Newsletters

GHS Connect #22 Monday 9th March

Mia's notes

Thank you very much again to Sarah Williams for the World Book Day extravaganza, and thank you also to everyone who made the effort to dress up.  I’m particularly impressed that Richard managed to cycle in and then somehow transform into a character, apparently seamlessly.

Well done to our ECTs who are well on their way now to completing their training and thank you to those who supported with cover to enable a mass training event for them last week. 

Let’s keep the focus up now with Year 11 and Year 13, and as I’ve now said a few times, it’s about having a clear plan for them all.  What do they need to revise exactly? How will they do it?  How will you help them to access the materials?

Have a lovely week, everyone,

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day

Tuesday
No meeting due to Thursday Subject Evening

Wednesday
Briefing in the library – 8.15am

Thursday
Year 12 Subject Evening - Check your appointments here

Friday
Normal Day

Notes
Year 11 Interim 3 Due

Learning and Teaching Tips and Strategies

This term, we will be sharing top tips and strategies for oracy. 

Week 3: Think, Pair, Share – Hunting for Responses

Think-Pair-Share is only as strong as the “share”. “Hunting for responses” means deliberately and strategically selecting pupils to share answers, so that we can check understanding and create a richer classroom dialogue.

Top Tips:

• Choose pupils based on the purpose: to model high quality answers to address misconceptions, to deepen thinking.
• ‘Hunt’ for contrasting answers, e.g. “Who had a different interpretation?” or “Who disagreed with their partner?”
• Ask pupils to share their partner’s idea first to build a listening culture.
• Use ‘no opt-out’ routines supportively to promote active participation.
• Probe thinking by asking follow-up questions, e.g. “Why?”, “Can you add in the key term X?”
• Prompt accountability from pairs early, e.g. “I will be asking you to share as you have an excellent answer."

  

When we respond intentionally, we make classroom discussions a powerful method of assessment and learning.

See here for Tom Sherrington’s three golden rules for getting pair talk right.

Student Voice – How are we developing the impact of student voice this term?

At Greenford High school, we aim to use 'Student Voice ‘ as a consultation strategy, regarding pupils as ‘expert witnesses’ on teaching and learning (Rudduck and McIntyre, 2007).

What have we done this term to continue consulting with our students on key aspects of our school community?

• Continued our emphasis on discussing key aspects of school life such as behaviour, teaching and learning, homework and enrichment with students in years 7 and 10. Our students meet in groups of 10 and represent a cross-section and microcosm of our school community so that a range of voices are being heard and valued
• Discussed our PSCHE provision with students in key year groups – 7 and 8 – so that we can evaluate the impact of our curriculum and the topics we are exploring
• Delivered year group assemblies to remind our students about the ‘power of their voices’ and to remind them that we are a ‘listening school’.
• Invited the lower school to respond to a carefully designed online survey so that we could capture their perspectives and begin planning for the year ahead. This survey is not a replacement for valued conversations but provides an opportunity to gauge perspective from a wider range of pupils.

Key headlines from the online survey

• Instead of asking students for ‘yes, no, maybe’ responses, the focus was on establishing their reasons for why they feel the way they do. For example:

Finally, some captured comments and fearless feedback from our students:

If you have any questions, suggestions or feedback or if there is something you’d like discussed with our students, please contact: jwilliams@greenford.ealing.sch.uk

Inclusion Messages

Safeguarding

To continue our education and work with our students around contextual safeguarding, we are running the ‘Lion Project’ in school focusing on Year 8/9 students.  This is organised by the police and focusses on key issues around communication, negotiation and discussions around gang affiliation.  The project will go on for 8 weeks and runs every Thursday period 1 & 2 in AF16. Please see an image from the first session.  A huge thank you to the Pastoral Support Workers for overseeing this.

 

‘Red Vs Blue’

We have continued to monitor the information around the ‘Blue vs Red.’  Thankfully, we have not heard of any schools that have had any involvement around this. Hopefully everything will resume back to normal this week, but we will communicate with you with any further updates as we receive them from the police and local authorities. 

Thanks for all your support.

Gurvinder

Bright Spot

This week's Bright Spot is Sarah Williams, who not only organised staff dressing up as book characters for World Book Day, but also brought in Catherine Johnson, author of the Year 10 Greenford Read Book Sawbones to talk to our students. Thank you Sarah!

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