Newsletters

GHS Connect #7 Monday 17 October

Mia's notes

Welcome back to the final week before half term - a much needed break for everyone!

Thank you in advance to everyone who is involved in Post 16 Open Evening. This is another opportunity for us to show off our amazing school and celebrate all of the fantastic things we achieve together at Post 16. 

It’s been a busy few weeks, with a huge amount going on and I know that everyone has been working really hard on ‘making it easier’ to meet the challenges that some students face, as well as ‘connecting’ better with students and families. However, I do want to give a particular thanks to Sarah Williams for all of the work she has done on organising various reading activities. The Living Library is up and running - thanks to Andrea and Ramya who read an extract from ‘The Dark Lady’, and Year 8 form tutors are preparing to launch the form time read very soon. Sarah has also organised Fiona from the National Literacy Trust to train Year 12 reading buddies and the parents of 10 year 8 students whose reading needs to improve. This is an outstanding example of ‘making it easier’ and ‘connecting’ in action - well done and thank you Sarah! As if that wasn’t enough, those Year 8s will now take part in an 8 week intervention to try to boost their reading ages! An outstanding initiative Sarah!

Finally, if you haven’t heard, our very own Sushila Hirani will be going down in history, after having a drill for HS2 named after her! Do check out the news clip that Will shared on Twitter if you haven’t already. Sushila was nominated for this rather bizarre but prestigious accolade by primary school students at Dairy Meadow in Southall, for being such an inspiring role model for STEM subjects. Well done Sushila!

Have a lovely week everyone,

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal day.

Tuesday
Department time 3.15pm - 4.30pm.

Wednesday 
No meeting.
Post 16 Subject Fair & Open Evening - details here on VLE

Thursday
Year 13 Interim deadline.

Friday
Normal day. 

Notes
Year 13 Interim data collection.

Learning and teaching: Spotted

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

Learning and teaching: Action Research CPD

Thank you to all colleagues for taking part in our CPD on Wednesday.   Research Leads mentioned to me how lovely it was to hear buzzy conversation and genuine reflection about pedagogy at the end of a busy half term and colleagues have fed back that the opportunity to discuss and share ideas with other teachers was really useful.

Here is a flavour of some of the areas colleagues will be developing over the next few weeks…

• Ben D. is going to be working on using the ABC strategies to support SEND students to write fuller answers and complete tasks more frequently. 
• Amandeep will be looking at how to use flexible grouping with her KS3 class to support differentiation. 
• Scott and Parissa are both considering how questioning strategies can maximise the engagement of students in lessons and how these can develop better student responses. 

In our next session colleagues will be sharing what the impact of our initial attempts has been so please make sure you are actively taking your enquiry question into account in your teaching and planning. Some of the best innovation in school comes from teachers in their classrooms but it is also easy to forget and slip back into familiar habits. We’ll send a couple of gentle reminders to keep us all on track!

Kelly

Bright Spots

Ellie Navarro: Ellie has been nominated by Tara Quigley for delivering a really useful training session in the Science department meeting on how to plan and deliver our Spotlight Assessments effectively. The research was easy to digest, her exemplar lesson gave everyone lots of inspiration and she also gave time to plan an upcoming spotlight collaboratively. Tara went on to say: “I have now planned a really nice lesson for this week, with a similar structure to Ellie's that I'm excited to teach.” Well done Ellie!

Jess Humphries: Jess has been nominated by Clare Secombe who said: “I met with Jess to plan a session for the IOE visitors and she was so supportive. She went out of her way to offer a full session for them, which meant I could focus on the Science delivery instead. It led to the students having a real “wow” experience and hopefully will mean they all enter their training better prepared to support students from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds.” Thank you and well done Jess!

KS4 Achievement update

Exam Meeting & Reports: We have almost finished our first set of exam meetings that have taken place in 3 years. As always Mia, Andrea, Richard and I were very impressed with the level of analysis and reflection that has taken place to produce the exam reports which were the focal point of our discussions in the meetings. We are always amazed how well our HoDs and TLR holders know the students and how much teachers and middle managers do to support the achievement of our Y11 students. Thank you to all of the HoDs, TLR 5 and TLR 4 holders who contributed to this process.

Exam Results 2022: I presented our results to governors at the Full Governor's Body meeting last week. They were very impressed with the results and the progress of our students. They acknowledged the hard work of all our staff and commended everyone's efforts to ensure that our students were not adversely affected, academically by the last two years. 

KS4 Intervention: Last year we had a comprehensive plan for intervention and we are hoping to replicate that this year too. This is what has started already:

• Study club - we have over 50 students working in school supported by Steve, Chloe and Andrea from Monday to Thursday. They are working in the dining hall, please pop in to say hi.
• We have recruited some Y12 students who have chosen to support the KS4 Achievement agenda through mentoring and study sessions. We are positive this army of talent will have an immense impact on our students and their results.
• We have also planned some study skills sessions for some of our more vulnerable cohorts to give them more focused support.
• The Boys and Girls Achievement form groups have been doing some great work with our young people in Y10 & 11.

What can you do?  Please continue to support the whole school target of supporting our more vulnerable cohorts in lessons. The main things that you can do:

• Know who they are 
• Try and build positive relationships with these students
• Try to understand their context and share that information with colleagues in a sensitive way
• Look at their books first when marking
• Talk to these students about their learning experiences
• Track their data and progress
• Ensure that they are included in every intervention, unless the data suggests otherwise.

Thank you and well done to everyone who works with our key exam classes, you all make a huge difference to the lives and results of our young people.

Amandip

Show My Homework update

As you know, we’re really stepping up our use of SMHW this year.

Now that we’ve downsized the student planners, the SMHW app needs to be the main portal for setting homework and it’s clear – from looking at recent user activity – that both staff and students are engaging with the platform more than ever!

Every half term we’ll be generating reports that calculate the quantity of homework set by year, subject and teacher, thereby monitoring provision and giving us the opportunity to celebrate progress being made.

So, watch this space where we’ll announce this year’s first SMHW ‘Power Users’ and ‘Departmental Champions’ alongside updates on student and parental usage.

And, to clarify expectations about homework frequency, please refer to the recently updated Homework Policy which – after a lengthy consultation process – was ratified with HoDs earlier this term.

The policy also outlines the categories for each homework – Essential Prep, Building Knowledge, Practise, Create – and includes suggestions for the tasks that can be set but which do not require formal marking. 

We obviously don’t want to create unnecessary workload, but it’s important that homework is set regularly, in accordance with the policy, so that students develop the right routines.

And you’ll probably be aware of some of the time-saving features on SMHW, for instance:

• You can ‘re-use’ homework via the ‘Actions’ tab on the right hand side, and:
• You can ‘Share to [Google] Classroom’ with a single click.

The ‘Insights’ tab is also very useful as it allows you to see which students have / have not viewed a task you have set. 

And if you click on an individual student and view their ‘Insights’ you can see their most recent SMHW activity, so where you have homework concerns in your class it’s a good first step to ensure they’re accessing the platform.

You’ll have seen that SMHW appears in both the whole school and results appraisal targets this year, such is the integral part we want it to play:

Effective setting of homework and digital resources (through SMHW, GC) so that students can develop their ability to work independently [and] achieve [or] exceed their minimum target grade. 

…so please maintain the excellent start, and share with me any success stories, alongside any feedback about how we might maximise its use. 

Adam

Mental Health: chocolate and teacher self-care

So here it is fellow chocolate lovers, the one we’ve all been waiting for, Chocolate Week - a whole week dedicated to Chocolate. Here are a few interesting facts you might not know about chocolate.

1. White Chocolate Is Not Chocolate. This is because it doesn’t contain cocoa solids or chocolate liquor, meaning it isn’t chocolate in the strict sense. But it does contain parts of the cacao bean‚mainly cocoa butter.
2. The Aztecs loved and valued the cacao bean so highly that they used it as currency during the height of their civilisation.
3. A jewel thief made off with $28 million dollars of gems in 2007 because he was able to gain the trust of the guards working the bank in Antwerp, Belgium, by repeatedly offering them chocolate.
4. The blood in Psycho’s famous shower scene was actually chocolate syrup.
5. The scientific name for the tree that chocolate comes from, Theobroma cacao, means food of the gods.

With half term fast approaching, it’s a great opportunity for us to reset and get some quality R&R. The self-care guide for teachers put together by Calm provides some really useful resources and guidance on how we can try and take better care of our “whole self”. I would recommend having a look through, I am sure there is something for everyone.

Happy Chocolate Week and a happier half term!

Niloo

Inclusion Heroes!

I have two Inclusion Heroes this week - firstly, Niloo Adhami for running the Mental Health Day drop-in on Monday and inviting one of our Educational Psychologists to come along and support staff. This will be the first of a number of these. Secondly, Haydar Shah for being absolutely brilliant on Friday Period 6 with a particularly tricky character. Haydar's calmness and excellent de-escalation sorted out the situation. A huge thank you to both of you!