Newsletters

GHS Connect #32 Monday 8 June

From the Head

One of the benefits of running the Q&A sessions on Friday was that I got to see so many of you after such a long time away! It genuinely was really lovely to see so many of your faces and to re-connnect again, if only very briefly. After a sombre meeting on Wednesday, it was a good way to start the weekend, and to begin to take the steps needed to tentatively open up to some students.

I want to say a heartfelt thank you this week to Allison, Noble, Pam, Shem and Andrew for their contributions to Wednesday’s memorial for Douval. I know, from the feedback that we have received, that it was a time of sadness but also helpful reflection for many, and I certainly could not have led the gathering without the support of the above-mentioned heroes. Thank you also to Adam, Paul and Will who helped me with the technology. Thank you to everybody who came - it was very special to gather this way together to say a proper GHS goodbye to Douval.

The last few weeks have been extremely hard in many ways - the news continues to be gloomy what with the appalling and devastating news about George Floyd’s death, continual reporting on Covid-19 and now a re-surfacing of the Madeline McCann case after 13 years (I realise as I am writing that some of you may be too young to even remember this, but for those of us who had babies and toddlers back then, it will be forever stored in our memories). You will have seen, I hope, that I have communicated a response regarding the death of George Floyd to our students and parents in my letter last week; as I said on the VLE, I was sickened and immensely depressed by his murder and I feel it is essential that our community see us as standing in solidarity with those who protest peacefully. I really hope that against this backdrop of depressing news, you are managing to take care of yourselves and look out for one another. Please do get in touch if you need anything.

On a totally separate note, I want to say well done to Dan Siskin and Suzanne Hughes who have been appointed as Year Leaders. Well done, also, to Trisha Soneji who has been appointed as CIAG Leader and Lisa Leonard who has been appointed as EPQ Lead.  More internal advertisements will follow - bear with us as we work through them all.

Finally, a massive thank you to Paul who has done so much work on the re-opening plans - hours and hours of behind the scenes work to allow ‘face to face time’ to happen safely. I’m looking forward to seeing some of you soon in person when we (hopefully) get to a place where we have some more students come back in.

Have a lovely week and take care of yourselves,

Mia

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

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

> Sarah Williams and Oumayma Geagea having a really successful, well attended live lessons with KS3 classes on Google Meet.

> Will Halsey using YouTube to pre-record an explanation of the week’s learning for GCSE groups. 

> Reena Bharadva, Trisha Soneji, Steven Bold and Joseph Wilcox offering Bronze, Silver and Gold tasks on Google Classroom so that students can select which to work up to and hopefully will not feel overwhelmed.

Google Classroom voicenotes 

Missing the ability to talk to your students and offer them an encouraging word?  Georgina has the answer below with an easy to use extension on Google Classroom!

Using ‘Mote’ in Google Classroom

This week, I have started using MOTE - thank you Adam Hamida for the recommendation!

Mote is a Chrome extension that lets you easily add transcribed voice comments and feedback to shared documents. Mote works with Google Docs, Slides and Sheets, as well as Google Classroom and this week I have found it so useful for adding voice comments to my instructions and also using it to provide individual private voice comments when feeding back work. Students can listen to my instructions or comments and feel more connected and it also transcribes what you say (which you can edit). They just click on the purple triangle to listen!! 

Firstly, install Mote onto your Chrome internet browser on your PC or laptop - you can find it in the Google Chrome web store.

Then whenever you use Google Docs or Google Classroom, you can add a comment and record a 90 (max) second voice comment.  

Here is a YouTube video to explain it further.

Thank you shout outs you can actually read!

Last week we shared a bumper crop of thank you messages from friends and colleagues to kick off the half term - but we had some feedback that some were too small to read. Hopefully the images below will be a bit more helpful...

If you want to send a thank you to someone, please send a postie to csecombe@greenford.ealing.sch.uk by Tuesday 9th June.

This week's Speakers for Schools

Speakers for Schools are continuing their programme of virtual talks and have created an online library of previous talks in case you want to set one of these as a lesson or extension activity. 

The video library can be accessed here.

The schedule of talks can be found on the Speakers for Schools website here.