The Spring Term has brought us some fantastic achievements at Maidensbridge, particularly with our reading skills and love of books. I have been writing countless certificates for children who have read between 50,000 and 1,000000 words since September in KS2. Well done to all children who have received one of these.  I am also extremely proud of the year 2 children who have  worked so hard with their phonics, despite disruptions and 81% of the class were able to  successfully pass their phonics screening check. There is also a small group of Year 2 children who have started on the accelerated reader program early, due to their fantastic achievements in reading! How many words can you read before Easter?

I was also very proud to give out librarian badges this week to a small group of children in KS2, who are our reading ambassadors.  They are going to keep our books areas tidy and organised as well as make book recommendations for the children, as they make their reading choices.

This term we will be enjoying World Book Day dressed as our favourite character on Thursday 3rd March. We also have a group of children who are busy preparing for the Dudley Book Quiz by reading the key texts and practicing questions, hoping for victory and to be named reading champions! Good luck!

We will be inviting you again this term to a Parent 'Book Look' where you will be able to come to school and see your children's books, and the learning they have been doing this term. This will
be the evening of Thursday 3rd March. We will then follow this with Teams Meetings on the evenings of Monday 7th March and Tuesday 8th March for you to be able to book an appointment with your child's teacher. We will be releasing these appointments before half term.

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week for children and as part of this important recognition for our children’s feelings we are taking part in a live singing event with Dudley Performing Arts.

Singing has been missing for so long from school life due to the Covid restrictions and there has been much research completed to suggest that ‘singing’ can lift a person’s mood and can create positive feelings.

Therefore, Dudley Performing Arts are putting together an event on Friday 11th February at 11am called ‘Harmony’. This will include schools, children, parents all over Dudley all coming together to share a song for good mental health. The children will be coming home with a sticker and certificate to show that they have taken part.

If you would also like to take part, I will be putting the youtube video on Teams for you to learn the song at home and then you can tune in at 11am from wherever you are to join our singing.

Let’s spread the happiness!

Thank you to all of the parents for completing our OFSTED Parent View questionnaire, we were pleased to receive 145 responses and I will be sharing the results with parents before half term. We really appreciate your input to school-life so that we can all work together to be the best we can be.

Reception 93%

Year 1 94%

Year 2 96%

Year 3 97%

Year 4 98%

Year 5 95%

Year 6 94%

Please remember that if anyone in your household displays the symptoms of coronavirus

· a new persistent cough

· a high temperature

· a loss of taste and smell

you must not send your child/children into school, the child must isolate until PCR test results are received. Please call the office to inform us and then let us know the outcome of the result.

If your child is considered a close contact of a positive case for Covid-19, we will inform you and we will ask for 7 days of lateral flow tests to be completed every morning before school so that we can try to reduce transmission in school.

When a class reaches the threshold of 10% of positive cases, we will refer to our Outbreak Plan which can be found on the school website.

Thank you everyone for your support for Numbers Day last week. Some of the children had amazingly creative costumes and brilliant handmade t-shirts, we were very impressed!

Well done parents! We raised £160 for this worthy cause. We also raised awareness of maths and gave the children some ideas about what jobs they could do in the future involving numbers.

Good luck to our children who are competing in Netball this Friday against Church of Ascension and to our Cross-Country runners who are competing at Summerhill next Thursday

Can I please remind parents that we need to make sure that we keep all children as safe as possible when they are arriving and leaving school. These safety measures include pedestrians walking on the pathways provided not down the driveway which is for vehicles, no dogs on site and careful parking in our surrounding streets. Thank you for your support and helping us to avoid accidents.

Watch this space! We will be launching our new website very soon which will also include improved
communication systems with parents. We will be looking for some volunteer parents to tell us what
they think before it goes live!

Please call: 0300 555 0050

If you are concerned about a child’s welfare please speak to a DSL in school, or call Children’s Social Care on the number above.