Week of Feb 26 – Mar 2

Hello Ridgemount Families:

We had a great assembly at Ridgemount this week. We unveiled our new school logo which was created by one of our students and shared our new school cheer. We reviewed our school rules and our talked about our new school initiatives (Ridgemount Road to Success and Learning Skills and Work Habits Posters and awareness). We will be asking our students to create 5 school expectations to design this Road to Success and will then post these and make them a regular part of our school day to encourage positive culture and well being throughout the school. Soon we will have Learning Skills Assemblies to share presentations to show what these learning skills look like, how we can demonstrate and put them into action and then celebrate those making progress with their learning skills and work habits by giving out certificates to these students.

Our students did a fantastic job in the assembly which lasted almost an entire hour. Well done Roadrunners!! Thanks to the school staff assembly committee for organizing a fabulous assembly! Please be sure to ask your children about some of the messages from the assembly and support our school initiatives by

We are proud of our Dance Crew as they performed both at the board level and for all of us at the school. Thanks to Ms. Davies and our student participants.

A special thanks to our School Support EA and all of our school EA’s (Educational Assistants) for all of their work with our Nutrition Program. The students are really enjoying the healthy snacks. Ms. Manson and Mr., Swinarchin are also introducing our Wampum Belt and our awareness of our Indigenous traditions and cultures. We look forward to sharing and having some of our community/family members in to share their stories and wisdom.

A reminder that this Friday is a PD DAY so there will be no school for students. The staff will be engaged in Continuous Leaning and Improvement in the area of Math, Positive Culture and Well Being and sharing our instructional strategies. Thanks to the PD team for organizing this day!

Our By Law Enforcement Officers have been coming by the school so please be sure to adhere to the signs posted at the front and side of the school. Be sure to not block the bus loading zones as those violating could be ticketed and we do want to ensure the safety of all students. Please support us by making sure students are on time so they do not miss their buses and by encouraging those that can walk to school to please do so. A reminder to continue to talk to students about bus safety as we continue to hear from drivers that there are occasionally issues. We apologize for the buses that have arrived late this last month. We are continuing to share our concerns and will continue to address these issues with our Transportation Department. 

Thanks also to our Green Team for continuing with their audit of our recycling. They are doing a marvelous job of building capacity and awareness of the program throughout our school and contributing to our achievement towards being the best ECO school that we can be. Well done Green Team!!

We also have had our Gr 3 and Gr 6 After School Scholars Program

starting up this week and next week and these programs will run on Mondays and Wednesdays for the next 10 weeks.  Some of our students will be working in these programs on improving their math skills in preparation for EQAO coming up in May. Thanks to our 3 scholars teachers – Ms. Murray, Ms. Warrick and Ms. Williams for giving some of our students this incredible opportunity!

Next week we have our Community Liason Officer coming in to meet with our grade 8 students to discuss making good choices and keeping safe. Officer Dinning will also join in on a few of our Social Skills groups that we are now running and will plan some future visits with other grades to talk about issues involving making good choices, keeping safe and healthy and increasing our awareness of how to address bullying, digital citizenship and street safety to name a few.

Upcoming events also include Ridgemount Chocolate Sales fundrasier, Grade 6-8 Oral Communication / Speech Festival, Girls and Boys Soccer Tournaments. Stay tuned for more updates and information in next weeks posts. March Break is from March 12-16. 

Have a great week everyone !

Mr. Carey – Principal