Newsletters

GHS Connect #3 Monday 20 September

From the Head

Welcome back to another week, everyone.

I was hoping not to have to start too many versions of Connect this year with mention of Covid, but unfortunately, we have been getting a few cases, mainly in Year 10 and Year 13, and we will need to monitor this carefully over the coming days. I have been in contact with Public Health, and we may have to bring in some additional measures, depending on the number of cases this week. 

In the meantime, please continue to ventilate classrooms, ensure that desks are sprayed and wiped and do wear face covering s if you would prefer to.

I will obviously communicate further over the coming days.

On a more positive note, all year groups seem to have settled in really well and made a great start. There is definitely a very positive vibe coming from the students who are keen to talk to me about their learning and school life. Thank you all for making this happen as brilliantly as ever.

Thank you to everyone involved in the final year ahead meetings and to everyone involved in the photography happening on Monday.

Have a lovely week,

Mia

Monday
Year 7 and Year 11 photographs (individual and whole year group for Year 7, whole year group only for Year 11) 
Website photographers also in - those involved have been informed.

Tuesday
Meeting: Department meeting (3.15pm - 4.30pm)
Meeting: TLR holder meetings (3.30pm - 4.30pm)

Wednesday
No meeting

Thursday
Normal day

Friday
Normal day

General: Year 11 and Year 12 assessment week.

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

A round up of some of the great learning and teaching strategies we’ve noticed being used around school recently…

• Phil Crampton breaking down algebra clearly, addressing misconceptions and modelling from the back of the room with a tablet. He showed students how to organise and present their work in their Maths book. Phil has an incredibly warm and calm manner which is fostering positive relationships.

Learning and Teaching: table layouts

As colleagues begin to feel more comfortable in the classroom it’s lovely to see teachers changing room layouts to best suit student learning. 

In Marike Littlefair’s year 7 lesson, students were sharing resources and working together on group tables:

In Amanda Hill’s lesson, she altered the shape of the desks to support some oracy work the students are doing in English:

Reminder: GHS Homework Types

Please remember when setting homework on SMHW and Google Classroom to communicate to students which type of homework it is so that they understand the purpose and can place more value on independent learning. 

Kelly McCarthy

Inclusion and Pastoral

Thank you to everyone for all your hard work in embracing tutor time and assemblies. It feels good to get those pastoral moments back…

Only a couple of things from Inclusion and Pastoral this week - don’t forget it’s our second PSHCE lesson of the term on Thursday so please make sure you check the resources and have your booklets ready for your classes. If there are any questions or queries, please let me or Keely know. 

Secondly, as I said in briefing on Wednesday, some of our ‘big hitters’ are struggling with the return to school - please remember to use the systems we have in place but also bear in mind what Mia said last week about clear, calm instructions, focus on the behaviours we want to see and building in take-up time. I was at an Inclusion Senior Leaders Meeting last week and the situation is the same across the board - generally schools have had really positive returns to normality, but with a small handful really struggling for a variety of reasons. 

Lastly - don’t forget those to-do bits and pieces. Most of the SMHW letters have now gone out to parents, who are signing up and checking tasks already so keep on using it so well, letting me know if there are any issues. And, KCSIE…

Have a good week! 

Lou

Inclusion Heroes!

Our two heroes this week come from the same department with the same year group:

Hanad Mahamed for his unending patience in helping a Year 11 student replace her timetable, find where she was meant to be and then take her there, during his PPA - way beyond the call of duty.

Alistair Newall for a brilliantly inclusive lesson with some of the more well-known Year 11 boys, who were fully focused on their learning and able to tell me all about the properties of different types of waves. A pleasure to watch!

Achievement Team

There are many opportunities at GHS to help students reach their potential and I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce one of the initiatives: the achievement team and their forms.

Hanad Mohamed and the Boys’ Achievement form (11M4):
 

 
Chloe Altman and the Girls’ Achievement form (11W4):

 
Adam Hamida and the Boys’ Achievement form (10M4):

 
Naomi Foot and the Girls’ Achievement form (10W4):

 
If you teach any of these students (you can check your registers for the M4 and W4 form groups) you will soon be hearing from their form tutors. By working together, we are going to help students continue to bounce back.

Andrea and Jess 

Behaviour for Learning: Meeting and Greeting Students  

Building positive relationships with students is one of our key behaviour foci this year. Peter Mather is brilliant at this so, as you can see in the photos below, even when he is reminding a student to correct their uniform, the student has a big smile and does it without question. Peter is always meeting and greeting his classes which provides him with an opportunity to do a quick emotional check-in with each student in his class as well as making them all feel valued.
 
Meet and greet, or 50/50, is also part of our school behaviour policy because it means that the corridors are being monitored by a number of staff as students enter and exit the blocks.  Having staff half in and half out their classrooms means that students are less likely to engage in poor corridor behaviour.

Thank you to everyone for meeting and greeting at GHS!

Mark and Jo