It is an absolute pleasure to be writing to you at the end of our first full week back. For all of our new families, of students in Year 7 or Year 12, I extend a particularly warm welcome. As Greenshaw’s headteacher I aim to write home most Fridays with a few highlights from the last week, giving a sense of how the week has been and sharing some stories of the previous five days.

Please continue to use the school website for important information around term dates, parents’ evenings and contact the school whenever necessary. My weekly letter is not a bulletin about all events in the coming week, more to give families a flavour of what the last week has been like in school. I also use this letter to celebrate achievements, and nominate our ‘Stars of the Week’ from each year group. On occasion, students might also achieve great things outside of school - please never hesitate to let me know of these things at nhouse@greenshaw.co.uk so we can congratulate the student in school.

Students of the week

Our congratulations go to our stars of the week listed below for their commitment, focus and sense of drive in our first week and a half back at school. Well done to all!

Year 7	Year 8	Year 9	Year 10	Year 11	6th Form
Max	tbc	Dristi	Kaya	Shammah	Abbie / Erin

Building work

All families, new or old, will be aware that we have exciting plans for a rebuild of several of our oldest and least positive buildings. The area to the north of our site, next to Rosehill Grove, is hoarded off as our contractors make preparations for our temporary accommodation that will allow the rebuild to start in earnest, around next summer term.

One thing we have worked really hard on over the summer is creating additional PE spaces internally, to replace the astro turf sports pitch where the temporary accommodation will be. Over the summer we have created two new internal spaces to make sure our sport and fitness work can continue unabated.

e have fitted out a new Spin Studio. We have repainted a large room, added air conditioning and strong audio facilities to recreate a space for exercise bikes that would not feel out of place in a private gym. Along the same corridor we have knocked three classrooms into one large Fitness Suite, where we have weights and gym equipment as well as floor mats for pilates and other body conditioning activities. Although the building project will take some of our outdoor space for a short time, we have created replacement facilities inside.

These are permanent changes, so students will continue to benefit from these, even after we have the outside spaces returned. 

Outdoor PE

To make sure our students have a varied experience of sports, as well as fitness work, we have decided to use local sports centres for students in Years 7 and 8. On Tuesday many of our Year 8 students took part in their first off site PE lesson of the year. In total, fourteen Physical Education lessons took place across our local community where students participated in a range of activities including badminton, volleyball, football, fitness and swimming. I am very proud that our PE department can provide our students with new and enriching experiences in high quality facilities. This will enable us to ensure that students continue to experience a broad and balanced PE curriculum, despite the works happening on our site.

Extra-curricular clubs

The extra-curricular clubs timetable has gone live today which students can sign up to via Frog. By clicking the ‘Clubs’ button on Frog, students can view a range of videos explaining what each club has to offer. We are very pleased to be offering clubs before and after school in a variety of subjects ranging from Food, MFL, Wild Readers book club, Chess and our extensive PE activity programme. 

Attendance

I am really proud that attendance at Greenshaw has always been well ahead of the national average over the last few years, and this first full week has seen very high levels of attendance. I will be writing separately to you at the start of next week reminding you about our processes for reporting absence, and more importantly why strong attendance is so important.

School emails

Please note that due to a system change the school’s sending email address will change from              no-reply@greenshawhigh.co.uk to 14067@bromcomcloud.com during next week. Please add 14067@bromcomcloud.com to your email contacts so that school emails don't get directed to Spam folders. Please note that if you press reply to this email address the school will not receive your response.

Education Wellbeing Service - Supporting your teenager’s mental health 

Please find here information regarding the many free online webinars being offered to parents/carers throughout this academic year. Scan the QR code for further information and to book onto one of these workshops. 

At the end of a chilly first week back I would like to thank all of our families for their support. Your children have been a pleasure to have back: smartly presented, polite, hard working and with brilliant attendance. I hope you all have restful weekends, and I look forward to many more weeks of this school year like this one.

Mr N House, Headteacher