Greenford High School Parent Portal - GHS Connect #28

GHS Connect #28 Monday 4 May

From the Head

We are slowly starting to get a small trickle of students making enquiries about coming back in. I guess many of them will be beginning to struggle with lockdown. As I write, we are no closer to hearing when the school might reopen and in what form, I believe we are due an announcement about this in a few days time.

One thing that has been fed back is that some students are feeling rather overwhelmed with the amount of work at times. Please remember that we don’t have to set quite the same amount of work as what we might expect to happen in a lesson in 50 minutes and it’s okay to tell your students that they don’t necessarily need to complete everything. Some of our SEN students will also need things breaking down into smaller chunks.

I’d like to thank you all once again for all that you are doing to support our students. I know that there are some wonderful things going on remotely and I know that pastoral staff are also supporting our students in the best way they can too. Thank you also for checking in on each other - I have heard great things about how the Business Studies team, led by Helen, have worked really well together to deliver live lessons and also how Hanad gave the Science team a Zoom lesson on setting assignments and providing feedback. I’d also like to thank all of those staff who are checking on one another’s wellbeing, and who are also thinking about that of the students. Special mention to Clare Secombe, Tara Quigley and Lou Grimley for the wonderful wellbeing staff message picture which can be seen below. A lovely idea - it looks brilliant! Please let me know about anyone we can shout out or thank in Connect as I am obviously not hearing about things in the usual way.

Our governors have written a letter thanking all staff - the letter can be seen on the VLE and I have copied the text below:

Dear Staff

On behalf of the full governing body, we wanted to take a moment to thank you all for your incredible commitment and resilience at this time of difficulty. We are aware that many of you are juggling multiple responsibilities – looking after your own families, coming into school when needed, caring for others and trying to stay safe yet still providing a full learning experience for our students at the same time and also supporting our students pastorally. Thank you so much to all staff, both teaching and support, for all that you are doing to make this situation as bearable as possible. Thank you for also ensuring that the school continues to operate, ready for opening again whenever that is. As ever, your hard work is much appreciated.

When this crisis comes to an end, however long it takes, we know Greenford High School will be able to say with pride that we continued to be a community and that, even though we may have been isolated, together, we achieved.

Best regards,

Shital Manro - Chair of Governors
Sunny Chana - Vice Chair of Governors

Have a good week,

Mia

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

A round up of some of the great remote learning and teaching strategies Greenford staff are using currently…

> Tracey Cleave using the visualizer to record her thought process of planning out an answer to an A-Level 20 marker for Y12 on the topic of Coasts.

> Sajjad Jaffer making videos for his classes to help them understand various Maths topics.

> Dipa Pinodria researching and sending out information about websites colleagues might find useful at this time.

Remote Learning and Teaching update

This week we did a little check in with some staff to see how they felt the online learning and teaching was going. Colleagues reported back that although many students are really trying their best to complete online learning, a number of students are struggling with the logistics of distance learning and feeling a bit overwhelmed. Thank you for everything you have done to support them through this!

Going forward, perhaps bear the following in mind when setting tasks:

> Consider reducing the amount of work set; half of what you would cover in a double lesson is perhaps a good starting point. If you teach the same class for multiple lessons in a week, it may not be necessary to set work for every lesson.

> Perhaps use slightly longer deadlines for the completion of tasks to support students who may not have access to a device on a given day.

> Try to set work in a regular and consistent way so students know when to expect tasks (and not all on a Monday). It is possible to schedule tasks to become live on certain days through Google Classroom (see below).

Now, more insights from the house of Georgina Stevens…

Lachlan’s Top Tips for 'scheduling' on Google Classroom

This morning, my son, Lachlan (who is in Year 7), received a huge amount of work in one go from one teacher (I know why she did this as it is not always convenient to set him work 3 times a week on his normal lesson days) but it took the two of us nearly 20 minutes to work out when he should do each task. Lachlan and I wish she knew how to schedule assignments on Google Classroom! This is also really useful as you can schedule the assignments to come on the same day/s each week so students know when to check (as unless they have downloaded the app on their phone or regularly check their emails (which they don’t!!) they do not actually get notifications of new assignments).

In case you need it, here is how to schedule assignments:

1) Create your assignment as normal. (Consider the deadline length…)

2) Click the arrow next to the assign button (top right) and choose schedule:

3) Select the date you want the assignment to appear to your students:

4) You should be able to see all scheduled assignments in your “classwork” area. They will appear as light grey until they go live, and can be edited like normal assignments:

Georgina Stevens