Principal's Message

Term 3 Week 6                                                                                                   20 August 2026

From the Principal

Hi Everyone,

Gosh it has been such a big week! My first three days were spent at the Year 4 Camp. The weather was not perfect all the time admittedly, but it is safe to say that everyone still had a whole lot of fun!  It is always a big thing to go on your first school camp, and you learn a lot. It wasn't all smooth sailing but over the three days, us and the kids got better at being a strong team.  Thank you so much to all our Year 4 teaching staff who time away from their lives to support our children to have a great camp. Thank you, Mr Declan Wenzel-Halls, (who was the chief organiser, along with Mr Corbett), Mr Tim Shephard, Ms Danielle Rothwell, Mr James Tate and Mr Gary Lake. I also had our leadership team accompany me; thank you to Mr Thomas Corbett, Mrs Shelley Lee and Miranda Sainsbury.  We weren't all lucky enough to go and we must say a very big thank you to Mrs Tara Griffin who was holding the fort back at school, very well no doubt! Well done again to our Year 4 children, it was great getting to be with you on three days of the camp!

As I have mentioned before, myself, Mrs Tara Griffin, Mrs Shelley Lee, Mrs Gillian Bishop and Ms Georgia Perkins are part of a Reading Collaborative Learning Community.  We also have a voluntary Ironside Reading Team, made up of 22 teachers, who give their time up every fortnight to look deeply into the evidence around the effective teaching of reading and work to ensure we have systems in place at Ironside State School to support that. Yesterday, we had Toowong State School and a regional team come and visit us and watch a specific aspect of the teaching of reading from Prep to Year 6.  They were looking specifically at what is called the Daily Review; the opening part of an effective reading lesson.  The visitors were very impressed with what they saw and gave us great feedback. Thank you so much to the teachers who welcomed these visitors into our school and your classrooms. What you are doing, is so important for improving the student learning outcomes, not only of the children in your class but also right across our school, as you lead the way in our effective reading teaching agenda.  Thank you, Mrs Gillian Bishop, Mrs Leanne Nebe, Ms Simone Flanderka, Mrs Taylor Wilton-Knox, Ms Georgia Perkins and Ms Katie Paterson and of course, thank you to all of the children in their classes!  😊

Congratulations to all our Prep to Year 3 Merit Award recipients for this week! We are very proud of you.

This Monday coming, the 24th of August, it is our whole school STAR assembly. Our Senior Band will be performing for us, which will be wonderful.

We had a lot of different things going on this week and I believe they were all a big success.  Congratulations to the Chess Team who represented us at the chess competition this week. I believe they did very well and it was a wonderful learning experience too.  Thank you to their coach Mr Tim Shepherd and to Mr Neil Malcolm who accompanied them.

A group of our children were also selected to be part of a Music Camp over at Toowong State School. I believe they were wonderful ambassadors for our school and no doubt they had a great day extending their musical prowess. Thank you so much to Mr James Kukulies for organising this wonderful opportunity for our students.

I believe Renata Jane, The Teddy Bears Picnic incursion that happened for our Preps was wonderful. Thank you so much for our Prep Team for always organising these wonderful experiences for our little ones to enhance their learning.

Our Year 1 Team also organised a talk about fire safety with the children this week, which I believe they were most excited about. Thank you to the Year 1 team! 

We were straight back from camp but that did not stop Mr Tate from taking our Debating Teams out for their first competition last night. The teams did a great job, given that it's been a term with many interruptions.  Top work Debaters! 

I apologise that the Year 2 Wolston House excursion wasn’t on the calendar, as the dates got snuck in.  A group went off today and just loved it, like they do every year!

Coming up next week, there are a couple of things that you need to know. Excitingly, our Year 5 and 6 Choir is performing at Sing Fest on Monday. I am so annoyed that I can't go to it because I think it, they will just be amazing but hopefully someone can film it for me. Thank you so much to Mrs Annemarie Kirsten for organising this wonderful opportunity for our children to perform.

Our Co-curricular School Photo Day is on Tuesday so please keep that in mind for if your child is involved in a co-curricular activity at our school and will be requiring a photograph. It's about obviously important to wear your full school uniform with pride and be looking photo ready on the day.

Coming up this week I have the School Council meeting on Monday and on Tuesday night we have the P&C meeting, and I certainly hope you can get along to support our wonderful P&C.  That is this Monday, the 25th of August at 6:30pm in the Staff Room.

The next professional development around Writer's Toolbox is happening in our school on Thursday, as we welcome one of the WTB coaches in, who will model in different classrooms how to use various aspects of the Writers Toolbox effectively. Our children just love it; these are really exciting sessions.

I'll finish by saying a huge thank you to everyone who completed the school opinion survey, it really means a lot to us to get your feedback.

Have a truly fantastic weekend and week ahead.

Servabo Fidem

Keep the Faith

Angie Kelly