Newsletters

GHS Connect #29 Monday 10 May

From the Head

Thank you for all of your lovely ideas for Douval - we will look at all of these and I will involve the JLT and other students as we draw up plans for the Summer, as well as consider more permanent ways of remembering Douval. I know it was a very difficult week for many - thank you for looking out for each other.

I know that everyone is working incredibly hard on marking and preparation for TAGs. This article in The Guardian outlines what I know many people here at GHS will be feeling and experiencing, but it’s important to remember that we are a school that knows how to assess our students and knows their strengths and capabilities. I know it is easier said than done, but please do try to keep all of this additional work in perspective and don’t spend ridiculous amounts of time on marking.

As restrictions begin to ease, we are starting to think about a future where we might not have to continue with all of the limitations we have in place. Please remember though, that Government guidance has not changed as yet, so we are still very limited with what we can do. That means that at the moment, we continue to have to manage bubbles and we are still not able to amend very much. This is, of course, affecting student behaviour and creating additional stress and exhaustion for staff, but please hang in there, as we hope very soon to be able to begin to do things differently. 

Not being able to meet as a staff is also really taking its toll and I am looking at ways to re-instate this as soon as possible. We will have a staff meeting on 8th June - more details on this will follow and we also have Unconscious Bias training from Prof Paul Miller on 22nd June. Both of these events have been postponed from previously scheduled events.

We will shortly be advertising for some non teaching Pastoral Workers to support with behaviour and pastoral care across year groups. This is part of a wider strategy to increase pastoral provision in the school and more details will be given in the staff meeting on 8th June.

Finally, I will be restarting the staff wellbeing group and there will be a few places available for any interested staff - I’ll put an announcement up on the VLE with more details shortly.

Have a great week,

Mia

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

A round up of some of the great learning and teaching strategies we’ve noticed being used around school recently…
 
> Caitlin Woods discussing patriarchal attitudes in Elizabethan society with her year 9 students as part of the Romeo and Juliet curriculum:

> Ben Dupres with his Year 7s who were working in pairs to debate the location of satellite and aerial photographs of coastal features!

> Amit Pall focussing on synonyms to improve his students’ vocabulary in their writing:

> Will Halsey leading a focused revision session considering content, skills and timings to apply when practising exam questions.

Learning and Teaching: Random student generator

It was lovely to walk around last week and see colleagues actively using alternatives to ‘hands up.’

Just a reminder that a random names generator (helpful if you don’t need specific questions to go to particular students) is already set up in MINT Class. Just click on the classroom tools button on the left hand side of the home screen:

Kelly McCarthy

Inclusion & Pastoral

Firstly, I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone for last week’s Tutoring Friday and talking with our students about Douval as I know that will have been tough. I am looking forward to talking to students about how they can conduct themselves in a way about which Douval would have been proud and how we can continue to remember and celebrate his name.

There’s not much from me this week other than to say that this week is Mental Health Awareness Week - if you could please encourage your tutees, therefore, to look at Virtual Tutor this week in their Google Classrooms, as it is all about raising awareness of our own mental health and what we can do to look after ourselves.There are lots of links, a couple of messages and a prompt to get them to list all the things that make them smile…

Linked to Mental Health Awareness Week is a reminder that our school counsellors are here to support staff too and they have a new GHS email address: scp@greenford.ealing.sch.uk

This is a confidential service, so please feel free to get in touch with Jo and Tash if you would like to talk to them. And, don’t forget we also have Michelle Williams, our School Social Worker, back on site with us who is also here to support us with some of more vulnerable students and families if you would like to talk to her about particular students or strategies to work with hard to reach kids.

Lastly, this week’s Tutoring Friday will be a PSHCE session. Keely will send a reminder VLE message with the link to resources in the next couple of days. As always, if there are any questions, just ask.

That’s it for this week - let’s hope the sun shines on Mental Health Awareness Week and that everyone has a good week!

Lou Grimley

Character strengths at GHS

Firstly, thank you very much for taking the time to give us your feedback on character. The results showed an overwhelming choice for Compassion and Resilience as our next character strengths. Also, your thoughts have helped us start planning the next steps we need to take to make Character more prominent at GHS. We will work to make sure the language around character is consistent and use visuals to help brand our character strengths. 

On Friday, I was able to visit some forms. Dipesh’s assembly encouraged our students to show courage by doing the right thing.:

Also, we remembered Douval. He was a man of great character and he is an important role model for our students:

Finally, we wanted to celebrate the courage of Anaam Zakria who rescued a hurt pigeon on Thursday. She noticed the pigeon on her walk from D-block to I-block and managed to safely get the pigeon in a box where it stayed till the end of the day. Then, after school, Chloe and Anaam drove it to a veterinary clinic in Northolt. 

Andrea and Noble