Newsletters

GHS Connect #10 Monday 20th November

Mia's notes

I hope everyone has had a lovely weekend. 

I have been reminded of what a wonderful school we are this week, as I have been gathering together lots of content for our end of term 'Community Connect’ newsletter. It’s been quite a term so far, and we’re not yet even into December!

Just last week we had a visit from James Murray, a mock interview for ALL of Year 10, a visit from author Jeannie Waudby, a boys’ achievement group visit to Olympia, a Jack Petchey workshop, various sports fixtures, the Year 9 Sports Leader Award training, an A Level Media trip, parent workshops with Ealing Safer Parenting Team, a Year 7 parent social media awareness talk, our Year 7 tutors’ evening and a Somali parents’ coffee morning. All of this in just one week!  And of course, this is all happening amidst excellent learning and teaching, assessments, marking, planning, preparation and daily pastoral care.

After all of this, everyone definitely deserves a break on Friday 24th November for our occasional day. As outlined last week, we have decided to ensure that all students are off site at 3pm on Thursday 23rd November. This means the following please:-

On Thursday 23rd November after school:-

• No clubs to run;
• No interventions, Studio 11, Study Space, other homework sessions to run;
• No 6th formers in the LRA after 3pm;
• No meetings;
• No detentions (these will be rolled over to the following week).

This should mean that staff can all get away as soon as possible after 3pm, so that everyone can enjoy the long weekend and hopefully really feel the benefit.

Have a great (shorter) week,

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day

Tuesday
Year Team Meeting/Pastoral time 3.15pm - 4.30pm

Wednesday
Briefing 8.15am in the library.

Thursday
Normal Day

Friday
Occasional Day - School closed to staff and students

Notes
Year 13 Assessment Week (in class)

Learning and teaching: Embedding Excellence

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

Ajit Kundi promotes mathematical conceptualisation through clear and simple diagrams, which supports students to access the task.

Oracy

Want to try out a gamified oracy activity that will encourage students’ oracy skills whilst continuing to develop their listening skills? 

These oracy games are a great starting point to increase confidence with speaking and listening; developing student motivation in your classroom.

1-20 game

As a group, explain to students that they are going to count from one to twenty. However, they cannot develop an order system to help them. Instead, after a student says one, another student must jump in and say two, another three. If two people speak at the same time, they must restart.
 
To be successful, students will need to ‘read the room’, using eye contact to establish whether it is the right time to speak. It is about group dynamics. They must be aware of others and wait patiently for an opportunity to speak. 

Articulate

Split your students into small groups of four or five. Provide each group with a number of words. These could be subject specific (key terminology) words from glossaries which can be used as an effective revision tool for KS4/KS5 classes.

One student must describe the word to their group, without saying the actual word. To be successful in this game, you need to reach for alternative vocabulary.

Amit

Inclusion Updates

SEN Updates 

The SEN department is currently in the process of completing a number of LUCID tests to support our students with exams access arrangements. The list of year 11 students that will be tested by the examiner will be available shortly. 

Mental Health Updates 

With a long weekend coming up, Ms Adhami wanted to share with you ideas to look after your mental health. 

• Plan some time in the day for yourself 
• Find people you can talk to and trust 
• Keep things in perspective 
• Approach others with kindness and an open mind. 

Just a reminder that Niloo Adhami offers staff and students support on Tuesday break and lunch times. 
 
CLA 

Angela and Jo have worked very hard to create passports for our children looked after cohort. These will be launched soon and placed on SIMS for all staff to access. 

Inclusion Heroes:  

I want to say a huge thank you to the very new ARP team. They have been running the department whilst staff absence has been low, supporting each other and the students and have continued to strive towards getting the best out of our ARP students. 
  
Gurvinder