Newsletters

GHS Connect #36 Monday 3 July

Mia's notes

Another odd week is coming up, with 2 strike days on Wednesday and Friday. Other than that, it’s an action packed week ahead with the 2 Year 9 trips to Thorpe Park, the Year 12 history trip, a Year 12 science trip, Year 9 DT trip and Year 10 Art trip. Thanks to everyone involved!

We’re fortunate that we don’t have many trips clashing with the strike days, but if you are due to go on a trip on Wednesday or Friday and are therefore not striking, please ensure that you come into school first and sign in, so that you are registered as not striking.

On Monday we will be welcoming our new staff for the staff induction day. It will be great to have them here. Please do spend some time having a chat and getting to know them. On Tuesday, we will have our CDIA Faculty exhibition from 3:30pm - 6pm. There will be a short staff social from 3:30pm onwards in F block foyer where we will have tea, coffee and cake, which everyone is welcome to come along to prior to visiting the exhibition.

Last week we had lots of trips, as well as the Year 6 welcome evening and the Year 6 induction day on Friday. All went really well - thank you so much to everyone who was involved.

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day
New Staff Induction Day
Year 12 in school, attending UCAS day (off timetable all day)

Tuesday
In school staff social event - F Block Foyer after school.
All Year 12 to return to a full timetable

Wednesday
NEU Strike - See VLE for further details

Thursday
Normal Day

Friday
NEU Strike - See VLE for further details

Notes
Thursday - World Book Day. Staff dress up as book characters.
Year 10 mocks - all week.

Learning and teaching: Spotted!

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

Trips

This year we have delivered 162 trips from years 7-13! In case you missed the significance of that figure…here it is again 162!!! That is one hundred and sixty-two trips this academic year! (This includes the big Whipsnade Zoo, Thorpe Park and University visits for year 10, which are coming up)

We have been to zoos, universities, broadcasting centres, racetracks, marvellous museums, pretty parks, Galleries galore, theatre productions, trampoline parks, different parts of the world (including Legoland), bowling, Kew Gardens and Bletchley Park but to name a few.It will mean almost every single GHS student will have attended at least 1 trip this academic year.

For every member of staff, whether teaching, support or pastoral who has enable a trip…THANK YOU!

A special thanks to Gina, Chetna and Karen for all the admin work that they have had to process to make these trips possible – you guys’ rock even more!

The experiences we afford our students are so essential for their culture capital! Some of our students have never left Southall or Northolt; some have never been to a restaurant; if we don’t take them, some will never see an art gallery or theatre production. What many of us take for granted are lifetime experiences for so many of our students.

Next year see if you can increase the enrichment by 25%!

Also, if not already, check out the attached Google doc mapping out the trips for this week and next.

“Education, or enrichment, is a dynamic, evolving, lifelong process. Every time you look, sensitively with awareness, your vision grows.” - John Paul Caponigro

Happy Monday.

Noble

CPOMS

A huge thank you to everyone for the mass staff effort in signing up to CPOMS and to those of you who have started to use it regularly – in September, this will be how we record any safeguarding concerns, so the more practice we get now of logging those niggles that we may have, the better. If you click here, you will find a handy guide to how to do it. The recording lasts about 5 mins, so make yourself a cuppa, grab a biccie and have a watch. If there are still queries or snagging issues, as there are bound to be, please just let me know and I will get them sorted.

 Lou

Power2 Graduation

On Monday evening I attended the Power2 Graduation Awards for our students who took part in Teens and Toddlers and Rediscover last year – Mariam Mohammed and Eshan Mahi were 2 of that cohort who went along and received their awards. Congratulations to both of them!

Lou

Inclusion Heroes

This week’s Inclusion Hero goes to the Transition Team, with a particular shout out for Gurvinder Nayyar, Amandeep Phull, Pam Lewis and Sukey Mathadu for the inordinate amount of hard work that has gone into preparing for the arrival of our Year 6s in September. The visits, the workshops, the Welcome Evening, Induction Day and the 3 million emails that fly around about admissions is a huge task, and it was brilliantly smooth this year – the Year 6 cohort look great. Long may they stay that way…

Lou

Bright Spots

This week’s bright spots have been nominated by Maya Popovic and Paul Stokes, who say the following.

“My ‘Bright Spots’ are the following, fantastic people who helped carry out speaking exams in home languages: Monika Siek (Polish), Amin Butt (Urdu), Hardeep Brar (Panjabi) and Waris Ahmed (Farsi/Persian). Without their support, amid other commitments, it would have been extremely difficult to successfully prepare the students and lead speaking exams. Our students are very fortunate to be part of such a diverse community, with a variety of languages spoken by teachers and support staff! With gratitude, Maya, Oumayma and Team MFL.”

"Harpal Sagoo does so much for our staff community.  This year he has organised 13 staff football matches, 2 staff rounders games and a netball match.  This isn’t always easy given how hard it is trying to pin down 11 players plus on a Friday after a busy week.  However, his tireless work creates a great end to the week and gives everyone a chance to meet people from outside of your department.  Thank you, from everyone who has played this year!" Paul

Thank you and well done!