Newsletters

GHS Connect #18 Monday 23 January

Mia's notes

I hope everyone has had a good, if cold weekend!

This week we have Year 13 mocks taking place, as well as a range of trips once again. Thank you if you are involved in these, and thank you also to Will, Will, Pravina, Sushila, Harpal and Mark for the trips last week. If you haven’t seen the Sky Sports clip, showing Bukayo being quizzed by some of our Year 7s, do watch it on the Sky Sports website here.

All of these additional experiences for students are hugely important, but nothing beats their day to day classroom experience and I am always so impressed by what I see as I am walking around school. However, I was struck, as I’m sure you were, at the increasing numbers of SEN students in our staff meeting before Christmas - we now have 20% of students diagnosed as SEN in Year 7 and Year 8 which is a significant shift in our school. It’s also important to note that 20% of a year group equates to 60 students per year group who have some identifiable need, and let’s face it, there are probably more who have not yet been diagnosed. 

I just want to remind everyone therefore, that it’s really important that we continue the push on developing strategies for SEN by ensuring ACCESS to the task, BRIDGING the learning and CHECKING UNDERSTANDING. One of the most important ways to help SEN students regulate their behaviour is to help them to feel they are succeeding, so supporting them with accessing the task and also praising them for every tiny little thing should really help as well.

Finally, from me, I know that a few colleagues will be thinking about their next move, perhaps re-locating, or heading abroad, and if that applies to you, and you know you will be leaving, please do let me know sooner rather than later. It makes such a difference if we are able to recruit early on, rather than waiting until the resignation date.

Have a good week,

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal day.

Tuesday
Department meeting 3.15pm - 4.30pm.

Wednesday 
Briefing 8.15am.
Whole Staff T&L CPD 3.15pm - 4.15pm.

Thursday
Year 10 interim deadline.

Friday
Normal day.

Notes
Year 13 A Level mock exams - study leave for A Level lessons, BTEC lessons continue as normal.

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: SEN strategies

This week Gurvinder Nayyar (SENCO) shared with HODs some further refinement to the ABC strategies to support SEN students in particular. The strategies suggested under each heading will really help level the playing field for our students with additional needs. HODs will be exploring these with teams over the coming weeks and we’ll be sharing examples of good practice. Feel free to get a head start and start experimenting with these this week:

Behaviour updates

I hope that everyone has had a good couple of weeks back - we are nearly half-way through the half-term!

Mark and I thought it would be good to give some updates on behavioural bits and pieces, given meetings we have had with staff over the last week or so, and queries that have come through. So, here goes…

1. Toilets - thank you! We will continue to crackdown on this… Here is the slide with full details;
2. Patrol focus - please remember to call Patrol when you need it, and be reassured that students will be picked up as quickly as possible;
3. Big hitters - and, related to that, Patrol will continue to take the big hitters to PYE, MAN, JOH and GRI. We are keeping a close eye on that small % causing the biggest issues and looking at what we can do for them;
4. Reduced timetables - remember to look at these in the Pastoral and Inclusion Folder;
5. Incident Tracker - this is in the same folder and will give staff an idea of what higher level sanctions have been given for key incidents;
6. Interventions - there are lots of bits and pieces coming up, such as Teens and Toddlers and an outreach project to EAP, Ealing’s pupil referral unit. Watch the VLE for details;
7. Top and tailing lessons - remember to continue to use Meet and Greet and End and Send to top and tail your lessons;
8. Bullying Workshops Round 2 - the next cohort of students who have repeatedly bullied will be starting their workshops in the next week;
9. Uniform crackdown - this will be a focus over the next couple of weeks. SLT will be conducting learning walks to pick up on uniform issues that have been creeping in;
10. Respect Focus - and, lastly, this is going to be the next big focus, as we are aware that defiance towards staff, lower level disruption in class and failure to follow instructions the first time is still a big issue. Mark and I will be working with staff between now and half-term to come up with a strategy to deploy when we come back, and the PSWs are currently working on a series of Respect Workshops that will run in a similar way to the Bullying ones… More news on this to come.

Have a good week, everyone!

Lou

Teach First trainees

It's been great to have Teach First tutors using our facilities, training their 2022 cohort of 24 DT trainees in using machinery and the food tech room last Thursday (see images below).

Thank you to all involved especially Sushila, Tam, Stuart and Jayne.

Peter Mather

Inclusion Heroes!

This week’s Inclusion Hero goes to all the staff who work over in I Block - the Year Teams based over there, Sarah Packman, all the teachers who have lessons over there, the ARP crew, and so on. All the work and reflection that we put in at the end of last year has certainly paid off! Thank you to everyone.  

Lou