Community Connect - March 2023

Dear Parents and Carers

Welcome to our latest edition of Community Connect, our newsletter that attempts to share just a selection of the many wonderful things that make up the varied and abundant experiences of a Greenford High School student.

As ever, I continue to be impressed by the continued hard work and resilience shown by our students, and thank you for all of your support as parents and carers.  We can only succeed when the school and parents work together, and an excellent example of this was demonstrated at our recent parents’ evenings, which have all had very high attendance rates from families.  

We continue to push our work on character to support our students in becoming the very best versions of themselves. Part of this has involved tightening up our processes around bullying so that students who engage in repeated instances of bullying attend a series of workshops to help change their behaviour. A similar model will soon be being launched around respect - fortunately, although this applies to very few of our students, those students who show repeated defiance will be expected to attend ‘respect workshops.’  I am very grateful to our incredible pastoral teams who are working so hard to introduce these interventions to help students to make the right choices.

Moving onto academic matters, we are now just weeks away from the all important exams for Year 11 and Year 13, and students have worked hard on their mock exams, and should now be putting in the final effort to revise before the Summer. More information on some of our support for students sitting exams can be seen below, including information about our Easter revision sessions.

I hope you enjoy seeing some of the things that our students have been up to this term, by browsing through the rest of the newsletter.

Mia Pye
Headteacher

Year 11s Work Hard to Prepare for Forthcoming Examinations 

Year 11 have shown true GHS character, by completing their second round of mocks with such resilience. It has been fantastic to see how students have grown in confidence and how they approached the exam fortnight. We are very hopeful that students are almost fully prepared for the real things!

Coming up we have events that will further support our Year 11s. Tuesday 28th March is our Mock Results Day, where students will receive the results, engage in tailored workshops and then we have a group coming in for a motivational assembly! Over Easter, we have a series of planned intervention classes, where students will be invited into school the week commencing Monday 3rd April. 

As we approach the Summer term and the exam season, we remind families of all the resources available to support students. Please check our Year 11 newsletter for further details, including our top tips.

Students Reap Rewards for Hard Work and Good Behaviour

As part of our work on building and celebrating our character strengths, we have held a number of reward events for students in each year group who have earned their character badges or who have contributed to the school in other ways.  In Year 7, 63 students took part in an afternoon of games and challenges inspired by the TV game show Taskmaster, and have also taken part in a reward trip to Oxygen, Acton. In Year 8 there is a bowling trip planned for before Easter for students who have completed their compassion badges, alongside a pizza party for the form who wins the form board competition. Students who demonstrated excellence in the Year 8 guided reading project were also presented with an amazon voucher. Well done to everyone!

Year 9 were lucky enough to undertake a trip to the London Dungeons for their character badge trip and those with zero behaviour points and 100% attendance will also be treated to a movie afternoon towards the end of term.

Year 10 have taken part in a bowling trip, Year 11 have will be taking part in a games afternoon and Year 12 have enjoyed a celebration assembly!

Year 9 Army visit

Year 9 were very fortunate to enjoy a recent visit from the British Army to test their ability to communicate, problem-solve and display leadership. Students were provided with a presentation on the varying different career pathways the Army has to offer, followed by a variety of challenging tasks. Officers praised the behaviour of the cohort, commenting on how their engagement and enthusiasm was exemplary. It was lovely to see the personality of so many different students shine through in a day filled with resilience.

Trips, Trips and More Trips! 

Yet again we have run a huge number of trips this term, providing many opportunities for students from different year groups to get out and about and learn more about the world, both locally and further afield. This is a core part of the way we ensure outstanding personal development for our students, as we believe that great learning happens both inside of the classroom and also through other experiences. 

This term, our Music students have visited the Apollo Theatre, the Brady Arts Centre and also the ECC in Northfields to take part in a concert. DT students have gone to Belazu in Greenford, on a STEM trip for Greenpower racing and West London College, while Art students have visited Somerset House, Tate Modern and the Guildhall and Barbican Gallery. Drama students have gone to Theatre Royal, The Bush Theatre, PE students to Acton Ten Pin, Computing students to the First Lego League Competition and English students have visited The British Library and The Globe Theatre.
Post 16 students have also visited  Cevantes Theatre, St Paul’s Cathedral, The BFI, Southbank, Rio Cinema, Queen Mary University, The Royal Opera House and even London Zoo!

Meanwhile, Geography students have undertaken their fieldwork in Amersham and High Wycombe, and our Boys’ and Girls’ Achievement groups have enjoyed trips to the Science Museum and Wembley Stadium.

Along with our many pastoral reward trips, we have undertaken no fewer than 34 trips this term alone with many more planned for after Easter.

Library Update

In the library we always try to encourage pupils to read a diverse range of books and regularly update our displays to reflect significant days, themes and seasonal events. These displays are always a great way for pupils to discover books and authors they would not normally read.

Accessit Library  

Our Library catalogue, Accessit, is a wonderful way for pupils to get to know what books are available in the library. The Accessit home page is updated regularly - recent themes included Valentine’s Day and World Book Day. By signing in pupils can check what books they have on loan and reserve books. You can view the library catalogue here. By signing in to the library catalogue pupils can also take responsibility for their own books, ensuring they know what books they have on loan and when they are due back.

As part of their Accelerated Reader lessons, all students in Year 7 & 8 recently completed a STAR reading test. The average reading age for Year 7's rose by 3 months since their first STAR reading test in September, while for Year 8's the average reading age also rose by 3 months. Reading is so important in all aspects of life, and we encourage all our pupils to borrow books from the library and read for at least 20 minutes every day.

Whole School Reading

We recently celebrated the achievements of the seven Year 8 students who had taken part in the family buddy reading programme.  Year 12 student volunteers stayed after school each Wednesday for eight weeks, to support the selected students with their confidence in reading aloud, helping them to master pronunciation and improve their vocabulary.  This was preceded by a training session for parents, to support their skills and confidence in reading with their children at home. Most of the Year 8’s improved their reading ages as a result, which is a superb achievement.         

Students in Year 7 and 8 enjoy reading a shared book, weekly, during form time, with their form tutors.  Year 8’s have just finished reading ‘You are a Champion’ by Marcus Rashford, and Year 7s are now reading ‘Notting Hill: A West Side Story', by Candice Carty-Williams. Year 9’s will start their shared form time reading book after Easter. 

In the summer term we are looking forward to Year 12 ‘Greenford Read’, our whole school book club. We will be reading ‘We Move’, a collection of short stories by former Greenford student, Gurnaik Johal.

As it fell on a strike day this year, Greenford High School will celebrate World Book Day in May. 

Sports Round Up

It’s been a busy term already in PE with football, basketball, netball, badminton and table tennis fixtures aplenty, not to mention the numerous lunchtime and after school clubs that run every week.

Ms. Rayner continues to pull together a richly varied extracurricular programme that offers our students so many opportunities to enrich their time here at GHS.  Attendance at PE clubs has been great, so much so we’ve had students knocking on the door asking for more opportunities.

Ms. Kelly took responsibility for running a fantastic netball tournament for the borough, where we hosted 14 other teams across 3 courts.  A huge amount of work went into covering all potential logistical challenges, resulting in a day that ran like clockwork.

Our PE trainee Mr. Majevadia has put in a huge amount of work developing our badminton players this term, culminating in our Year 10 boys, Year 11 girls and Year 11 boys winning a borough badminton tournament hosted at Dormers Wells Leisure Centre

Finally Mr. Moors took a group of Year 7 and 8 students to the West London Schools Table Tennis Championships.  The students were incredibly excited about the opportunity and did themselves and the school proud.  A special shout out to Inza Mohsin who won her group and will now have the chance to compete at the National Championships.

There have been trips aplenty as we rewarded our Year 9 sports leaders with a bowling trip, whilst those students who have shown a great attitude to learning in PE have been mini-golfing and escape-rooming.
 

Students Meet Bukayo Saka

A small group of Year 7 students were delighted to meet Bukayo Saka at the Arsenal Stadium back in January. Not only did they meet the world-famous football star, who of course, is an ex-student of ours, but they also got to grill him and ask him a range of questions about his own general knowledge - some of which he didn’t know the answers to!  This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and we are so thankful to Bukayo for being his usual lovely, friendly, entertaining self, but we’re also so proud of our students who were such great ambassadors for the school on the day and were featured in a Sky Sports news clip!

Post 16 News

It has been a busy term in the world of Post 16. We have had a series of important mock examinations - for both Year 12 and Year 13 students - in the first half-term. Alongside this, we have seen many students sit important BTEC examinations. The interim reports coupled with the parents’ evenings that have taken place this term have created a motivational buzz upstairs in Post 16, and Year 13s and Year 12s alike are buckling down to their studies with a renewed ambition. 

There has been a flurry of community-minded activity from our students, and it was particularly lovely to see some of our Year 12 students visiting girls’ achievement forms lower down the school to discuss motivation, revision, and how to go about the stressful process of examinations successfully. Year 12 students have been offering support and advice to many lower school students over the past year through presentations, after school tutoring, reading support, lunchtime playground support and in class lesson support. Netball has started with much excitement on Friday afternoons, and the boys’ basketball team is training hard with some successful matches under their belts already. One group of Year 12s also presented their views on current events at the University of West London, testing their courage and public speaking skills.

The number of clubs and societies run by Post 16 students continues to be impressive; ranging from The Debating society, to Literature Society, Law Society, the Medicine Society and of course the ever popular Chess club. All Post 16 students have the opportunity to continue to develop their research skills through the Extended Project Qualification, and we are delighted that more trips and visits are planned for the summer term.

Year 13 have been working incredibly hard in the run-up to their final submissions and exams. Over 210 UCAS applications were sent off this year with some wonderful offers being made from a wide number of Russell Group universities, including: Imperial College, UCL, Bristol University, KCL, Nottingham, Manchester, Durham, St Andrews, Warwick and many others. We are also delighted to have had seven offers from Oxford and Cambridge being made, after successful interviews in December: 

• Maisah Kabir & Zoe Gordon - Medicine at Oxford (right)
• Jasveen Motizda & Thisha Sivakumar - Engineering at Cambridge (below)
• Jenusiya Jeyaseelan - Biochemistry at Oxford
• Antwone Andrews- Law at Oxford,
• Maria Lightfoot-Boston - Literature at Oxford (below)
• Saba Khan and Eeman Shakeel both pooled with potential offers this summer

International Mother Language Day

On 21st February, we celebrated International Mother Language Day with our forms. Students were proud to share with their classmates how many languages they speak at home, which in some cases is, impressively, more than four! We also completed a quiz about different (and unusual) languages spoken around the world. Did you know that over 7000 languages exist across the globe? We are extremely fortunate and proud that over sixty of those are spoken in our school! 

DT – Greenpower Race Team update

Team Viper are GHS’s own group of 8 Year 12 students (Oscar Urban, Salah Altaleb, Karan Brar, Laith Chaman, Sageethan Dayananthan, Bavneet Sehra and Sujith Suriyakumaran), involved in the Greenpower IET Formula 24+ Race competition. This competition is not only fun but provides a chance to boost students’ career and educational opportunities in Science,Technology, Maths and Engineering (STEM). Students are designing, building and racing an electric car for Greenpower Race events nationally. 

Team Viper have progressed well with their electric car ‘Medusa’ to be ready for the IET Formula 24+ Championship. The construction and engineering elements of the car have been completed, and it ran like a dream when they tested it on the school grounds a few weeks ago. The team are currently putting the finishing touches to the body work and then they will be ‘race ready’ for April 24th when they are competing at Mallory Park Racing Circuit in Leicestershire. We can’t wait!

Student Voices Bring About Changes in School

At Greenford High School, listening to students is extremely important. Students are able to feedback things that they are concerned about through their form reps, who then meet with Year Leaders each half term. Any ideas or feedback which comes through these channels are then discussed by the Senior Leadership Team, and we then decide what we can do to make things better. 
Recent changes that have come directly out of Student Voice have included:

• providing more notice to students about key events happening in school;
• providing assemblies on aspects that students have said they want covered; 
• allowing students to choose the prizes they would like for rewards;
• making the systems for collecting character points easier to navigate;
• organising anti-racism workshops;
• organising respect workshops;
• improving the lunchtime experience for students;
• improving the availability of spaces for students who wish to undertake prayer.

In the past year, aspects of school life we have improved or introduced as a result of listening to our students include:

• ‘international day’, which we ran last Summer;
• opening the lecture theatre for Year 11 students at lunchtime;
• increasing the number of clubs in school;
• increasing the number of organised trips;
• introducing more reward afternoons;
• improving the food offer in the canteen;
• providing halal food every day in the canteen;
• revising and improving our bullying processes so that students better understand what we do to stamp out bullying.

Show My Homework

For those of you who are actively engaging with ‘Show My Homework’ on a regular basis we’d like to say a very big thank-you as your support makes a huge difference in helping students develop their independent learning at home.

As you will know, ‘Show My Homework’ allows you to see all the tasks that have been assigned for your child via a mobile phone app, along with any accompanying resources, and deadlines for when they need to be submitted to their teachers. 

Those of you who attended a parents’ evening this term will have received a letter about how to access ‘Show My Homework’, and we’ll email all parents again before the holiday with reminder details - it’s very straightforward to set up and use!

We’re also planning to make more use of the Satchel: One app that incorporates ‘Show My Homework’ and, currently, we’re trialling the new Behaviour module. 

If you’re already signed up, this will mean you should soon start to receive notifications whenever your child is awarded Character Points by a member of staff - another way of keeping you updated about their progress in school.

So please don’t miss out on receiving this instant feedback about your child and download the Satchel One app today. To do this, simply visit your mobile phone app store - either the Apple App Store or Google Play and search for ‘Satchel One’. Then enter the unique parent code that is on your letter / email about ‘Show My Homework’ and, from there, follow the on-screen instructions.  

Super-talented GHS Staff!

We are fortunate to have a whole host of talented staff here at GHS, but wanted to share news about a couple of our staff who are doing amazing things outside of school. Firstly, good luck to Ms Shah from Science who is running the London Marathon this year and raising important funds for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. We also wanted to celebrate Ms Chong who prior to her maternity leave was successful in gaining an award from The Royal Society of Literature who have now commissioned her to write a ‘choose your own adventure’ book, and then work with a select group of students to write their own!