Principal's Message

Hi Everyone,  

There is such a buzz in the air at the moment!  Last week a large number of us attended Writer’s Toolbox Professional Development and it was brilliant!  By the very next day, teachers were trying out this new learning with their children in writing, that’s how excited they are and they all reported that the kid’s loved it!  I will approach the Writer’s Toolbox team to run a parent session too and I know you will be very impressed with the level of differentiation that can be implemented with Writer’s Toolbox!  Only some classes are doing Writer’s Toolbox this term, as we can only train so many teachers at a time but all children in year 3, 4 and 5 will be completing a short diagnostic test so that we can capture the baseline data and that is why we have asked for parent consent for all of our children now.  I want to again say THANK YOU P&C!!  It is the P&C and you who support P&C events that have brought this to our school and we are so grateful! 

The waiting is over and we now know that the winners of our Athletics Carnival are Cook!!  Congratulations, the top spot is hotly contested!!!!  Congratulations to our Age Champions too!  To be the age champions in this field of children is amazing!!  There were 14 records broken at this year’s Athletics Carnival  -  14 new records!!!!!  Wow!!  Congratulations to those children!!  44 of our children were also involved in the Track and Field trials this week and I want to say congratulations to all of them, it is so impressive to get to this level!  Thank you again must go to Mr Nathan Reardon and Mr Jorma Bushnell, for overseeing PE in our school and organising and overseeing our wonderful carnival!

100 Days of Prep was very cute!  100 Days brighter!  Thank you to our wonderful Prep team and congratulations Preppies!

Our Preppies are full of extra joy at the moment thanks to the P&C who bought a lot of different equipment to enhance lunchtimes in our prep area and it has worked a treat!  Thank you P&C!

Mrs Lee and I had a lovely time representing Ironside State School at the Kobe Delegation receptions, marking 40 years of this reciprocal relationship.  It is very exciting that we have another group of students and staff heading over to Japan this year.  Currently in our school there is a project underway to get 1000 paper cranes folded to take to the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima.  We are hoping as many children as possible can help out at first break, every Tuesday in the Japanese room.

The children were so full of enthusiasm after the STEM Inspiration Day at the University of Queensland last Friday.  I believe they represented our school exceptionally!  Congratulations STEMMERS and also Mr Chow and Mrs Huxley.

Congratulations to all of our Year 4-6 children who received a Merit Certificate last week on assembly, we are very proud of you! 

Thank you to the Intermediate Strings for your beautiful performance on assembly last week.  This week we have the Year 2 Choir performing at the P-3 merit assembly and I know they will be wonderful!

Speaking of strings, there are a couple of intensive workshops coming up this week for selected students  -  congratulations to them; your dedication and hard work is paying off!

Coming up this week:

· Year 4&5 selected strings:  Waltz/Schero Workshop, Graceville SS 8:30-4:30pm  Monday 28th July  -  Thursday 31st July

· P&C Meeting  -  Tuesday 29th July, 6:30pm Staffroom

· Australian Problem Solving Maths Olympiad  -  Wednesday 30th July

· Principal’s roundtable meeting  -  Wednesday 30th July 12-3pm Milton SS

· Principal’s breakfast meeting  -  Thursday 31st July

· Year 5&6 selected strings Canzona Workshop—8:30-4:30pm Graceville SS Friday 1st August

· P-3 Merit Assembly  -  Friday 1st August 9:15am  -  Intermediate Strings performing

· Religious Instruction begins for Term 3  -  Friday 1st August

All the best to our children going in the Maths Olympiad this week  -  we are very proud of you!

I have a couple of professional development opportunities this week, in the form of connecting with principal’s colleagues and engaging with expert presenters  -  I am very grateful for these opportunities. 

Welcome back to Mrs Elizabeth Graff-Valizedah who has returned to us after being the acting business manager at Ithaca Creek State School.  Mrs Graff-Valizedah is very glad she had that opportunity but is very glad to be back too.

I am hoping to see you all at the P&C Meeting tomorrow night at 6:30pm in our staff room  -  please come and join this great group and support your children.

Finally, the Parent School Opinion Survey has been emailed to all parents email address  -  PLEASE can you take the time to complete it and give us feedback!!  PLEASE!  :)

Have a wonderful week.

Yours in Education,

Angie Kelly

Principal

PS  As promised, please see the photo gallery in the newsletter for a few camp photos I took.