Newsletters

GHS Connect #16 Monday 19th January

Mia's notes

Week 3 of the term already. Thank you to everyone for everything you have been doing to make it such a positive start back. 

Thank you especially to everyone who was involved in Year 11 Parents’ Evening – this is such an important evening, and it really was a wet, dreary evening, but we still seemed to have lots of parents who turned out for the event. Much of this was down to the exceptional work of the Year 11 team calling parents to arrange appointments.

Thanks also, of course, to the Post 16 team and the entire exams team for all of the work during the Year 13 mocks – another crucial event, of course, and also to Trish and the Year 8 team for the Healthy Eating workshop.

I hope you all 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
After School Meetings – 3.15pm - 4.15pm
HOD Meeting
HOY/DHOY Meetings
Teacher Mark, Plan & Collab
SEND Focus Group
ECT CPD

Thursday
Normal Day

Friday
Normal Day

Notes
Year 10 Interim 2
Year 13 Mock Week 1 (Study Leave)

Learning and Teaching Tips and Strategies

This term, we will be sharing top tips and strategies to support students to take pride in their workbooks.

Week 2: Routines Manage Cognitive Load

Consistent routines in books help students focus on learning rather than what to do, freeing up their working memory and making their books easier to navigate for revision.

Top tips to support routines:

• Start lessons with a fixed retrieval routine in books.
• Use a predictable routine for independent work (e.g. attempt → check → amend).
• Train students to self-correct using models, rather than rewriting whole answers.
• Use a consistent routine for recording key vocabulary (e.g. written in context and then reused in a sentence).
• Emphasise key information with a consistent shorthand (e.g. highlighting key terms, arrows for processes, boxes around definitions).

Excellent Books - Shout Out

Lane Dias has created a book etiquette sheet for the Geography department.

On behalf of all of our students, I thank you for the blood, sweat, and tears that will be poured into this work. When such time and effort is invested in the marking, it is crucial that equal effort is shown by the students that you teach. 

Can you please, therefore, continue to devote lesson time to:

1. Students actively responding to feedback

Feedback will take many forms over the next few months, including written, whole-class, verbal, and live marking, to name but a few. Year 13 students should be guided to actively engage with this feedback. There is nothing worse than spending a couple of hours marking a set of papers/ exam questions only for the students to glance at the grade and not engage with the written comments and instructions for improvement. Please carve out time in your lessons for students to respond to your work.

2. Modelling active revision and signpost resources that will support students

Our departments are wonderfully well-resourced. Google Classrooms, revision booklets, guided websites, UpLearn, and e-documents all serve to support students in their independent study. Please take some time in class to actively point students in the direction of everything that you offer and model their use so that they are fully aware of what they need to be doing outside of lessons. 

3. Continually reminding students about the importance of attending all lessons and being punctual

This is the ‘broken record’ approach we have adopted since the beginning of Year 12. As we approach the end of the course, students historically begin to ‘run out of gas.’ We know how imperative it is to have them in lessons over the next few months. Please continue to drive this messaging. Many departments share revision timetables with students; this tangible resource often helps students recognise the value of these final sessions. You are their greatest resource, and they must make use of every minute that remains.

Naturally, if any students show a dip over the next few months, please flag this to the Year Team, who will be on hand to support.

Richard

Inclusion Messages

Safeguarding Updates 

To continue to embed our culture of CPD training offering around safeguarding, we have asked all departments to complete the following quizzes.  HOD’s will shortly be disseminating this information to you all.  But I have attached the themes for each week and the department quiz that we would like completed

Date	Safeguarding Topic	Link
HOD’s Meeting- TLR holder to lead Wednesday 21st January 2026	Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025 Quiz	General KCSIE Quiz (A)
Department Meeting Tuesday 3rd February 2026	Prevent Duty for schools 2025	Prevent Quiz for School Staff 2025
Feb Half Term
HOD’s Meeting- TLR holder to lead Wednesday 4th March 2026	Sexual Violence & Harassment 2025	Child-on-child Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment Quiz
Department Meeting Tuesday 24th March 2026	Online Safeguarding 2025	Online Safeguarding Quiz, KCSIE
Easter Holidays
HOD’s Meeting- TLR holder to lead Wednesday 29th April 2026	Concerns about colleagues	Concerns about Colleagues Quiz
Department Meeting Tuesday 5th May  2026	Types & Indicators of Harm 2025	Types and Indicators of Abuse Quiz

SEN Updates

I wanted to thank the hard work of SEN for running a very successful Coffee Morning on Thursday 15th January.  We had a great turn out from our current SEN parents and those parents that wanted to find out more, but their child is currently not on the SEN register.  A special thank you to all in SEN, Parental Ambassadors, Connexions and Mental Health Support. See pictures below.

Gurvinder

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