Newsletters

GHS Connect #16 Monday 9 January

Mia's notes

Welcome back to our first full week and I hope that everybody managed to ease their way back in last week, before the full five days kick in this week!

Students seemed pleased to be back on Thursday and there was a lovely, positive atmosphere around school. This is a short half term with only 5 weeks to go until the break, so it’s important that we set the tone for how we want things to be.

This week, Mark will be leading an assembly about behaviour expectations, we will continue our approach to use of the toilets, and will continue to work on punctuality to lessons. Lou has given a bit more detail about some pastoral reminders in the section below - please do have a read. There will also be some new other aspects about behaviour we will be tweaking, and more info on this will follow. One key change, which will be detailed in a further announcement, is related to PATROL, where any identified high profile child who is patrolled will automatically spend the lesson they were patrolled out of with either PYE, MAN, GRI or JOH. 

Finally, a new term calls for new bright spots, so if you have anyone you want to thank or celebrate for anything at all, please do drop me a line so I can include it in Connect!

Have a good week,

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal day.

Tuesday
No meeting due to Year 11 Parents' Evening.

Wednesday 
Briefing 8.15am.
No meeting due to Year 11 Parents' Evening.
PSHCE drop in - optional.

Thursday
Year 11 Parents' Evening 4pm - 7pm (in person, appointments via School Cloud)

Friday
Normal day.

Notes
Year 12 assessment week.

Pastoral and Behaviour Reminders

Welcome back, everyone, and I hope you all had a good weekend.

I thought it might be a good idea to give some reminders about key bits and pieces that we will be continuing with this year in terms of pastoral and behavioural work:

1. Toilets - the crackdown continues! Please do not let students out to the toilet during lessons unless they have a toilet pass. B Block toilets will continue to be open during the day and monitored;
2. Punctuality to lessons - if a student is more than 5 minutes late to your lesson, please mark them late. Consistent lateness to lessons will be picked up by the Year Teams;
3. Logging of bullying incidents - please remember to log all incidents of bullying on SIMS, using one of the 7 categories that are now on there;
4. Students on reduced timetables - we have a number of students on reduced timetables. Please look at Pastoral and Inclusion on the Shared Drive for details, where you will find a folder called Reduced Timetables;
5. Incident Tracker - and while you are in the Pastoral and Inclusion folder, don’t forget to look at the Incident Tracker in Incidents/Tracker to find out about sanctions for high-level incidents;
6. PSHCE Drop-In - we will have Faye Jones coming in from the borough to talk to those year groups delivering RSE this term. Please come along to DG01, 3:15 - 4:15, if you would like some help and guidance on how best to deliver these lessons. She will be coming back later in the year to talk to other year groups when those lessons are scheduled;
7. Year 8 Online Safety Project - all of Year 8 will be taking part in a series of workshops around this topic, starting this Tuesday. Staff affected have already been emailed - if there are any queries, please ask!

That’s all for now - I hope that everyone has a good week.

Lou

Learning and teaching: Spotted!

A round up of some of the great learning and teaching strategies we’ve noticed being used around school recently... here's one from the end of last term! 

Teaching and Learning Focus

At the beginning of the year we set our focus for L&T: ensuring all students and especially those in our vulnerable cohorts have a level playing field by ‘making it easier’ for them to overcome challenges.

The main way we can do this is to maintain a relentless focus on the ABC strategies (Access, Bridge to Independence, Check Your Groups). During the autumn term,  we focused specifically on ACCESS to tasks and in particular any READING students have to do in lessons and this should continue this term.   

Whenever a student is required to read in your lessons whether it be an exam question, a source, an essay or a textbook consider using the following strategies to make it easier for them to engage with the text:

• Activate wider/prior knowledge so that students understand how this fits in with what they have learnt previously;
• Read aloud to model fluency;
• Use dual coding - images can assist with comprehension or vocabulary acquisition; 
• Explicitly teach tier 2 and 3 vocabulary; both subject specific vocabulary and the academic language that students need to master. 

Thank you for continuing to support our students by scaffolding their learning!

Kelly

Bright Spots

This week’s bright spot goes to Keely Juster, as nominated by Phoebe Henderson-Barnes.

Phoebe says: “Since September, Keely has been covering PE lessons. Without fail, Keely gives 100% to each lesson covered and always seeks to provide a positive learning environment for the students. At the end of each lesson covered, Keely will always give the class teacher and myself a debrief, making sure to congratulate and praise students who deserve it. Keely has helped out with fixtures and training, going way beyond her call of duty and both the PE team and students have really enjoyed having her in lessons!”

Inclusion Heroes!

This week’s Inclusion Hero goes to Ben Gunn - as I walked around the school during my Patrol on Friday last thing, it was lovely to see how calm and engaged students were in lessons across the board, but I was particularly impressed by Ben teaching Greek Drama to Year 7 and introducing them to key topics, themes and characters. A tough call for P6 on the 2nd day back! But, each and every student was totally absorbed - thank you, Ben!

Lou