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P&C Opportunities
Our first P&C Meeting for 2025, will be straight after our AGM (Annual General Meeting) on Tuesday 11 March at 6.30pm, in the Music Room at the back of the school behind the hall.
A special thank you to our Robertson State School P&C executive for 2024 (Mel – President, Tenielle – Vice-president, Lay - Treasurer and Dana - Secretary). These volunteers have given so much of their own time to make a significant difference to our students, staff, school and community - Thank you!
I would also like to especially acknowledge Mel (close to nine years as President) and Lay (close to six years as Treasurer), as they have informed me that it’s time for them to hand over the reins to a new President and Treasurer. A massive thank you for your hard work and efforts during this time. I have also spoken to Tenielle and Dana who will continue on if needed; however, are more than happy to support other members to take on these roles.
I encourage all parents to get behind the small group of volunteer parents, who give up their own time for our students, to run the Robertson State School P&C. We are all extremely busy; however, if you can assist with even a few hours every now and then, it really makes a difference for all students and the school. Many hands make light work!
At the AGM, all positions become vacant at this time, and all members must resubmit to be a member for 2025. All executive positions also come available at this time. The AGM is THE ONLY meeting where you do not need to be present to join the P&C and applications may be sent in by email or handed into the office. However, anyone applying for executive positions must be present to apply. Please find attached, the membership application and the executive member position application. We are looking for organised people who would love to take on executive roles. All parents/caregivers are invited to attend this meeting.
I look forward to seeing you at the meeting next week.
Click on this link to see the Executive role descriptions
Sunnybank Rotary Club Donation
I would like to thank all members of our community who have donated money to our school building fund. Last Thursday, Summer, School Council Chair, and I met with Peter, Shane and Lixia from the Sunnybank Rotary Club (SRC), who also made a donation of $1000.00. The kindness and dedication of the SRC is one of the many examples of our generous community, who volunteer support for our school and make an everlasting difference for our children/community for many years to come. Thank you!
Cross Country
What an amazing day for our school community and our students. A massive thank you to our H&PE Teachers Mr Rostron and Miss Montgomery for organising this wonderful event for our students. Thank you also to our staff, Terri (Groundsman) and to Sunnybank High School for your support as well. Finally, well done to all students and thank you parents who supported the students on the day. Go Team Robertson!!!!!!.
Tyrone Bruce
Principal
Shae Robinson
Deputy Principal
Phonics: A Comprehensive Guide for Families
When attending parent-teacher meetings or conversing with educators from Prep to Year 2, you’ll often hear about the essential role phonics plays in a child’s educational journey. Phonics involves recognising the alphabet, understanding the visual representation of each letter, mastering their formation during writing, and identifying the distinct sounds that each letter and specific letter combinations produce when pronounced.
Phonics is crucial for early literacy development as it equips children with the foundational skills to decode words, improve reading fluency, and enhance their spelling abilities. Learning phonics supports children in recognising the relationship between letters and sounds, providing them with tools to tackle unfamiliar words and develop their reading comprehension skills.
The Literacy Hub offers a variety of strategies and resources designed to assist you in supporting your child’s phonics learning at home. By engaging in phonics activities and games, reading together, and encouraging your child to sound out words, you can significantly reinforce what they learn in the classroom.
For more insights, visit the Literacy Hub's dedicated page for families: https://www.literacyhub.edu.au/for-families/phonics-a-guide-for-families/
Additionally, to explore a broader range of literacy topics, including the 'Big Six' components of literacy, check out this guide: https://www.literacyhub.edu.au/for-families/the-big-six-of-literacy-a-guide-for-families/
NAPLAN Years 3 & 5 - Week 7 & 8
Students in Years 3 and 5 will sit NAPLAN tests in 2025 from Wednesday 12 March to Monday 24 March. All students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are expected to sit the NAPLAN tests, which are now held in Term 1 each year. NAPLAN gives a snapshot of how children are performing in reading, writing, spelling, punctuation, grammar, and numeracy. It complements other effective classroom assessment and reporting practices.
See the types of questions and tools available in the online NAPLAN assessments at the public demonstration site. https://nap.edu.au/naplan/public-demonstration-site
The NAPLAN timetable is below. Parents can help by ensuring their children have a fully charged iPad, are sleeping well and eating a healthy breakfast. Reassure and encourage your children to do their best.
2025 NAPLAN Timetable
The 2025 NAPLAN testing period (12-24 March) is rapidly approaching. To enable our students to have the best possible opportunity to participate fully in the testing, we will be engaging in some readiness activities next week to ensure students have experience in navigating the online platform and checking that their iPad is accessing the app correctly.
We ask that all families check the following on their child’s iPad as soon as possible.
Ensure the NAP 2025 app is installed.
Ensure the iPad operating system is updated to the current iOS 18.3.1
NAPLAN@Robertson Sessions for Parents
See the types of questions and tools available in the online NAPLAN assessments at the public demonstration site. https://nap.edu.au/naplan/public-demonstration-site
Parent/Teacher Interviews Semester 1
Parent Teacher interviews will be held for years Prep - Year 2 in Term 1 Week 10 (Tuesday 1 April – Wednesday 2 April).
Parent Teacher interviews will be held for Years 3 - 6 in Term 2 Week 2 (Tuesday 29 April – Wednesday 30 April).
The availability of teachers across these dates is different for each teacher so please log in from 12.00pm Monday 10 March to see availability for your teacher and make a booking. Interviews will be of 10 minutes duration.
Bilingual interviews
- We ask that parents of the bilingual program only make 1x booking with their class teacher pair. You will still be able to meet both teachers for your booking for 5 min each for a total of 10 minutes. Do not make 2 bookings – thank you!
Parent login
- All parents will need to login with the email they receive newsletters to in order to create a parent teacher booking.
Parent login method
- Due to security and privacy requirements of Education Queensland, we are not permitted to load parent and student names into Schoolzine without first obtaining individual consent from parents. Therefore, no student data is contained within the system.
All parents will need to login with the email they receive newsletters to in order to create a Parent Teacher booking.
Please follow these steps to log in to Schoolzine and make your interview bookings:
- Got to the Robertson State School Schoolzine website
- https://robertsonss.schoolzineplus.com/view-session/38
- At the login screen, login with the same email that you receive the Robertson State School newsletter.
- Proceed to make bookings as instructed on the screen.
Points to be aware of:
- You will not be able to access the system until it goes live. See the timeline below for details.
- You will only see time slots that are available at the time you are using the system. As time slots are booked for teachers, those time slots are no longer displayed as available. Schoolzine prevents double-booking of teachers.
- Other parents may be making bookings at the same time that you are using the system. It is possible, though unlikely, that a time slot is displayed to you as available, but is then booked by another parent shortly afterwards. If you then attempt to book this time slot it will not be available and a message will be displayed to indicate this.
Timetables
Interviews
- Each interview is scheduled for 10 minutes.
- It is very important we stick to the 10 minute interview period. This can be very challenging with some parents.
- Please come prepared with questions to ask during the interviews.
- You are welcome to wear a face mask if to you wish to the interview.
Venue
- The interviews after school will be held in your child’s classroom.
Kerin Gordon
Deputy Principal
Welcome to Week 6!
Each fortnight, I’ll be featuring one of our staff members within the WISH team, so our families can get to know who is supporting the students at Robertson State School.
This fortnight, we meet our Social Worker, Natasha Bradford.
A message from: Community Hearing Screening Clinic
New Free Local Audiology Screening Service
As an initiative to reduce hospital waiting lists for non-complex audiology cases, Children’s Health Queensland are providing FREE hearing screening clinics throughout the community. These clinics help to improve access to specialist care and provide a fast, efficient pathway to diagnostic audiology services. More importantly, they reduce the wait time, travel time and travel costs for families. Clinics are run by Allied Health Assistants, under the delegation of an Audiologist.
We are excited to share with you our new clinic at Mt Gravatt East, which runs Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.
Families are encouraged to call us on 32908970 and self-refer.
Who can be seen at the clinic?
The clinic offers free hearing screening for children and young people aged from 9 months to 16 years.
Who is eligible for this service?
Community Hearing screening is a targeted service and provide free hearing screening to Medicare eligible clients who meet the following criteria:
- Concerns regarding hearing
- Concerns with speech and language development
- Concerns with behaviour and or learning
- Those requiring hearing screening prior to further investigations
- Those who have not had their hearing screened within the last 12 months
How do families make an appointment?
Parents can make an appointment over the phone or complete our online enquiry form.
Community Hearing Screening booking enquiry form | Children's Health Queensland
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact our clinic on 07 3290 8970.
Until next fortnight,
Amanda Slinger
Head of Special Education Services - (HOSES)
.
Speech-Lanuage News
What is Literacy – Empowering Families with Tips for Fostering Literacy and Reading Skills at Home
Literacy refers to an individual’s ability to read and write. These skills are crucial for success at school, daily life and down the track when your child will enter the workforce. Literacy involves the foundational skills like phonemic and phonological awareness (which will be discussed further below), which are vital for effective reading and writing for your child and setting them up for the best success in the future.
What is Phonological Awareness:
Phonological awareness is a crucial and critical skill for all children in developing their skills in reading and writing. It is the foundation of learning to read and is the ability of recognising and working with sounds in spoken language. It is the understanding of the different ways in which language can be broken down into smaller parts. There are many subskills that are a part of phonological awareness including syllable awareness, word awareness, rhyming, alliteration, and phonemic awareness.
Parents can actively contribute to building their child’s phonological awareness skills by engaging in the following activities:
- Rhyming Games: This encourages a child to identify words with similar ending sounds
- Alliteration Games: Explore words that start with the same sound to enhance the recognition of sounds
- Blending and Segmenting Games: Break down words into individual sounds e.g., “C-A-T” and blend them to form words e.g. “CAT”. You may like to play this game whilst driving e.g., “I can see a T-R-U-CK… what do you think I can see?” Your child can then blend the sounds back together and say “TRUCK”!
What is Phonemic Awareness:
Phonemic awareness delves into letter-sound knowledge; emphasising the ability to identify, focus on, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words.
Parents can actively contribute to building their child’s phonemic awareness skills by engaging in the following activities:
- Letter Sound Recognition: Helping your child associate letters with their corresponding sounds e.g., the letter /b/ is the first sound we hear in “bath”, the letter /c/ makes the first sound we hear in “cat”.
- Word Blending Practice: Engage in exercises where your child blends sounds to create new words.
- Word Recognition: Foster your child’s ability to recognise whole words that cannot be sounded out phonetically.
Promoting Reading and Writing Skills:
For successful reading, children must be able to recognise letters, blend sounds, understand word meanings, and comprehend sentences. Writing skills involve similarly through thinking, word separation, sound-to-letter correlation, and creating coherent sentences.
Parents can actively contribute to building their child’s reading and writing skills by engaging in the following activities:
- Encouraging Reading Aloud: Engage in regular reading sessions with your child to enhance word recognition and comprehension.
- Creative Writing Exercises: Spark creativity by encouraging your child to create sentences and stories.
- Punctuation and Grammar: Emphasise the importance of proper grammatical structure and punctuation in writing to your child.
Parent Tips for Recognising when to Seek Help:
- Chat to your classroom teacher/s if you notice that your child exhibits challenges in reading, writing, or spelling.
- Maintain open communication with your child’s teacher/s to stay informed on their progress and any concerns.
- Pay attention to your child’s reading and writing habits at home, addressing any notable challenges promptly.
It is important to remember that parents play a pivotal role in nurturing their child’s literacy skills. By incorporating these strategies and reaching out to your classroom teacher when needed, parents can create a supportive environment that fosters a love of writing and reading for your child.
With warm regards, and until next time,
Morgan Johnson
Speech Language Pathologist
Robertson State School (Mondays & Tuesdays)
Cross Country
What a successful day for our Whole School Cross Country. Students representing themselves and their house in such a positive way. Thank you to the parents who came and supported our day and everybody else including staff and students from Sunnybank High School that made our day what it was.The age level winners
Prep Girls: Arielle C, Shreya C, and Mimoona A
Prep Boys: Orion A, Prince P and Xuan P
Year 1 Girls: Avelyn C, Ruby A and Mila I
Year 1 Boys: Hayden S, Kian P and Liam W
Year 2 Girls: Mila B, Aria K and Renai L
Year 2 Boys: Arthur C, Aly R and Ethan P
Year 3 Girls: Cassidy W, Sophie S and Myra D
Year 3 Boys: William K, Cooper C and Jeremy L
10 Years Girls: Janice S, Chole H and Joyce H
10 Years Boys: Mikhail L, Yong-Kai L and Xavier W
11 Years Girls: Amelia C, Yejin Y and Zoie T
11 Years Boys: Tennessee C, Emeryck V and Tristan L
12 Years Girls: Alaska C, Jolina L and Lillian C
12 Years Boys: Caleb H, Andrew S and Alexis T
Chris Rostron and Renee Montgomery
PE Teachers
Decoding Strategies for Reading Comprehension in Chinese
Our Year 5 students are developing their decoding strategies to enhance reading comprehension in Chinese. Over this week and next, we are focusing on Visual and Contextual Strategies as well as Morphological Strategies to support their learning..
Why Are Radicals Important?
Aid Character Recognition: Characters with the same radical are often related in meaning.
Provide Meaning Clues: The radical gives hints about a character’s definition.
Assist in Dictionary Lookup: Traditional dictionaries categorise characters based on radicals.
By mastering these strategies, students can improve their reading fluency and comprehension in Chinese.
Common Chinese Radicals and Their Meanings
Jung Wang
Languages Teacher
The school focus for the next two weeks is:
Be responsible, be safe: Know which areas are out of bounds
We are learning to: We are learning to be responsible by knowing where the ‘Out of Bounds’ areas are. This is because students need to be safe at school.
Definition of “Out of Bounds” - If a place is out of bounds, people are not allowed to go there. An ‘Out of Bounds’ area is a place where teachers on duty can NOT see you, making it unsafe.
During this week, classes will revise the Out of Bounds areas. Please look at the photos of the “Out of bounds areas” so you are aware where they are:
“Out of Bounds” Area at Robertson:
Always out of bounds:
Above the oval 
The banks of the oval 
Along the Fence 
Behind the cricket nets 
Hill at the back of the oval 
Behind the soccer goal fence
The garden under the walkway near Helping Hands
Stairs to Year 6 Building (Only allowed with a teacher)
Grassed area between Year 5 and Year 6 area (Only allowed with a teacher
Behind the Tuckshop 
Behind the Adventure Playground 
Behind the library 
Car Parks – Front and Back (Only allowed with parents)
At Lunch Time:
Path and gate at the back of the oval 
Prep verandahs 
The front of the school near the Prep rooms 
Front gate and grass area near Prep 
The front of the school
Verandahs, stairs and bag racks near classrooms
Before and After School:
All Playgrounds 
Year 3 Beginner String Parent Information Night
All students who are new to their String instruments this year will be having a Parent Information night on Monday 24 March in the Music Room (Mrs Francis’s Room) at 6.00pm – 7.00pm.
Please ensure that your child brings their instrument, music stand, Tricky Fingers Book 1 and all other requirements such as rosin, shoulder rests, bow hold buddies, cellophants etc.
Students should wear their full music performance uniform (including music socks) and bring their Robertson State School Black Music folders.
Please ensure that you are now connected to your child’s Seesaw Account and are checking it regularly as their assessments and parent communication is now being sent via Seesaw. If you are not connected to their Seesaw account please email me so I can send you the invitation to join.
Please ensure your child is practising every single day, even 10 minutes a day is better for their brains and muscle memory than practising in one big chunk on the weekend.
From the Music Team
Heather Francis, Robyn Gray and Vivienne Thomas
Please support our Sponsors
PLATINUM SPONSORS
GOLD SPONSORS
SILVER SPONSOR
Spring Fest Donors
We thank those below who have donated items, money and vouchers towards our Spring Fest raffles.
Please support these businesses by clicking on the link to view their details.
Little Glass Room Bar and Dining
Legal Guru – Contact Russell Tien