Principal's Message

Hi Everyone,

We are over halfway through the term now!  I am off to the Year 4 camp this week, Wednesday to Friday.  It is on the Sunshine Coast this time, so much warmer than Canberra!  I look forward to being with all of the year 4 children and the staff.  Thank you to Mrs Griffin. She is the principal in my absence, which allows me to have this wonderful opportunity.

Our NAPLAN data has now been put into Education Queensland’s data system SORD  (School Online Reporting Dashboard) and so it is nice and easy to look at.  For those of you who are interested in looking at our whole school NAPLAN data, please come along to our next P&C Meeting on Tuesday 26th August at 6:30pm, where I will go through it all.  Ironside State School continues to perform incredibly well and compares favourably in our region, state and nation; so congratulations to our hard working children and staff.  The areas where we are currently professionally developing as a staff, match where we can see we need to be continuing to put our undivided attention.  Last week Mrs Griffin and I attended the Leading Reading Implementation Masterclass professional development and it was excellent and matches with what we are currently doing in terms of staff development currently.

It was great to get some incoming parents along for our 2026 Prep Information Night!  Remember, if you know of people who would like to enrol our children at Ironside for 2026, it is important they contact our school as soon as possible for planning purposes.  Thank you to Mrs Tara Griffin for being the host with the most, we have had wonderful feedback about your presentation!

I let our children in Year 5 and 6 know that I was looking for a team to run our new Lost Property Shop (no money exchanges hands of course!) and I have got a great little team doing this important work; huge thank you to them  -  Legends of the Lost!  Please, please help us out and name every last thing that your children bring to school. 

Congratulations to all of our children who received STAR awards last week, what a huge achievement!  Again, listening to the accompanying reasons why is so heart-warming.  It must be so tough for teachers to pick these recipients out of all of our wonderful students.

Thank you to the 6 ’strings’ playing girls who came together and did an outstanding job entertaining us on assembly; just incredible yet again.  This week we have the Junior Strings at our P-3 Merit Assembly.

Our Peer Mediators are always doing such wonderful work around our school and it is always a treat when they talk to us on assembly about what one of our STAR Values looks like in action.  Thank you to all of our wonderful Peer Mediators!

We also got to congratulate some wonderful students who work endlessly in the library and help to make our school a better place.  These students received their Library Life Member badge from our fabulous librarian Mrs Annika Sauvage.  Congratulations girls! 

At our previous assembly we got to congratulate students who have been accepted into SHEP  -  the State Honours Ensemble Program, a special music program run by the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University.  We were able to add to that group and congratulate Daisy too; well done!!

One of our students Lucia Jhamb, showed incredible initiative and applied for a grant for our school and was awarded the grant!!  Lucia was able to share on assembly that she is using the grant money to create a Buddy Bench for our school, to support people who might not have anyone to play with.  What an extraordinary act of selflessness and commitment  -  thank you Lucia!

 Coming up this week:

· Year 2 Wolston House excursion  -  Monday 18th August 

· Year 4 Towards Zero Waste excursion  -  Tuesday 19th August

· Collaborative School Improvement  -  Indooroopilly SS  -  Tuesday 19th August, Ms Kelly attending

· Year 4 Sunshine Coast Camp  -  Wednesday 20th—Friday 22nd August

· Qld Debating Union Competition Year 5&6  -  Thursday 21st August

· P-3 Merit Assembly  -  Friday 22nd August  -  Junior Strings performing

· Religious Instruction  -  Friday 22nd August

· Interschool & Intraschool Sport  -  Friday 22nd August

I am off to visit Indooroopilly tomorrow for our Collaborative School Improvement principal’s meeting.  I look forward to catching up with my colleagues and hearing about their work towards improvement and sharing ours.

All the very best to our Year 5 & 6 Debating Teams as they compete in their first competition this week.  We thank Mr James Tait all of for the time and energy that has gone into coaching the teams.  I wish I could be there!

I would like to welcome some University Undergraduate students to our school.  We have Eve Cameron, Rani Morrison, Amy Lynn and Ella McShane with us.  We are thrilled to be training the teachers of tomorrow.  Thank you to our staff who are overseeing their placements.

Sadly, Ms Karen Ho, one of our year 2 teachers has fallen ill this term and needs to take some time off.  Ms Ho is adored by her class, families and colleagues and so we are all very saddened by this.  We wish Ms Ho all the very best for her recovery.

This message is for parents and children who ride bikes.  Please do not ride in our school or on the footpaths, it is very dangerous for our pedestrian traffic.  Please walk your bikes in our school and on the footpaths and help to keep us all safe.

I will finish like last week  -   I have two jobs for you to do for me.

· Please complete your School Opinion Survey!

· Please complete your Writer’s Toolbox consent form if you want your child involved.

Have a wonderful week.

Yours in Education,

Angie Kelly

Principal