

Please see below a link of students in Year 10 with exams access arrangements in place and those that have been identified as potentially in need. 

Please place a tick in the box next to the student's name if you believe them to require arrangements.  Please complete the form using the link below by Friday 13th June.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VucDLgHXP4u9EdYS-SM0XxP_BdgX30eb/edit?gid=1911766100#gid=1911766100

Missing Child Procedures

Following my VLE announcement please can we ensure the following processes are in place if a student does not arrive to your lesson.

Gurvinder

Bright Spots

This week's Bright Spot is Tracey Cleave, nominated by Peter Mather. Peter says:

A shout out from me for Tracey organising, planning and preparing Year 12 Geographers once again for their A Level coursework with a great day at West Wittering (also driving the minibus).

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