Principal Pen
Dear Parents and Caregivers,
Just a reminder that students are currently undertaking final assessments for the reporting period. Please ensure your child is on time and at school every day unless they are sick. This is to ensure they are in the best possible position to ‘Achieve SuccESS @ ESS’. Once the hard work is done, we will celebrate the end of semester with some fun activities in the last week of school including, the Principal’s Award’s Assembly, Jnr and Snr Sports Days, Slime Run for Chaplaincy and the Under 8’s morning on the last morning of term.
MULTI-PURPOSE ROOF
Our multi-purpose roof is coming along and looking fantastic. In fact, they are currently ahead of schedule, so we are hoping that practical completion and approvals are finalised before the holidays. This will be great news for us and our students who are involved in SLICE Tennis after school, as they are currently having their lessons in an alternative location on the school grounds. We are still awaiting news around the ‘Stronger Communities’ grant to add the lighting to the roof, but are hopeful this will happen very soon.
UNDER EIGHTS DAY
Each year, we celebrate Under Eights Week with a special morning of activities for our under eights. This year it is on the last morning of the term, and we are pleased to have our oval back this year so we can spread out the activities on the oval and surrounds. We have invited our transition partners (Kindy and Day Care Centres), the Everton Park Library, Everton Park State High School and the Emergency Services. so it is shaping up to be a fantastic morning. Of course, the morning does not work without the generous support of parents to supervise small groups of students around the activities, as the teachers are busy running the activities on the morning.
We look forward to seeing as many families as possible join us for this great morning to round out the semester.
BRISBANE NORTH READER’S CUP COMPETITION
This week we had two teams of students in Yr 5/6 represent our school at the Brisbane North Reader’s Cup competition. This is only the second year we have participated in the competition and we were astounded at the success our students achieved. Enoggera Team 1 came 1st out of 44 teams from both state and private schools represented on the day, and our Enoggera Team 2, came 2nd. Enoggera Team 1 were in the lead after 3 rounds with 47 points and maintained their lead to the end to finish with a massive 75 out of 100. Enoggera Team 2 finished strong when the questions were at the most difficult. They were in 5th place after Round 3 with 44 points but gained enough in the last 2 rounds to finish in 2nd with 72.5 points, only ½ a point ahead of 3rd place. This is almost unheard of for a school to take out 1st and 2nd, which just shows the depth of talent in our reading programs at Enoggera. Mrs O’Malley and I have worked with our teams for the past 10 weeks in preparation and were so impressed at their commitment to the competition to read and study in detail the 5 novels and attend all of the meetings each week. Our Team 1 now gets to do it all again with new books so they can represent Brisbane North at the State Competition to be held on Thursday, September 7th at Moreton Bay College.
Congratulations teams as we are ever so proud of your well-deserved success!
FULL SCHOOL REVIEW
This week our School Leadership team of myself, Mrs Burrows, Mrs O’Malley, Mrs McKenzie and Mrs Paton all attended a meeting with our Regional Director and Assistant Regional Director to look at our report from our School Review, held at the end of last term. We worked on unpacking the report further to inform the Quadrennial School Review and ultimately our 2024-2027 Strategic Plan. It was great to share some of the positive affirmations at this meeting.
Our reports were shared in the last school newsletter and will be up on our website shortly. In case you haven’t been able to read the Executive Summary shared or the infographic, they include four key affirmations and five improvement strategies to guide our next steps. I would like to share one of the key affirmations in this newsletter.
Confidence and pride in the school is shared by staff, parents and students.
Strong partnerships between staff and parents are valued, and the ‘small school’ feel is held in high regard by community members. Parents resonate a strong sense of community within the school and display a sense of belonging, with many actively participating in school activities. There is a commonly held belief that every student is able to realise their potential when provided with appropriate support.
This was wonderful to hear that the reviewers heard what we believe and that we are very lucky to be part of a wonderful school community who work together to support one another to ensure our students achieve the very best opportunities so that they can realise their full potential.
PERFORMING ARTS WINTER SOIREE
Our Performing Arts Department have decided to provide our students with an additional opportunity to perform this semester to showcase their repertoires. The Winter Soiree (afternoon concert) will be held this Thursday, June 8th at 5pm in EPAC and is free to enter. The evening should conclude between 6 and 6.30. The Teachers have been in contact with the parents of students in the groups that are performing at the concert. There will not be any costumes required as students will perform in their Strings shirt or school polo with the standard performing bottoms of black dress pants, black school shoes, and black socks.
OPEN DAY
We held our first Open Day for this year on May 26 and we had over 30 new families looking to enrol here for 2024, either in Prep or other year levels. We will hold another Open Day in the middle of next term (date TBA) prior to finalising our Prep enrolments for next year with Prep enrolment interviews at the need of term 3, and then our Prep transition program in Term 4. If you know of families who live in our catchment and are hoping to come here, please let them know we are currently accepting Prep enrolments for next year. We also have an out of catchment waiting list.
ROBO CUP JUNIOR AUSTRALIA CHALLENGE
This Saturday (June 10) we have some of our Senior Robotics students attending the 2023 ROBO Cup Junior Australia Challenge at Somerville House for the first time to enter into the On-Stage Novice section. A small group of keen Robotics students have been synchronising dance, robotics and music into a performance. Our students have used their new Wakakirri finale dance as their inspiration for choreographing their robots to perform. They previewed their performance for us on assembly on Monday and it was amazing to see the work they had put in to code and decorate their robots. We thank Mr Harris for putting in the time with these students to prepare and we look forward to hearing how they go on Saturday as they represent our school.
More information about the competition can be found at: https://www.robocupjunior.org.au/onstage/
Till next time,
Mrs Anne Robinson
Principal