Welcome Back! 

I hope you have enjoyed a well-earned break with your loved ones and the students are well rested for a busy term ahead. I had a wonderful break visiting my family and friends in Cairns. I look forward to continuing to connect with as many parents as possible this term. 

 

ANZAC Day 2025 

ANZAC DAY is a commemoration, not a celebration. It is not a celebration because we are not celebrating a war. Wars ruin lives – they ruin the lives of those lost in war, and they ruin the lives of those left behind. Anzac Day is a commemoration – we pay tribute to the brave men and women who gave up their lives to fight for their country. They fought for our freedom, the right to live our lives without fear and without violence. 

 

Australia is often spoken of as a lucky country, we are lucky because most of us have enough food, clean water, education, a roof over our heads and hope for the future. Australia can only stay a lucky country if we continue to work to ensure that everybody can live their lives as they choose, without fear of oppression, violence, or war – without fear for our lives. 

 

The best way that we can honour the people who gave their lives for our country is to honour their memory and never forget their contribution. We aspire to keep the country of Australia a free country where people can live in peace and harmony. To make sure that the future is positive, at school we begin with rules to guide the way we behave. A great country starts with each and every one of us – how we behave towards each other. 

At our school we have the rules of, “be Responsible, be Respectful and be Safe”. These rules form the basis of a safe community. If we obey these rules, then we will all have happy lives and learn how to communicate with each other and get along with each other. 

 

The ANZAC tradition is based on valuing the contribution of selfless people to the lives of others, of understanding that belonging to a community means respecting all of the members of that community. When I think of Anzac Day, I think of the men and women who were brave, who sacrificed that most precious of things – their lives. I think of men and women, some of whom were barely out of childhood, who looked out for each other, who followed the instructions of their leaders, who did not think of themselves, but did what was the right thing to do for their country. 

 

This ethic must live on. To live in a country such as Australia is a privilege, and to earn that privilege we too must uphold the Anzac values. We must look out for each other, be respectful of other people, be responsible for our own actions and contribute to society and be safe in our behaviour. This is what it is to be Australian. To be comrades, to be friends, and respect our country and all who live in it. We must not forget our traditions and our values and the journey of those before us who made this country what it is.  

 

Thank you and congratulations for a job well done in terms of our Anzac Day commemoration. Thank you to Mr Gordon and all of our parents and community members who provided flowers. To our School Captains we can all feel very proud – Great Job! Thank you to staff for teaching our children on how to behave at official ceremonies. Thank you also to our special guests who add so much to our event with their individual contributions, our music department for such moving renditions of the musical items, and to our students for such outstanding respectful behaviour. 

Lest we forget. 

 

Brisbane City Council Safer Schools Program 

I am happy to announce that Robertson State School has been confirmed to be included in the Brisbane City Council (Council) Safer Schools Program for Term 2, 2025. This program aims to promote safe parking practices and ensure compliance with local traffic regulations around schools.  

 

Child safety is paramount, and illegal parking within school zones remains a significant concern for parents, residents, and our school. Limited parking spaces around peak drop-off and pick-up times often leads to competitive and potentially dangerous parking behaviours.  

 

While we understand the challenges parents face in navigating school zone drop-off and pick-up, it is crucial to prioritise safety. Over the coming term, Council officers will be conducting regular patrols around our school to monitor parking compliance. The enforcement approach will use a combination of foot patrols and highly visible Community Safety and Regulation vehicles, that can identify alleged offences using Automatic Number Plate Recognition and GPS software. Compliance action will be taken on any observed breaches.  

 

I kindly request that parents, guardians, and visitors to adhere to all parking regulations in the vicinity of our school. Please find further information below from Brisbane City Council.  

 

School Zone Parking 

Parking in accordance with all road rules and signage is important to keep our children and other road users safe. Unfortunately, Brisbane City Council has received an increase in the number of reports of illegal parking around our school. As a result, our school has been added to Council’s Safer Schools Program this term. 

 

What does this mean? 

Brisbane City Council’s Parking Compliance Officers will be actively patrolling the streets surrounding our school over the coming term to encourage safer parking behaviours. These patrols will be conducted on foot and in highly visible Community Safety and Regulation vehicles that can identify alleged offences using Automatic Number Plate Recognition and GPS software. Please be kind – they have a job to do. 

 

What are the common parking signs around schools? 

A guide to common parking signs around school zones can be found on Council’s website by searching the term ‘School Parking’.  

We appreciate your cooperation in ensuring the safety and wellbeing of all students and other road users. If you wish to discuss the matter further, please contact Curtis Boyle, Parking Supervisor, on 3027 4337. 

 

News, Dates and Deadlines  

In an endeavour to limit numerous communications from the school, our News Dates and Deadlines will now be aligned with our fortnightly newsletter. 

 

2025 School Calendar and Parent Handbook 

At the end of last term, you would have received an email with an electronic copy of our 2025 School Calendar and Parent Handbook. I do apologise for the late delivery of this document. In an endeavour to maximise our school funds for essential learning resources, I have decided to send this document electronically and to keep an up-to-date copy on our school website page, under forms and documents.  This will make sure that the calendar remains as current and clear as possible regarding important school events.   

Website Calendar link: https://robertsonss.eq.edu.au/calendar-and-news/events-calendar 

2025 School Calendar and Parent Handbook: https://robertsonss.eq.edu.au/SupportAndResources/FormsAndDocuments/Documents/Documents/Parent-handbook-and-calendar.pdf 

Tyrone Bruce

Principal

Christian Religious Instruction

Message from Nicole Stirling:

Christian Religious Instruction (CRI) starts this term and is an opportunity for your child to explore, question and discover Christian values as part of a holistic education.

If your child is enrolled in CRI, the student books are now available at the school office for a cost of $4. If you would like to know more about this program, there is a brochure also available at the school office.

For further questions about CRI or if you would like to assist with this program, please contact the Co-Ordinator, Dr. Nicky Stirling at Nicole.Stirling@uqconnect.edu.au

Active School Travel at Robertson SS: Changes for 2025

Robertson State School is excited to inform you that Active School Travel will continue in 2025, with a few changes designed to give our dedicated teacher volunteers more time to focus on their core role of teaching and supporting our students.

While we won’t have a school representative walking with families this year, we are still very much encouraging families to make walking to school a regular part of their routine. We strongly believe that walking to school not only supports the health and wellbeing of both students and parents but also helps reduce traffic congestion around the school. We hope to see many families walking to school together and enjoying the morning exercise.

In line with this, Chappy’s Breakfast will continue every Thursday morning. Students who walk to school with their parents will have the chance to win great prizes. It’s a wonderful opportunity to start the day on a positive note, as well as promote the benefits of being active before school.

We also invite all families to join Chappy and school staff in the tuckshop each Thursday morning before school. It’s a great way to catch up with other families, enjoy a delicious breakfast, and support our school community.

We look forward to seeing more families embrace Active School Travel and hope to see many of you at Chappy’s Breakfast each week. Let's continue to work together to keep our school healthy, active, and connected!

Shae Robinson

Deputy Principal

Respectful iPad use and Cybersafety

Be Respectful and Be Safe: Use iPads correctly at school.

We ask students to how that they can use their iPads appropriately and safely, both at school and at home. As parents and carers, you play a key role in supporting your child to have a positive and safe online experience.

Messaging Apps

We urge all parents to be mindful of student use of Messaging apps. Know which social media apps or websites your child uses and what the age restrictions are. Students should never be using these social media apps while at school, and sending or receiving messages or calls from friends or family outside of school should be at the parent’s discretion. If you allow your child to have social media, you should also create your own account and add your child as a friend/follower. If your child is under the age of 13, it is important to read. Parents may wish to consider removing social media apps, or limiting screen time to these apps in a way that ensures parents can diligently supervise their use. Unfortunately, these kinds of communication apps can lead to all sorts of issues with cyberbullying if misused.   

Resources and articles to help you to understand how to support your child can be found here: https://www.esafety.gov.au/parents 

Responsible interactivity  

Ensure that your child knows how to block, unfriend and report inappropriate online behaviour. Review privacy settings regularly as they can change without notification—particularly after device, app or system updates are installed. Enable parental controls from the settings menu on your child’s device to prevent access to specific features and content. 

ANZAC Ceremony

Thank you to everyone who helped make the ANZAC assembly a success. The help from all in ensuring a respectful and well received ANZAC ceremony is very much appreciated. I’d also like to thank the RSS State School Captains, students, staff and parents who attended the ANZAC Sunnybank Community Parade + Service on Friday and helped make this occasion memorable. See the Principal’s section for more details. Some photos are below. 

We will remember them.  

Kerin Gordon 

Deputy Principal 

Absences: Every Day Counts

Sibling Enrolments 2026

Enrolments for 2026 are now open. Please visit the office after 10.00am and before 3.00pm if you would like to commence enrolment for siblings.

Prep 2026 - Date of birth should be between 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2021. 

Excursions

Parents – forget having to fill out and deliver a paper form. Instead, provide consent for excursions and events using the QParents app. Visit the office for more information.

Due Dates for Payment and Consent:  

Please note that overdue payments or consent will no longer be accepted.   

Life Education  

Parents are still able to provide consent, provided the class date has not passed. Additional information and flyers are available in the office. .

Thank you for your coorporation.

Administration Office

Vivienne Thomas

Band Instrumental Music Teacher

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String News

Our Mini Mozart students had their first spectacular assembly performance on Monday 28 April. Well done on their fabulous performance.

All Corelli Strings have also received their first assessment piece for this semester that will be filmed during classtime in Week 2 so please check Seesaw for a video of your assessment task and a copy of the task sheet in case you ‘misplace it’. 

Our Paganini Strings have their first performance at our Combined Schools Advanced String Workshop on Tuesday 6 May at Macgregor State School with both Warrigal Road Chamber Strings and Macgregor Strings.

   

Save the Date: Winter String Soiree

Our Winter String Soiree will be held in the Assembly Hall on Tuesday 3 June from 6pm (doors open at 5.45pm) for all String students.  Please mark the date in your calendars so that you don’t miss this spectacular event. 

Music Learning Helps Neural Development

Music Learning Helps Neural Development 2.34 MB

Robyn Gray

Strings Teacher

Chris Rostron and Renee Montgomery

PE Teachers

Bilingual Webinar

Yvonne Lu

Bilingual Curriculum Co-ordinator

April was Autism Awareness Month!  This occasion is marked to acknowledge the strengths, achievements and uniqueness of people on the Autism spectrum. This year’s theme was all about learning and growing together as one community.  

At Robertson State School, we have a number of children who have a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), each bringing a range of unique strengths and characteristics to each and every classroom.

Further Support for ASD

If your child has a diagnosis and you are looking for further support, Autism Queensland is just one of the many providers offering a range of support services for children and their families. Workshops and webinars are run regularly to help support children and adults with autism. 

Sessions are:

• Based on evidence-informed practice
• Strengths focussed
• Informed by respectful language and approaches
• Provide a safe space
• Co-designed with autistic individuals.

Some of our teachers at Pallara SS have attended these sessions and have returned to school equipped with ready-to-use, inclusive and supportive practices for their classrooms. You can sign up to their Newsletter via their website.

For more information, check out: www.autismqld.com.au

Another helpful source is: www.autismawareness.com.au 

Happy Autism Awareness Month!

Amanda Slinger  

HOSES  

Speech Language News

Multilingual Communication Development

Any child who regularly hears more than one language is considered a multilingual communicator. This article will explore how multilingual communication develops and answers some common questions around multilingual communication.

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, your child or children are likely to be a multilingual communicator!

Research shows that a child only needs 10-25% exposure to a language to start learning it – even if they don’t actively speak the language or you’re not deliberately teaching it. Simply being around different languages is enough for a child to begin learning.

This can happen at home, kindergarten, in shopping centers, parks, or other places your child regularly visits.

What Does Multilingual Communication Development Look Like?

Children learning multiple languages develop their skills a bit differently than those learning just one. How well a child speaks and understands a language depends on how much they hear the language and how much they get to practice it.

Research suggests that the more a child is exposed to a language, the better they become at understanding and speaking it. It doesn’t matter how perfectly the adults or other children around them speak the language and the most important thing is how much the child is hearing it. So, continue talking to the child in all of your languages!

Types of Multilingual Development:

There are two main ways multilingual communication develops:

1. Learning all languages from birth: For example, both parents speak English and Mandarin to their baby from birth.
2. Learning a second or third language later: For example, a child who hears Punjabi at home and then starts hearing English at age 3 when they enter an English-speaking daycare.

Children who have been learning multiple languages since birth often pick up new words faster. Both types of multilingual children may show errors with grammar and sentence structure. They might also mix words, grammar, and sentence structures from different languages – a process called 'code-switching.' This is not a sign of confusion; it’s actually a positive sign that the child is progressing in their language development!

With regular exposure and chances to practice, multilingual children will develop their language skills to make friends, learn at school, and communicate effectively. If a child is struggling with one language, it may simply mean they need more exposure and practice. If they are having difficulty with all languages, seeking support from a Speech-Language Pathologist may be necessary.

Supporting Multilingual Communication Development:

Children learn languages best through fun, meaningful interactions. For multilingual children, the same principle applies!

To help multilingual children thrive:

• Keep talking to them in all their languages.
• Play with them and encourage interaction with other children using those languages.
• Use plenty of words and sentences without pressuring them to respond.
• Keep your language simple and repetitive, giving the child many chances to respond in their own way, whether through words, gestures, or other forms of communication.

Warm regards and until next time, 

Morgan Johnson  

Speech-Language Pathologist  

Robertson State School (Wednesdays & Thursdays) 

Welcome back to Term 2

We hope everyone had a relaxing holiday and is ready for a fantastic Term 2! 

We have some exciting events coming up, and our amazing P&C team has been busy working hard behind the scenes to make it all happen. 

Parent volunteers are always muchly appreciated – your support makes a huge difference!

Keep an eye out for more details and ways to get involved. And for the most up-to-date information, follow our new Facebook page!

Let’s make it a great term together Robertson! 

Mother’s Day

What’s a better way to celebrate all the wonderful and amazing  Mums, Aunts, Nans and carers than for our beautiful Robertson students to select something special for those in their lives to say ‘I love you!” 

We have had community input with their wonderful creations – these will be showcased at our Mother’s Day Stall this year.  

Mums be excited for some new and exciting handmade gifts coming your way! 

If you have any creations or donations you would like to offer – there is still time. Please send through photos and price point by Tuesday 6th May, 2025 to pcrobertsonss@gmail.com. 

We are still seeking volunteers to help on Thursday 8th and Friday 9th May, 2025 to assist our students in their purchases.  

Please click on the link below. We would love to see you for an hour or even 2.

It’s a lot of fun, getting know your Robertson community: https://volunteersignup.org/FL8BT  

Disco News

The highly anticipated Disco is back, better than ever!  

Students of Robertston get excited for ‘Glow in the dark Disco!’

Get your dancing shoes on and gather all your friends for a fun filled night of dancing and entertainment. Parents there will be something on offer for you too, while you picnic under the stars with the Robertson community. 

Presale tickets will be available via Flexischool – keep an eye out. We encourage pre purchasing to avoid entry delay, so there is more time for fun. 

On the night, there will plenty of snacks and glow in the dark accessories for purchase.  

Families if you are able to assist with anything to make this event amazing, such as donations to raffle prizes, assistance with food, lighting (indoor and outdoor) etc. please get in contact with us at pcrobertsonss@gmail.com.  

P & C Meeting

Our next P & C meeting is on Tuesday 13th May, 2025. Please come and join us. 

We look forward to seeing you all around the school and at these evernts! 

P & C 2025 

Executive Team