Principal's Message
Term 1 Week 8 20 March 2026
From the Principal
Hi Everyone,
Our Cross Country was today, and it was a roaring success! Congratulations to every child who competed. You should be enormously proud to have run that distance. Thank you so much to Mr Nathan Reardon for organising everything and, of course, to all his helpers. No doubt we will hear who the overall winners were soon.
Year 2 came back bursting yesterday and today from the Planetarium. Thank you so much to the whole Year Two Team for organising this great experience for our children. No doubt we will be able to hear all about it a bit further in another newsletter.
It has been so lovely to have our school alive with parents and families before and after school each day as Student Progress meetings get underway. Thank you once again to all our wonderful teachers for giving up their time and connecting with families to talk about all the children that they teach.
I want to give a shout out to Liana James. Liana was wearing her school uniform with pride and when a mother and baby hopped on a bus, it was Liana that stood up and offered her seat to them. The member of the public was so moved by Liana and her gesture that they felt the need to call our school and commend her. These small moments are such big moments, aren't they? As the old saying goes, who are we when no one’s watching? Liana is clearly kind and has a generous spirit. Thank you for who you are Liana James.
I'm so very proud of all our Year 3 and Year 5 students with the way they conducted themselves during NAPLAN testing. I know I've already congratulated them, but I feel compelled to do it again. Their great attitudes and the way they got in and got everything done and remained calm is a testament to all of them. Congratulations to the kids, their teachers, and parents!
The Life Education team have been at our school for the past couple of weeks, educating our children on all sorts of things to do with human life. Though these can be uncomfortable topics, the Life Education team are so impressed with our children, their maturity, their intelligent questions, as well as their beautiful manners. Well done Ironside State School children!
Congratulations to all our P-3 Merit Certificate recipients from our assembly this week - we're very proud of you.
Next week is our Year 4-6 merit assembly, and we will be having the Senior Band play for the first time this year, I believe. Anyway, I am very, very excited.
Congratulations to Ms Catherine Priday and Ms Georgia Perkins, who are the 2 new staff members on our School Council for the next two years. We have had 5 candidates for the 2 remaining parent positions. This means it will need to go to a vote. More information will come out about this very soon. It is very positive that we have so many people wanting to be involved in our school.
I'm always so proud and amazed to see children riding to and from school. Though I can ride, I don't feel it comes naturally to me. I wanted to share with you this photo found by Councillor Penny Wolff of children in 1957 riding their bikes to Ironside State School. Isn’t it so special?!
Mrs Tara Griffin, Mrs Gillian Bishop, Ms Georgia Perkins, and I are all going to our first day of a Reading Collaborative Learning Community next week. This will be a great opportunity to cross-reference our teaching of reading with evidence-based best practice.
Year 3 are going to be doing some valuable learning with the Dentist Team next week. I know they will be keen to learn all about how to keep the dentist away (no offence to you dentists out there.) Thank you for organising this Year 3 Team.
It is time to get organised if you are in Prep to Year 3 for our Easter Bonnet Parade coming up in the last week of school this term. On Wednesday the 1st of April we will be having our Easter bonnet parade in the morning. Please don't feel you need to go out and buy anything to make an Easter bonnet, you can recycle things to create it. I'm looking forward to all the fun.
The other reminder I wanted to give was around Harmony Day on our last day of school.
Children can wear their own traditional costumes from their own country or a little bit of orange on their clothing to represent harmony.
There will be a shared lunch at first break, but don't feel that you need to make a lot of food or anything at all. This is only about tasting a little bit. For example, if you were Italian and want to share a pizza with the class for shared lunch you just take your pizza and cut it up into little pieces so that there was enough there for everybody to try a little piece and that would be wonderful.
We are also having our Harmony Day International Talent Show. Children need to see their class teacher about being in it and their teacher will email me or they can tell their parents, and you can email me - akell58@eq.edu.au
Last week I talked about the fact that we will have the P&C International Breakfast on Thursday the 2nd of April. Since I last wrote about this, we have grown from 10 stalls through to 20 stalls! That is amazing and I'm very excited about it. Please contact our P&C or me if you would like to be involved.
I just wanted to draw your attention to the fact that next term in week 1, the Australian educator from the Writer’s Toolbox Team will be coming in to run a parent information session. I really encourage you to come to it. It will be on Thursday the 23rd of April at 6:00 PM. This will be a great way to develop your understanding of what we do with Writer’s Toolbox, how we use it and why using it improves people’s ability to write.
I will finish today with some staff news firstly I would like to welcome Tveta Krastanova-Santos, who’s taking the Year 2 class for the first two days of the week (Mrs Alison Harris is the other 3 days). Ms KS is a wonderful addition to our team!
Sadly, we are also farewelling Mrs Libby Strong, who is about to go on maternity leave. Any of you who have spent time with Mrs Strong, would know she is just the most amazing of people and always goes above and beyond for every child, staff member and family. Mrs Strong has been a part of our leadership team well over a year and led our school to now being entitled to a Head of Special Education Services. We wish her all the best on her journey and cannot wait to meet her new little family member.
We are also farewelling Mrs Elizabeth Graff-Valizadeh, who has been a wonderful, welcoming fixture in our front office for years! Though we are sad, Ms Graff-Valizadeh is going travelling back to her homeland, America. We will miss you very much and are so grateful for all you have done - safe travels and keep in touch please!
Have a safe and wonderful week!
Yours in Education,
Angie Kelly
PS The Student Council Come as your Favourite Movie or TV Show Free Dress Dayis next Friday 27th March. Gold Coin Donations are encouraged. Don’t forget!