Dear Parent and Caregivers,

WAKAKIRRI

It was great on assembly this week to see how our 2023 Wakakirri entry is progressing.  The students did so well and still have a couple of weeks to refine a few little bits.  Big congratulations to the students and staff involved, especially Miss Dunstan for her creativity and expertise and her support staff - Mr Harris who has helped with props, staging and technology, Mrs Harris who has been helping also with props and back stage and Mrs Hall who has been helping with the lighting and back stage for the story and also Ms Kerr who has been helping with the costumes.  Thank you also to those parents who have offered to volunteer to assist with hair and make-up at school prior to departing on the performance day. 

The team will now have a final rehearsal here at school in EPAC this coming Sunday afternoon (20^th August) from 1-3pm, before heading off to the Logan Entertainment Centre to perform on Thursday, 24^th August.  Miss Dunstan will be sending out final information to parents this week. We wish them all the best and look forward to them making ESS proud once again on the Wakakirri stage.

PREP OPEN MORNING

This Friday again we will hold an Open Morning for any new families looking to enrol at ESS in 2024, whether that be in Prep or any other year levels.  We will start with an information session around the school in EPAC at 9:00am and this will be followed by a tour of the school.  If you have already attended an Open Morning and have enrolled for 2024 then there is no need to attend another Open Morning.

The next stage of the 2024 Prep Enrolment process is our Prep enrolment interviews for enrolled students in the last 2 weeks of this term from September 4- 15.  Bookings for interviews will be made though SOB (School Online Bookings) and will be sent out next week to enrolled families. 

The final stage of the process will be the Prep Transition program in Term 4 which will consist of two Prep transition mornings and further information sessions for parents as well as special uniform shop access.

EXCURSIONS/CAMPS/ACTIVITIES

Today our Year 3 students attended the Nudgee Beach Environmental Education Centre to learn about the wetlands.  They had a great day and learnt a lot though the hands-on activities provided by the staff at the centre.  Thank you to the staff who organised the excursion and also to the parents who volunteered to assist with supervision on the day.

We have several other excursions/activities and camps coming up also for the Prep, Yr 2, Yr 4 and the Yr 5/6 students.  A reminder to families that when students are leaving the school on excursion, they are representatives of the school and must be in full school uniform and of exemplary behaviour at all times.  If students arrive at school without the correct uniform, parents will be phoned and students may be excluded from the excursion.  Likewise, if behaviour at school prior to the activity is not to a satisfactory standard, students may not be invited to attend these excursions/activities and camps as this can pose additional supervision and safety risks for the activity.

With all of these excursions/activities happening this term on top of some other incursions and all of them requiring permissions and some payments, I encourage parents to stay informed and to meet deadlines for permissions and payments.  If activities have payment required, the payment and permissions go to the administration office and if just permissions with no payments these can be managed by the class teachers.  It is the responsibility of parents to meet payment deadlines otherwise the invoices lapse and students will be unable to attend.

MULTI-PURPOSE COURT

Unfortunately, there have been issues with the certifications of our new roof so we are still working with the Project Manager, the company and new certifiers to correct the issues and ensure alignment with government requirements and get the project handed over.  However, this does appear to be a more detailed process than first expected and we will not have the court handed back to us in the near future.

SCHOOL OPINION SURVEY

The suite of School Opinion Surveys are undertaken each year by State Schools Division to obtain opinions about schools from parents/caregivers, students and school staff. The surveys are designed to help schools identify what they do well and find areas which may need improvement.

This year's School Opinion Surveys is officially open from 24 July to 18 August 2023.  I encourage all parents to go online and complete the opinion survey before it closes.

The SOS has been distributed directly to parents using OneSchool emails. All invitations will contain a link with a unique user ID and password as part of that link. The survey can be accessed by simply clicking on the link. Respondents will only be able to complete the survey once.

Till next time,

Mrs Anne Robinson

Principal

Pillar Practice

Our three school pillars include Safety (Be Safe); Relationships (Be Respectful); and Learning (Be a Responsible Learner).  Each fortnight at Assembly, a Pillar Practice is shared with staff and students that becomes our focus behaviour improvement.  This fortnight, our Pillar Practice is around our Learning Pillar focusing on:

1. Being a Bucket Filler
2. Treating others the way you want to be treated
3. Being inclusive

All class teachers are provided with a poster for their classroom and will explicitly teach our school expectations around the relevant pillar and behaviour.   Students are reminded daily about our focus behaviour with the goal of improving this behaviour across the school. The Student Engagement and Behaviour committee reviews behaviour data across the school at their meetings to discuss future focus areas for identified behaviours of concern. This process is documented in our Student Code of Conduct and is part of our explicit teaching of behaviour in our school.  You can support us by being aware of the current Pillar Practice and discussing the expectations with your children at home.

One of our current School Council parent representatives, Lisa McDonald, has recently stepped down from their position.  We are very grateful to Lisa for the valuable contribution she made to the School Council.  This has created a parent representative vacancy on the School Council and the opportunity for any interested parents to submit a nomination form.  The School Council meets once every term on a Monday afternoon from 3:15pm for approximately an hour.  The meeting is both in person and via teams, so you do not have to come to school to attend the meeting.   Nominations will be voted on by the current members at the meeting on Monday28th  August. The meeting has been postponed for 2 weeks from the original date due to scheduling conflicts.    Nomination forms should be email to Tina Burrows (tburr11@eq.edu.au) as the current chair of the School Council by Friday 25^th August.

National Science Week

It is great to be involved in Science Week activities this week. The National theme is “Innovation Powering Future Industries” and there are various themed Science events happening around Brisbane this week. Have fun!

BEBRAS

Last call for students wanting to participate in the BEBRAS Computational thinking competition. Come along Wednesday second break and where we will be “training our brains”.

Minecraft

Minecraft Education has recently been introduced into the year 5/6 Science and Digital Technologies subjects. Only students in that grade level have full access to the Minecraft resources. All other students have a limit of ten visits to the Minecraft Education servers. After that time they are locked out. We have had many younger students visiting the computer lab during lunchtimes and logging on to Minecraft. I am asking parents/guardians to support the policy that only years 5 and 6 use Minecraft Education at Enoggera State School as part of their learning program.

I feel it is timely to mention that for student use of Minecraft at home, parents/guardians should please monitor the activity closely as the public Minecraft  servers are not monitored or filtered for profanity in chat. Although Minecraft is a highly stimulating activity that promotes creativity and problem solving, it does require a level of maturity, especially when operating in “Survival” or “Hardcore” modes. I look forward to promoting the educational benefits of using Minecraft Education at Enoggera.

Michael Harris