Newsletters

GHS Connect #8 Monday 1 November

From the Head

Welcome back everyone. I hope you have had a lovely break. I know that it never feels like long enough, but it is unusual for us to return in November, so it may at least feel that we have less time than normal until our occasional day on the 26th.

This always feels like a hard term, with the darker mornings and shorter hours of sunshine taking their toll on everyone. It is, therefore, hugely important that we pace ourselves. It’s also really important to ensure that students are in the right routines and to ensure that we don’t let things slip - keeping a handle on strong routines makes our lives as teachers easier in the long run and helps to minimise stress. 

Could I please therefore ask the following of all colleagues:

• Continue with meet / greet and end / send for every lesson and changeover, and start each lesson with a ‘Do Now’ task.
• Continue to consider the needs of PP and SEN students by carefully considering how they are accessing and being supported with tasks. Not only will this help with progress, it will also help with the behaviour of those students who ‘switch off’ and disengage if they find something difficult.
• Use your judgement when allowing students to use the toilet in lessons, but never send more than one child from your class at a time, and always email ‘missing child’ if a child does not arrive in class and call Patrol if a child does not return from the toilet.

Finally, a reminder of the excellent work that our unsung support staff heroes undertake for us day in, day out. An example from Andrew in Science, who sings the praises of our Science Technicians, underlines this perfectly. “With 4 teachers off this week they’ve been absolutely brilliant in getting books, checking worksheets and organising work, and they’ve made a huge impact on the quality of the experience our students are receiving.  And these last two days without Mary – Tsehi and Johanna have done brilliantly in C block getting everything done without her.”

I hope your first week back goes well,

Mia

Monday
Normal day.

Tuesday
Meeting: Year Team meeting 3.15pm - 4.30pm.

Wednesday
PSHCE drop-in: optional
Year 7 Tutors Evening 4pm - 6:30pm on School Cloud.

Thursday
Normal day.

Friday
Normal day.

Notes
Maths and Science Mock 1.

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

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

• Colleagues in deep professional discussions about learning and teaching in the first of our Teacher Research CPD sessions this year!

Thank you to all colleagues for bringing such energy and enthusiasm to the sessions, even at the end of a busy half term and to all the Research Leads who spent time selecting the right bit of research to prompt discussion. 

Many staff shared in the evaluation that they really appreciated the opportunity to speak to colleagues from outside their department about pedagogy and the time to reflect on their own practice - our new approach got off to a great start!

This week Research Leads will open a Google Classroom for each group to allow us to share further research as colleagues start to work on their own enquiry questions in their classrooms.  

Happy experimenting!

Next session: 1st December 2021

Learning and Teaching: Supporting SEND Learners

Before half term we had some CPD from Gurvinder and Clare on supporting SEND learners more effectively. 

If you need a refresher of the training you can find it here or on the homepage of the Staff VLE. 

There are three key strategies we’re going to focus on for SEND learners as part of our Bounceback initiative this year:

• making sure that students can access tasks by scaffolding them appropriately; 
• supporting students to work independently by bridging from teacher instruction or modelling to solo tasks;
• checking that groups of students (these may be different depending on the lesson) have understood or can make progress in their learning.

Learning walks and book looks will focus on SEND learners over the next half term. If you’d like to share something that has been working well, please let the Learning and Teaching Team know!

Kelly McCarthy

Inclusion and Pastoral

Welcome back, everyone! I hope that you all had fab half-terms and got the chance to rest and recharge those batteries, whatever you were doing.

Firstly, a big thank you from me and Keely to everyone for embracing PSHCE last half-term and delivering it as part of our new fortnightly system. Please take some time to have a look at what you will be covering this half-term with your tutor groups. You will also have an opportunity to talk about it with your tutor team on Tuesday and come and see me for PSHCE drop in on Wednesday after school, if you would like to.

Just a couple of other bits and pieces - before the half-term break, there was a lot of coverage in the news about arrests that had been made across the country around county lines and criminal exploitation. This was accompanied by a lot of discussions and publicity about the potential signs of both of these, so take some time to refamiliarise yourself with this. A good starting place is the Children’s Society Look Closer campaign.

The other area worth checking out is our website and what is recommended on there for parents, carers and students in terms of looking after themselves under the Safeguarding tab. We can’t always be around to offer the support we would like to, especially when it’s a natural break such as the half-term, so point your tutees in the direction of the website for support if they need it!

Lastly, and in some students’ cases linked to the above, I haven’t forgotten about those students who have changed their gender-identity, their names and/or their preferred use of pronouns - the guidance and policy are on their way and details will follow for some support groups starting up.

Have a good week! 

Lou 

Inclusion Heroes!

This will return next week - please send any suggestions to Lou Grimley if you see some top Greenford pastoral work from any of our staff! 

Character strengths at GHS

After seven weeks of teaching, we have given the following number of Character Points to our students.

We will be focusing on Compassion this half-term.

Richard Lewis shared an excellent example of compassion shown by one of our students. Here is what he shared.

Meet Rubab…

Aspiration: Doctor
Date: 22.October.2021
Time: 10:37
Act: Rubab came to me, in BS04, saying: ‘Sir, take this, I just found £20 in the floor in the LRA… do you know who it might belong to?’

We spoke & Rubab said: “I would be so devastated if I lost this, so I really hope it gets back to whoever it belongs to.”

In Rubab, we trust!

Please take opportunities to talk about compassion with our students and celebrate acts of compassion with Character Points.

Andrea and Noble

PE Newsletter

If you haven't see it already, check out the new PE Newsletter with details of some great results from last half-term. You can find it on the VLE here!