LEARNING CURVE WELLBEING PROGRAM

The Learning Curve focus this week is from the ‘Health and Strengths’ category. The wellbeing skill builder is ‘Help Seeking’. This topic is about helping students to learn that asking for help with problems that are too big for them to handle will protect their wellbeing, as these types of problems do not go away on their own. It also teaches students to know the right people to ask for different problems is the most important thing in solving them, and that there are always people available such as their family, friends, teachers and trusted champions. We are encouraging students to deal with problems early before they become too big.

Students are working on this topic during their Health lessons and then following up with their class teachers as well as using their ESS Learning Curve diaries. The parent article re this topic is attached for your information.

PREP 2025 ENROLMENTS AND TRANSITION MORNINGS

Enoggera State School held our first transition to Prep morning last Friday with nearly all of our new 2025 Prep students attending for the morning of activities. We will hold the second of these mornings on November 15. Many thanks to our amazing P&C who opened the uniform shop for the morning, so our new students could get fitted out in their uniforms and also for providing the morning tea for the new parents to socialise together. 

A reminder that if you know of families who live in our catchment and are planning to come here next year, please remind them to get their enrolments in asap.

CLASS GROUPINGS AND ROLL UP AFTERNOON

We are working with staff now to create our classes for 2025. Thank you to the parents who have provided feedback around their child/children about the type of learning environment that suits them best. Whilst we take this information into consideration, we cannot guarantee that you will get all of the students you have indicated you would like your child to be with or not, as ultimately it is about making the best placement for effective teaching and learning. Sometimes this means not being with best friends so that they can concentrate on their learning whilst in class.

In week 10 we will hold our usual roll up afternoon on Wednesday, 4^th December from 2-3pm. Students will go to their 2025 class and teacher (if possible) and they will bring home a slip afterwards for you saying which class they have been placed in and who their teacher will be for next year.

2024 YEAR BOOK

A reminder that again this year we are producing a Year Book of the 2024 school year at Enoggera State School. This book is a great memory book of the year and is available to purchase by our families. It includes class pages and pages on all of our school events and activities throughout the year. It also includes a special focus on our graduates. The book is gifted to our graduating students at the graduation ceremony and will also be available for collection for families who order and pay for one prior. 

Order forms are now live and are attached below. This form will also be emailed out to families today, so if you wish to purchase the year book please complete the order form attached and return to the office by Friday, December 6. Invoices will then be raised based on the order forms we received back each week. We only have 57 available yearbooks for sale this year, so the first 57 families that order will receive their copy before the holidays. Full payment must be made by Friday the 13th of December to recieve your copy this year. 

A further order can be placed after that for delivery at the start of school next year with invoices to be raised in 2025. 

GRADUATION

A reminder that our Graduation Ceremony for our Year 6 students will be held on Thursday 5^th December at 9:00am in EPAC and this will be followed by the Guard of Honour later in the day at 2:50pm. The Graduation Social Event will be held in EPAC that night. Information has gone out to the Year 6 families with information about the event and a link to purchase tickets for the event through trybooking. The cost of tickets for a 3-course catered buffet dinner will be $45 per head. There will be a DJ to entertain the students after the dinner. There is a limit on three tickets per student to the dinner (graduate and two parents) only due to capacity in EPAC and with the caterers.

We are still looking for more parents available to assist with tasks such as setting up, cleaning up, decorating the EPAC and setting up a photo booth. Please contact Tina Burrows at school if you would like to help out before or after the event.

https://www.trybooking.com/CWOPT

WEEK 11

We have developed a plan for the ‘soft’ week of school in week 11 as there will be no formal activities or formal teaching of the Australian Curriculum occurring during that week. All official school events will be finalised by the usual end of week 10 of the term and week 11 will be supervision and alternative activities for those students’ requiring supervision. Students will be supervised in classes, which may not be their own class teacher and may be combined with other year levels dependent on the numbers attending. 

Therefore, if families are wishing to go on holidays early, they can go at the end of week 10 as usual, without missing anything important at school. This will enable our teaching teams time to do some very important planning and preparation for next year, but of course this is dependent on how many students are at school and are requiring supervision. 

We ask that if you know your child/children will not be attending school in week 11 that you let the office know as soon as possible. Hopefully, with less students attending in week 11 we will be able to collapse classes so that our teachers get some planning and preparation time for the new school year before heading into the holidays.

STUDENT CODE OF CONDUCT SURVEY

Thank you to those parents who completed the recent Student Code of Conduct survey to feed into the review of our Student Code of Conduct document, processes and artefacts. We looked at this data at the recent School Council Meeting and are now updating the documents ready for sharing with the school community prior to the new school year.

CHANGES TO THE TEACHING OF READING IN AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM V9

With the new version 9 of the Australian Curriculum there are significant changes to the way that reading is to be taught in Australian Schools.  The DoE have created a suite of resources for parents and have been running a twilight workshop in preparation for these changes. We have trained two teachers as our Reading Leaders (Mrs Moeser and Mrs Egerton) and our School Leaders are working with them to develop our implementation plan for the next two years.  As there are significant changes to long term practises in schools such as PM/PROBE Reading Testing, Sight Words, Reading Groups etc. the roll out will take time.  Attached below is a brochure created for parents re the changes and also a link to the reading workshops that have been held for parents.

https://mediasite.eq.edu.au/mediasite/Play/d5a99b04712b44758dc85854bde46a3c1d

NEW SCHOOL’S OFFICER 

Our new temporary School’s Officer has started with us this week.  His name is Reynaldo Delatorre, so if you see him around, please welcome him to our wonderful ESS community.

CHAPLAINCY

Recently the Local Chaplaincy Committee were advised that our Chappy Twinkee will be completing her studies at the end of this year and taking fulltime employment in the new year. This will mean that our Chaplain position will be vacant.

At the P&C meeting, discussions were had around the option of changing to a new Wellbeing Officer also provided from the same funding. As this change can only occur when the position is vacant or at the end of funding agreement, it was decided to send a survey to all families in our school community to get an indication for ongoing support of having a Chaplain in our school or moving to the new Wellbeing Officer. I have provided some information below re the two roles but basically both positions do the same role, but the Chaplains are provided by Scripture Union and Wellbeing Officers can come a from range of different approved providers to meet the funding guidelines.

Therefore, a survey will be emailed out to all families shortly and it would be great if each family could decide if they would support a Chaplain or a Wellbeing Officer moving forward for the rest of this funding period until 2027.

Once we determine the needs of the community this will be ratified at the next P&C meeting in November, so that we can move forward with either recruiting a new Chaplain or a Wellbeing Officer for 2025.

FACILITIES

We have had advice that the renovations of our Prep C and Year 1 classrooms will be happening over the holidays, so we look forward to seeing the plans for this work to occur. We have been allocated approximately $500,000 for this work which will be managed by a Project Manager employed under the project. We look forward to our classes moving into the renovated classrooms to start the 2025 school year.

As reported to the latest P&C meeting, we were unsuccessful again in gaining funding for the Prep playground from the Gaming Benefit Fund. As the need for this playground is urgent, we are now looking at trying to fund this through our school budget for next year in conjunction with the funds the P&C have pledged toward the project.

Till next time,

Mrs Anne Robinson

Principal