Newsletters

GHS Connect #7 Monday 18 October

From the Head

I had a lovely email from Georgia yesterday showing me some of the artwork that our students have in Gunnersbury Museum as part of an exhibition there. The work will be shown throughout October, so do drop in if you can. I will certainly be popping along during half-term. You can see some pictures from the exhibition further down in Connect. Well done to our talented art students and to our brilliant art department who have made this happen.

Now onto some less celebratory news, but important messages nonetheless. 

Unfortunately, we have a very, very small number of students who are sometimes missing from lessons. While we are talking about just a handful of students out of almost 2000, this can pose a serious safeguarding risk and it’s vital that students are not left to roam without someone senior being aware. Can I remind everyone that if a child is missing from your lesson, you must email missingchild@greenford.ealing.sch.uk.  This is really important. If a child leaves your lesson without permission, or goes to the toilet and does not return, please call PATROL. Do not just assume that the child might be in BG10 (the pastoral base) or similar - report all instances of missing children from lessons please.

Sadly, we have also had an incident involving racism towards a member of staff last week. Again, this kind of behaviour involves a minority of students, but it is important that we recognise that we are not where we would like to be with this. Whilst the student involved has been dealt with, can I please remind staff to challenge any instances of racism, to actively promote anti-racist views and policies in tutor time and PSHCE and to not be afraid to call out racist language that might be used?

Many thanks and hang on in there - 5 days to go until a well-earned break!

Mia

Monday
Vaccination programme starts 11.45am with Year 9 - details on this VLE announcement here.

Tuesday
Department meeting 3.15pm - 4.30pm.

Wednesday
Teaching & Pastoral staff CPD 3.15pm - 4.15pm.

Thursday
PSCHE Period 1 - resources here.
Interim deadline: Year 7 A2L and Year 8.

Friday
Normal day - last day of this half-term!

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

A round up of some of the great learning and teaching strategies we’ve noticed being used around school recently. This week, a focus on SEND...

• A Post-16 Y13 student supporting a Maths lesson and doing a brilliant job of modelling and scaffolding on the desks for students to help them to try questions independently!
• Yvonne Buluma-Samba supporting her students to construct a response to an exam question in Business Studies by modelling how to write it and providing helpful language prompts to ensure they could access the task (see below).

Learning and Teaching: Homework types

Thank you to colleagues for continuing to label homework with the GHS Four Home Learning Types: Essential Prep; Build Knowledge; Create; Practise/Practice. 

Hopefully using this language with students on SMHW - but also verbally in lessons - will help students to value independent learning and give them more focus and purpose in their work.

Here are a few examples from around school; 

Ms Henderson-Barnes – PE:

Mr Waterhouse – History:

Ms Doyle – Geography:

Kelly McCarthy

Inclusion and Pastoral

One week to go! I know we shouldn’t be wishing away our lives, but we are all in need of a well-earned break - last week I talked about Event Night during the week. Please make sure you carve out some much-needed you time in half-term and have at least one Event Night.

Just a couple of bits and pieces to let you know about this week - it’s PSHCE on Thursday. As always, have a look at the resources, adapt them as you see fit for your tutor group (please make a copy first!) and let me or Keely know if there are any queries. Years 8 and 10 will be taking part in a big survey run by the borough to look at their health and wellbeing in school and out. Many thanks in advance to all staff facilitating this.

A number of staff have spoken to me recently about students who have changed their gender-identity, their names and/or their preferred use of pronouns - at some point this week I will circulate some guidance on this, and will also share the policy I have been working on around this area. We will also be starting a LGBTQ+ support group for students after the half-term so watch this space for details…

Lastly, if you’ve not already watched it, try to catch up with Don’t Exclude Me on BBC2 - it looks at how a primary school in Southend has worked with some of its most vulnerable and challenging students in an attempt to balance their needs with those of the rest of the community. It’s an interesting and illuminating watch!

Have a good week and a brilliant half-term, when you get to it.

Lou 

Inclusion Heroes!

Well done to this week’s Inclusion Hero:

Maya Popovic - I popped in to see Maya about something this week and interrupted a lesson she was delivering to 4 EAL students in Year 7. She skilfully involved me and them in a conversation about their backgrounds, using all of the key words they had just been introduced to, displayed on the board. It was a pleasure to be part of the lesson!

Behaviour for Learning: Consistency (systems) and building positive relationships

End and Send
When you end your lesson, it’s as powerful to stand in the doorway (50:50) to “send” your students off and on their way. It gives you a chance you say goodbye to each student as well as having an eye on corridor behaviour. This is particularly important for single lessons so that other lessons aren’t disrupted.
 
Masks
Now that students and staff should be wearing masks in communal areas, it’s a good idea to get your class to put on their masks before they leave your lesson so that you don’t have to address missing masks as you end and send your lesson.

SIMs and yellow cards
If you give a student a yellow card, remember not to link this to a detention on SIMS. 
 
Corrective Conversations
Students need time and help to think about their actions and sitting in isolation during detention is ineffective and counterproductive - it sends the message that no one has time to deal with behaviour that does not comply with school rules. Therefore, at GHS we have corrective conversations during detentions so that you can connect with students and have the time to talk to them about their actions to help them change their behaviour. Here is a reminder of the corrective conversations framework we introduced in the September CPD:
 
1. Praise - confirm good work from the past
2. Probe – find out what the student was thinking at the time/the reason(s) for their action – this can be stilted with long periods of silence
3. Identify - select 2 or 3 options to take moving forwards
4. Plan - narrow the solutions to one clear action
5. Lock - ask the student to summarise the conversation & agree a follow up strategy (if necessary).
 
Don’t be afraid to practise having these conversations. You can use the prompt sheet that we handed out during the training to help you:

 
If you have any questions or want any support regarding the things discussed in this Behaviour for Learning section of Connect, please get in touch.
 
We hope you have a wonderful final week of this half-term.

Mark and Jo

Gunnersbury House Museum art exhibition

As mentioned above, our year 10 students have worked brilliantly on a project with visiting artist Matthew Small for the Above and Beyond exhibition in Gunnersbury House which is on until the end of October. The work was inspired by the bravery, kindness, resilience and compassion shown by so many of us during the pandemic. 

The work is being shown alongside Matthew’s portraits of some of the England football team heroes, including our very own Bukayo Saka. The students worked incredibly hard and exhibited amazing perseverance and dedication throughout.