Dear Parents and Carers

It has been great to welcome the new children and families who have joined The Ridge in Reception this term. We have been amazed by how smoothly they have settled into school and how quickly they have made friends. They have all enjoyed meeting their Year 6 buddies, who have risen admirably to the task of helping our newest pupils feel part of The Ridge family.  Well done Reception and well done to Year 6.

We are now well into the routines of the school year and a number of enhancement activities have begun.  Mr Yates is back running Forest School, Year 4 have had their first clarinet lesson and have been swimming and the first group of pupils from Year 5 have visited Pens Meadow Special School in Wordsley with Miss Thompson. To keep up to date with all that your child is doing in school, please make sure that you watch the ‘What Your Child is Learning’ videos for this term which were uploaded to Class Dojo last Friday.

Years 3 and 4 are off on residential to Astley Burf next week, accompanied by Mrs Hadley, Mrs Jarrott, Miss Wesson Mrs Evans and Mr Lamb. We wish them a fun and, fingers crossed, a dry few days!

Kind regards

Mrs D Hudson

Headteacher

On Tuesday 24^th September the photographer will be in school to take individual and sibling portraits. Any children who have PE on the day can come in standard uniform and bring their kit to change in to after they have been photographed.

There is no forest school next week for Years 2 and 5. Mr Yates is unavailable but this happily coincided with the date we had booked for the photographer.

Subject to Governor Approval, Monday 18^th November will be an INSET Day. School will be closed to children on this day whilst staff spend time further developing the curriculum in the foundation subjects.

• On the last newsletter we wrote that children need to bring a water bottle to school each day to keep hydrated in the classroom. However this must be filled with water, only - no squash, fruit juice or other flavoured drinks. They can however have these drinks as part of their lunch. As a Health promoting school, fresh fruit is the only snack allowed at breaktimes and lunch boxes should not contain chocolate bars. ( a chocolate coated biscuit - e.g. a kitkat - is acceptable).
• We have spoken to the children about swapping food with others. Please reinforce this with your child so that they know that they must only eat the food provided for them from home or the meal ordered for them. Thank you.

The school’s governing board is a bit like a board of directors. With the headteacher, the governors have overall responsibility for the strategic running of the school.

Governing bodies have three core strategic functions:

• Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction;
• Holding the headteacher to account for the educational performance of the school and its pupils; and
• Overseeing the financial performance of the school and making sure its money is well spent.

The board is made up of representatives elected by the parents, a representative elected by the staff, a Local Authority Governor and members co-opted onto the board because of their relevant knowledge, skills or experience.

We have two vacancies for co-opted governors and welcome expressions of interest from members of the local community to join the board. No special qualifications are needed and the most important thing is to have a keen interest in the school and be prepared to play an active part in the governing body’s work. However, we would particularly welcome nominations of people with the following skills:

• Experience of building management
• HR experience

 If you know anyone who may be suitable (for example a grandparent, neighbour, colleague) please speak to Mrs Hudson.

We are working with Dudley Performing Arts (DPA) to provide music lessons in school. September is a fantastic time to start learning an instrument and lessons can start straightaway for as little as £8.50 a week.  The team at DPA have decades of experience and are the biggest provider of music education in our area. If you would like your child to start music lessons simply click on the link below for more information about enrolling. 

Learning a musical instrument or to sing is a great thing for young people to do. It can help in all sorts of ways and research suggests that it can help children develop academically and socially.  Lessons take place in school making it easy to fit in around your busy family lives. 

https://www.dudley.gov.uk/things-to-do/dudley-performing-arts/information-for-parents-and-young-people/music-lessons-in-schools/ 

We are busy preparing for our Harvest celebrations which take place in a couple of weeks’ time.  As has become our tradition, we will be collecting donations for the Black Country Food Bank.

These are the food items that we would love you to donate:

• Milk UHT or powder, preferably semi-skimmed
• Sugar (500g/1kg)
• Breakfast Cereal (preferably non-sugared)
• Fruit Juice 1L carton long life
• Squash/Cordial
• Jars Instant Coffee (small)
• Tea bags
• Instant Hot Chocolate (preferably to be made with water)
• Pasta Sauce/Cooking Sauces
• Tinned or Carton Tomatoes
• Pasta/Rice/Cous Cous (500g/1kg)
• Packets of Instant Noodles
• Baked Beans
• Tinned Spaghetti
• Tinned Soup
• Tinned Vegetables
• Potato Instant Mash or tinned
• Tinned Meat/Fish
• Tinned ready meals (meat and vegetarian)
• Tinned Pies
• Tinned Fruit (in juice preferably)
• Tinned or carton Rice Pudding/Sponge Pudding/Custard
• Biscuits, Crackers, Crispbreads
• Jam/Marmalade
• Healthy Snacks (Raisins, Apricots, etc)

These are the non-food items:

• Can Opener
• Soap
• Shower Gel
• Shampoo/Conditioner
• Deodorant
• Anti-Bac Hand Gel/Handwash
• Tooth Brush/Toothpaste
• Children’s Toothbrush/Paste
• Flannel/Sponge
• Tissues (small packs)
• Nappies (all sizes)
• Baby Wipes
• Baby Lotion
• Baby Wash/Shampoo
• Sanitary Towels/Tampons
• Toilet Roll
• Washing Up Liquid

Our assemblies will be held on Friday 4^th October. For fire safety purposes we are repeating the assembly and ask that where possible’, you attended the relevant assembly to the key stage of your child. (If you have children in both key stages please come whenever is most convenient) Year 4 will only be taking part in the afternoon assembly as they are swimming in the morning.

• 10.00 a.m. Harvest – Rec and KS1 Parents
• 2.00 p.m. Harvest – KS2 

We look forward to seeing you.

After a lot of fundraising last year, we finally managed to buy a Nintendo Switch last summer for the younger children to play with in the hall.  We were very lucky to be donated an Xbox by Mr Smith (dad of Henry in Y5) which the older children love to use.  Unfortunately, when we returned from the summer break, we found that one of our two Xbox controllers no longer works. As we are busier than ever, there are a lot of children queuing for their turn – so we would like to appeal to your generosity.  If anyone has an Xbox One controller they no longer use, and you would be happy to donate it, our children would be very grateful.  Unwanted games for the Switch would also be given a loving new home!

Thank you for your support,

Jane Evans and the OSCAR team.

This Weeks attendance 

Whole School - 95.83%

Reception - 96.42%

Year 1 – 98.21%

Year 2 – 93.23%

Year 3 – 98.57%

Year 4 – 98.27%

Year 5 – 88.10%

Year 6 – 97.26%

Well done Year 3!

As noted in the last newsletter, our Attendance Policy has recently been reviewed and will be uploaded to the School Website, following approval by the governors at their meeting next week.

We would like to take the opportunity to highlight the section in the policy about informing the school of any unplanned absences.

The child’s parent/carer must notify the school of the reason for the absence on the first day of an unplanned absence by 08:45 or as soon as practically possible by contacting the school. This can be done as follows:

• Use the ParentMail app (preferred method)
• From 08:30, phone the main school office on 01384 818800 and speak to a member of the Office staff.

Thank you for your support with this.

Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility. Mrs Hudson is the Designated Safeguarding Lead and any concerns should be shared with her or the Deputy Safeguarding Leads – Mrs Hadley and Ms Gledhill.  Where child protection concerns are raised, the school has a statutory duty to refer these concerns to children’s social care.

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