Newsletters

GHS Connect #17 Monday 25 January

From the Head

Welcome back to another week, even if that means we are welcoming you from home. I hope everyone is okay and continuing to manage.

We have settled into a nice routine in our lockdown mini school where the students are kept very busy with your excellent lessons. We have a range of students in, from Year 7 through to Year 13. All are working hard, but it is made so much easier as a result of your fantastic planning. There appears to have been a step up in numbers of live lessons last week, which is great. Colleagues have been experimenting with a range of things from quick check ins, full lesson teaching, to trying out new things such as running a google doc at the same time as talking live to classes, so that collaborative classwork can be stored in one place. Thank you for your energy and commitment; if you hear about or spot anything to share and celebrate, don’t forget to let Kelly know!

A few congratulations this week. Well done to Hebe Westcott who has been appointed as KS5 Careers and Destinations Leader. This role will be supporting and developing the work that is undertaken at Post 16 in helping students get into great universities, but will also look to broaden our advice around other suitable destinations such as apprenticeships. Hebe will be working alongside Trish, who already heads up our Careers provision. 

Congratulations also to Ellie Navarro who will continue with the KS3 Science Lead, now permanently. This has come about as a result of Clare Secombe being appointed to Lead Practitioner permanently, and I now can’t remember if I have said well done to Clare already... If not, a very big congratulations to Clare too!!
Reena has now gone off on maternity leave - all the best to her. Trish is stepping up to be the Acting Head of RE in her absence. Thank you and well done to Trish who was appointed before Christmas. We will interview for the KS3 RE post to temporarily replace Trish, today.

It is around this time of year that we begin to think about staffing for next year so if you are considering a move away from GHS, it would be really helpful if you could let myself or Paul know about that (even if not yet definite). It really helps us to plan for our recruitment needs if we have some advance warning, rather than being told in May, close to the resignation date cut-off.

I can’t believe it is almost the end of January - still no news about when we might return. We will just have to sit it out like last time and await Gavin’s promised 2 weeks' notice!

Have a lovely week,

Mia

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

Thank you to everyone for the energy and enthusiasm with which you have approached this next round of online learning.  The response has been so positive that it’s impossible to pick out everyone, but here are a few we’ve heard about on the grapevine...
 
> Ayan Ali using Google Docs (with a copy made for each student) during live lessons and monitoring how students are responding to the task as they write. 

> Kathryn Thomas plotting out her live and recorded sessions and publishing a schedule to her classes on a Sunday night so they know what to expect and plan for in the coming week. 

> Phil Crampton securing a free 5 year subscription to Hegarty Maths worth £1500 a year!

> Elizabeth Ayres finding engaging websites to embed into the pre-recorded lesson to bring the remote teaching as close as possible to the classroom experience. 
 
> David Clare and Ina Baritsch organising live speaking sessions in small groups for the year 10 German students to ensure they are still getting as much practice as they would in a classroom.
 
> Lucy Metcalfe shooting hoops with the mini-school students.
 
> Stephen Conlon teaching Jo and Kelly how to use ‘Spiral.’ (a sort of Jamboard-type app, but better!) 

> Carl Harvey posing a question such as ‘What’s your favourite musical?’ and asking the students to respond to it as they answer the register. 

Learning and Teaching: Live Lesson Looks

In school it’s easy enough to get a sense of what colleagues are teaching by wandering past rooms and hearing the chatter of learning spill out into the corridor. But teaching remotely can be a much more isolated experience. This week, three colleagues have made mini videos talking about how they have used live lessons in their subject areas. These videos may offer you a few tips or just provide reassurance that you’re also teaching in a similar way to others. Please take 5 minutes for a cuppa and a little digital learning walk!

In  this three-minute YouTube video, Georgina Stevens explains how she sets up each live lesson, reduces the content covered, cold calls students for answers and uses Google Docs to keep them all focused.

Clare Secombe walks us through her GCSE Science lesson in this four-minute YouTube video and discusses how she uses Do Now tasks and IPEVO modelling.

In  this three-minute YouTube video, Jo Cole talks about how she flips the learning in some live Sociology A level lessons so students apply the content they’ve already started learning independently. 

Shout Out Boards

The first board will be published in GHS Connect next week. Don’t forget to celebrate a colleague by writing a post-it note, taking a photo and adding it to the folder: Staff shout outs 

A plea from me: Please, try to trim the photo so only the post-it can be seen (it saves me so much time) and do not send them over email. 

Top tips:
> Handwritten post-its look best (but a digital one is fine if not) 
> Use a felt tip / bold pen
> Take the photo from above
> Try to avoid shadows

Clare Secombe 

Behaviour for Learning

Each week in Connect, Mark and Jo will be sharing behaviour for learning tips designed to help manage behaviour in the unusual circumstances of Covid-19.

Behaviour for Learning tip #7: Motivation and Engagement

Understandably, a number of our students are struggling with motivation during this lockdown. Although we can’t recreate quite the same sort of interactions online compared to in the classroom, there are some basic principles that will help.

Online teaching can be nerve-wracking for a lot of teachers! Remember to express joy and excitement as you interact with your class. Telling jokes, pointing out beautiful moments, silly things, or even just smiling when you greet your class in the morning. The more fun you’re having, the more engaged your students will be.

Enthusiasm will continue to promote positive relationships throughout the school year, even if our day-to-day isn’t consistent. Now more than ever, it’s so important to be that model for students of how we can positively cope through challenging times. Here are some ways that you can do that:

1. Praise students who display the behaviour you want. By praising them and saying specifically what it’s for then it not only boosts those students’ self-esteem but reinforces positive behaviour with your attention. For example, if you congratulate two of your students for responding to questions in full sentences then it will encourage others to do so as well. This is a great way to direct your attention and build relationships.

2. Slowly build up the commands you want students to follow. Start by praising small directions that are followed and then build up the challenge. For example, you may have a student who doesn’t submit work. Firstly, you provide one or two direct commands where compliance is likely and then build up the commands.
“Put your hand up if you are here today when I call the register.”
“In the chat, write an answer to one question.” Then you can move on…
“Complete question 1 on the Google Doc we are working on.”

3. Give lots of opportunities for students to respond. Keep a quick pace and plan for lots of verbal and nonverbal engagement as this will increase student attention and consequently, more on-task behaviour and overall engagement.

This could look like:
- Using the raised hand function in Google Meet
- Students use the chat to give a thumbs up or down
- Get students to write their answers on a mini-virtual-whiteboard       
- Break down more complex questions and allow multiple students to answer different parts (you could use the break-out rooms to do this

All of these strategies will give you lots of opportunities for students to respond and succeed, whilst giving you a lot of opportunities to reinforce positive behaviour!

Mark and Jo

Inclusion & Pastoral

Not much to report this week as we hit the halfway mark of this half term - again, I hope that everyone is keeping their heads above water and has now found some form of rhythm to the week…

Live tutor sessions

A huge thank you to everyone for running the live tutor sessions in the morning this week - I hope that everyone found this opportunity to connect to their tutor groups was a positive one. If you have any concerns following these sessions, please let the Year Teams or the Child Protection Team know. And, don’t forget to post your Year Group assemblies this week on the day allocated for this - your respective Heads of Year will send you the youtube link, if they haven’t already done so.

I have had a bit of feedback on how it all went, and a number of queries about what to do with those who did not turn up. There is an Attendance To Form column on the Online Learning Trackers so if this becomes a pattern about which you are worried, fill it in there. It is also worth having a look at the pastoral notes on the Summary sheets of this document to see what feedback there is from those students who are not engaging and whether engagement is improving…

Laptops

Connected to this document, I am also getting out laptops to as many students as I can, so please keep that information coming. We have now distributed devices to all Year 10s and 11s that we know about who are struggling with access in the home, and to all Year 9 and Year 8 Pupil Premium students. Year 7 PP students will get theirs this week, and then I will go back to Year 9 to see who else is struggling. As you can imagine, this is a bit like playing Whack-A-Mole, so just bear with us as we get them out as quickly as we can with all the info coming through.

Remember to look after yourselves during all of this, as well as looking out for the students - there are a number of tips and websites on the VLE under the Wellbeing section, and remember that our school counsellors are also there for staff. If you feel that you benefit from talking to Jo, who runs the staff sessions, feel free to email her directly on jmorgan111.307@lgflmail.org.

Enjoy the week and wrap up warm - it’s snowing as I type!

Lou Grimley

Character strengths at GHS

Before the Christmas holidays, we shared an article from Impact (a termly journal of the Chartered College) and now that we are navigating another lockdown, its latest edition (Nov ‘20) focusing on character seems relevant to share again. Impact connects research findings to classroom practice, with a focus on the interests and voices of teachers and educators. 

In the introduction article, Alison Peacock (CEO of Chartered College) wrote about how, in the first lockdown, remote learning suddenly and dramatically muted the voices of our students. However, success was found in institutions that continued to engage young people in a culture where their views and ideas were celebrated. 
Now, not only can we provide this space in lessons, but with the re-introduction of form time. 

This week, perhaps there is an opportunity to discuss courage, community and responsibility with your forms. 

> Have they shown courage and turned on their cameras in live lessons?
> Have they contributed to their class community, sharing their ideas?
> Have they taken the responsibility to show up to lessons and hand work in on time?

Finally, in the same article, two poems were published from students who reflected on their experiences after the first lockdown. We have included them here as well as the article link if you are interested in reading more or sharing with your forms to prompt a discussion.  

Poems: Young voices from lockdown
 
THESE MONTHS BY AMAANI KHAN (16)

Will we talk about
the claps
or the muffled cries
or the way the sky
felt heavier?
 
Will we tell them
how hard it was
to fold the pages
of these months
and not see blood
on our hands??
 
When they ask us
about these months,
how will we find
the right pictures
to show them
how the world suddenly felt
 
so transparent?
 
 

CROSSING BY LINNET DRURY (17)

I didn’t know I’d miss waiting
at traffic lights, waiting for a burst
of colour, a static of sound.
I didn’t know I’d miss noise,
crowds, the breath of rain
as it hits parched tarmac, being
near enough to hear people’s
breath. I didn’t realise I was only
exactly alone when I was
walking home from school, or
to the shops. I didn’t
realise it was the in-
between times
that held
me together.
 
Read more at:  https://impact.chartered.college/article/celebrating-supporting-voices-actions-children-young-people/

Noble and Andrea