Community Connect Parent Newsletter - December 2022

Dear Parents and Carers,

What a wonderful term it has been with another very full calendar of events and activities. You will see many of these detailed in the newsletter below, and I hope you will take the time to browse through. Attending school is about many things; primarily, of course, it is about learning and progressing towards high academic excellence, however it is also about so much more - developing physically as a result of sport, pursuing talents in art, music and drama, developing as a person and learning how to make the best decisions for yourself and others, and of course, making friends and having a positive experience in school.

At Greenford, we strive to do all of these things, and encourage students to push themselves and take part in as many activities as possible, and to always try their very best with their learning.  I am thrilled that so many students are doing so well in all areas of school life, and I only have to walk around school, observe students in lessons, talk to them about their experiences and look at their character passports, to see how brilliantly they are doing.

Now that we have (almost!) fully recovered from the impact of Covid, we are also keen to continue to develop better links with parents. To this end, we have run a number of events this term and I want to thank all of the parents who have attended Expectations Evenings, the Year 7 Tutors’ Evenings, Parents’ Evenings that have already happened, the Year 8 social media evening, coffee mornings for various invited parents and a number of other events including our upcoming Winter Concert. Thank you also to the parents who have responded to some of the surveys we have sent out to specific year groups. Your support and input is very much appreciated.

I do wish you all a very restful and pleasant Christmas break and look forward to seeing you at future events in the Spring term.

Mia Pye
Headteacher

Post 16 News

Over 120 students have submitted their UCAS applications and are eagerly awaiting the responses from their five chosen universities. This number will almost double by the time the application window closes in January. Again, this year, we boast an incredibly impressive set of applications to the leading universities in the world and we are excited to report that seven students have been invited to interview at Oxford University and a further six students at Cambridge University! In addition, seven students have been invited to interview for medicine.

The post Christmas period is a crucial assessment point for Post 16 with Year 12 mock exams, a full Year 13 mock season and formal BTEC examinations all taking place in January. Students should be using a substantial part of the holiday period to revise.

Community coffee morning

Thank you to all our students and families involved in the community coffee morning this week (see pictures below). Our Post-16 students spoke brilliantly and it was a great opportunity to talk through current challenges and hear things from a student perspective. We are always keen to hear feedback and questions from parents and carers so we can help all of our students to make progress and enjoy school. Thanks to all of our staff who make events like this happen!

Year 11 working hard in crucial year

Year 11 is a crucial year in the lives of our students because they sit the exams that will shape their future paths. We have been working hard to support students in their journey showing them that, through hard work, they can achieve great things. We have been offering different interventions that are helping students build the knowledge and resilience:

• Studio 11 runs Monday - Wednesday for a cohort of invited students who work through bespoke tasks designed to help them improve in English, Maths and Science.
• First round of mock exams for all subjects have been completed. 
• Departments have offered targeted tuition after school.
• Form tutors have been discussing revision timetables and revision strategies.

We also held a coffee morning for parents of Year 11 (see picture below) featuring some of our Post-16 students and their top tips included: establishing good routines, getting a good night's sleep, limiting the use of social media, creating a revision timetable together and displaying it somewhere visible and finding ways to reward to help motivate.

Show my Homework

We are really pleased to report an increasing number of parents who regularly make use of our online homework platform that helps you to support your child’s home learning. 

‘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. You can find the app in your regular app store or can log in through the website here. 

It’s a great tool that empowers you to play an active part in your child’s education so, if you haven’t downloaded it yet, or if you’ve not signed up to the really useful notifications feature, we urge you to do so. 

We’ll email all parents before the holiday with a reminder about how to access ‘Show My Homework’, giving you a great opportunity to start the New Year in a really positive way!

Former Greenford student presents ITV News!

Our former student - and former presenter of GHS News - Raheem Rashid has made his debut behind the desk presenting the ITV Central lunchtime news. Expect to see Raheem presenting the ITV News at Ten sooner rather than later - he's been honing his skills since he was 14 and presenting from outside B Block! 

You can follow Raheem on Twitter @RaheemRashid 

Greenford students compete in national chess tournament

We were delighted that our students attended a national chess tournament all the way over in Southend and performed spectacularly, coming second overall! This is a huge achievement, as most of the students competing were from independent schools, but as usual, GHS had the edge!  Thank you to our wonderful teachers Mr Hirtzel and Mr Al-Musawi, who run chess club for a large, enthusiastic group of students each week. Everyone’s efforts are obviously paying off!

Year 8 Social Media Awareness

We were pleased to run a social media awareness evening for Year 8 students and parents on Thursday 8 December 2022. Thank you to all parents who attended. This is an important area to navigate with teenagers and although difficult, it is crucial that as teachers and parents, we educate ourselves about the dangers that social media can present.

As parents, there are a number of steps we can take including checking privacy settings, monitoring the content of group chats and limiting screen time. One of the most important things to insist on in the home is keeping mobile phones outside of bedrooms, especially at bedtime when children need to wind down and sleep. As problems and falling out with others in group chats can also happen later on in the evening, minimising use at this time is also important to support your child’s mental wellbeing.

You can watch the video presentation from the awareness evening on our website here.

Art & Photography exhibition

There was a lovely celebration of our hardworking Art and Photography students with a winter exhibition on Wednesday. It was lovely to see students so proud and excited to share their work in the Art studio!

Building character

At GHS, one of our key aims is to instil a sense of character in all of our students, and help them to demonstrate the key character strengths of courage, community, compassion, responsibility and resilience. Students have had a number of assemblies this year already focusing on various topics linked to community and compassion, including mental health, black history, remembrance, anti-bullying and community expectations, to name a few. We are also encouraging students to complete their ‘Character Passports’ - a full passport and ongoing demonstration of character strengths will enable students to be considered for a reward trip later on in the year.

Trips and Visits

We have had a wonderful array of trips happening this year already. In total, we have run 25 trips since September, and already have a further 9 trips in the calendar for when we come back after Christmas.  The trips have ranged from various theatre visits, Somerset House, Cadbury World, Overstrand Hall in Norfolk, the Houses of Parliament (where students actually saw the recently crowned King drive past!), Sky Academy studios, the Courtald Gallery, Tate Modern and Westminster Abbey, DT trips to the Excel Centre and Castle Coombe circuit.

Library news

We had a great start to the autumn term! For Year 7s, Roald Dahl Day meant Golden Tickets… In the year 7 I-Block library five books were tagged with a Golden Ticket alert. If a pupil borrows one of the special books, once they are returned the pupil will win a prize. So far only three prizes have been won, so the competition will run across the year until all prizes are claimed!

In the main library the Banned Books Week gained lots of attention. This was a display of books (right) that have been banned or challenged in other countries. Some classics such as To Kill A Mockingbird and Of Mice And Men have been banned in some states in the USA for their content, while a Goosebumps book was challenged for being too scary! It’s important to remember that if a book has challenging content, it can open a discussion about that topic, leading to a better understanding and appreciation that not all people have the same opinions.

The library displays change all the time - as well as highlighting banned books, there have been displays for Black History Month (right), Halloween and Remembrance Day, with more to come! It’s also worth checking out the library catalogue, as this is used to highlight events in the library calendar. 

Living Library

Each week, either in the I-Block library or the main B Block library, members of staff read to pupils. The aim is to bring books to life, hence the term Living Library. We have had a wide range of readings, including the story of Diwali, the Diary of Anne Frank and Geek Girl by Holly Smale. The I-Block library readings are only for Year 7, but the B block Living Library is for all year groups, so please encourage your child to attend.

eBook Library

As well as having two well stocked libraries in school, we also have an eBook library. The website for this is greenford.eplatform.co 

From here pupils can download an app to read books on their phone, a tablet, or they can read the books on a computer. The username and password has been emailed to pupils, but if there are any queries, pupils can email ghslib@greenford.ealing.sch.uk

Accelerated Reader

All pupils in Year 7 & 8 have Accelerated Reader lessons, where they read a book and then take a quiz on it. We expect all pupils doing Accelerated Reader to read and quiz regularly. The links to take a quiz are on the library page of the school VLE and on the Year 7 & 8 Google Classroom pages for Accelerated Reader.

Overdue Library Books

We currently have a number of pupils who have overdue library books. We email both the pupils and home on a regular basis, asking for the return of these books. Please remind your child to return their library books, so that other pupils can read it. If a book has been lost it must be paid for – for ease we can add the cost of the lost book to ParentPay.

Sports news

Both the Netball and Football seasons from Year 7-13 are well under way, with some wins, draws and losses, but great sportspersonship from all!

We’ve hosted the Senior and Year 10 Netball tournaments for the borough, where students have worked hard to get through the group stages. We're currently hosting Indoor Athletics festivals for Year 7s and 8s. Year 7 boys came 3rd and Year 8 girls came 2nd! Most notably, 15 Sports Leader students from Year 9 have been the backbone of these festivals, where they have been trained as Sports Leaders and have run and organised these events.

Now that the weather is getting colder, a reminder that students can wear a plain black long sleeved top underneath their GHS PE shirt or a plain black pair of sports leggings under their GHS shorts.

Greenford student is published author!

We were delighted to learn that star student Rooda Ahmed has had her short story published in a book.

Rooda’s short story was published in a book called ‘Twisted Tales’ and the publishers chose her story along with a number of stories from students in other schools. It is wonderful to have one of our students as a published writer!

Bukayo Saka media round up

With some scintillating performances for England in the World Cup in Qatar, it was no surprise to see plenty of media interest in our former student Bukayo Saka. Mr Sagoo and Mr Harvey were interviewed on BBC Radio London and Mr Harvey also spoke to the Telegraph amongst other newspapers.