Newsletters

GHS Connect #34 Monday 22nd June

Mia's notes

It’s going to be a hot one this week and we will be looking at ways we can manage this. This is likely to include bringing in our adapted school day which we have used in the past. Please remember that we are also relaxing the uniform policy, so students do not have to wear ties and blazers.

We also have our welcome evening for Year 6 parents on Wednesday so thank you in advance for everyone who is helping with that.

When it’s hot, everyone can react differently - please remember to remain calm and de-escalate if students are a bit grumpy and frazzled.

Have a great week,

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day

Tuesday
Department Time 3.15pm - 4.30pm
HOY training 3.15pm - 4pm

Wednesday
Briefing in the library – 8.15am
CPD - 3.15pm - 4.15pm

Thursday
Normal Day

Friday
Normal Day

Notes
Yr 12 Mocks Week 2 (study leave)
Yr 10 Mock (core)

Learning and Teaching Tips and Strategies

This term, we will be sharing top tips and strategies on ‘challenge’.

What makes classroom discussion truly challenging?

Week 4: Challenge Through Discussion

High quality classroom talk creates opportunities for students to strengthen their understanding through reasoning. Discussion moves away from simply sharing answers and becomes challenging when students are asked to build on and refine their thinking.

Top tips:

• Expect every student to contribute their thinking by offering paired rehearsal before whole-class discussion.
• Model what high-quality reasoning sounds and offer scaffolds to structure it.
• Intentionally use disagreement to deepen understanding and surface misconceptions.
• Design discussion around a tension rather than a question, so that students must evaluate ideas or weigh up alternatives.
• Try to return to students’ ideas throughout the lesson so that the discussion becomes cumulative.
• The reasoning behind correct answers as rigorously as incorrect ones.

New this term: The second series of the Learning and Teaching podcast. Listen to the third episode here: Practice: Helping Students Revise Successfully -1/2

Inclusion Messages

This week I am sharing some reading around online safety and SEN pupils with trauma.

Safeguarding

Online safety guidance tends to group all under-18s together, which means it's often too broad to be genuinely useful, especially with teenagers.

Younger children may accept boundaries set by adults without much pushback. Adolescents are different. As they develop their own sense of agency, well-intentioned advice from parents and teachers can quickly become background noise. Getting teenagers to follow online safety guidance is one challenge; getting them to internalise it is quite another.

Bitdefender has published some practical thinking on how to approach this with teenagers specifically. Find out more by following the link below:

How to keep teens safe online

SEN & Inclusion

Trauma and Autism - Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health

Children with an autism diagnosis may process trauma very differently from their peers and that difference can be hard to read. Depending on where a child sits on the spectrum, distress might be intensified, minimised, or expressed in ways that don't match what staff or classmates expect.

That leaves professionals with genuinely difficult questions: how do we make sense of a trauma response that looks different, and how do we support that child alongside others who are reacting in more familiar ways?

Dr Francisco Musich, Clinical Psychologist at the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, has written a piece that addresses this directly:

Trauma and Autism

Hope you all had a lovely weekend.

Gurvinder

Bright Spots

The first set of this week's Bright Spots nominations come from Peter Mather, who says:

A pleasure to give shout-outs to the first wave of successful end of year assessments for the following staff:

Nicola Moore, Science – Completing your first year of teaching is an incredible achievement and I hope that you are feeling rightly proud to get to this point in your journey being recommended for QTS after an excellent presentation detailing your first year here on the Teach First Programme!

Lane Dias, Geography - Well done, great to see that you have had a successful ECT year and have made great progress as detailed in your end of year report.
Vikita Gurbani, Business Studies – Two milestones to celebrate, a successful ECT year and completion of your Teach First 2-year programme.  Good luck with ECT Year 2!

Frances Ryan, English – Great to read your excellent ECT End of Year 2 report, you have had an impressive start to your teaching career and much to be proud of.

Morwenna Oldfield, Science – An excellent ECT End of Year 2 report, starting on the Teach First programme, a great three years in all at GHS!

Leah Gemmel, PE – Good to read successes recorded in your ECT end of Year 1 report, good luck with ECT Year 2!

Well done all, and thank you mentors for your excellent support, as always, Jo, Tom, Hebe, Georgina, Laura, Harpal, Naomi, Jacob and Christabel.

Next Adam Bush has nominated various members of staff, saying:

Now that the public exam season has concluded, it’s time to celebrate everyone who contributed to making it so successful.

In a school our size, it’s a massive undertaking, yet it has been managed so well because of the professionalism and team-work of all those involved.

So many people to thank, including: HoDs and their teams, Fay and the SEN dept., Mitie, Richard and Hebe and the P16 team, Ben and Phoebe and the Y11 team, Y11 FTs, Ewelina and the invigilators, the SLT…

But, of course, none of it would be possible without the outstanding work of our exam queens – Hardeep and Barbara – who are nothing short of phenomenal! How do they do it?!

And to anyone else who helped in any way, thank-you!

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