Term 1 Week 8 Newsletter

From the Principal - Mrs Walsh

Strengthening the Home-School Partnership: Parent-Teacher Interviews on Tuesday, 1 April 2025

At Eight Mile Plains State School we believe that strong communication between home and school is key to every child’s success. That’s why we are excited to invite all parents and caregivers to our upcoming Parent-Teacher Interviews on Tuesday, 1 April 2025.

These interviews provide a valuable opportunity to:

✅ Celebrate Progress – Hear about your child’s achievements, strengths, and growth so far this year.
✅ Set Goals – Work together with teachers to set goals that support your child’s learning and development.
✅ Address Concerns – Discuss any challenges and explore ways to support your child both at school and at home.
✅ Build Strong Relationships – Strengthen the partnership between families and teachers to create the best learning environment for your child.

Your involvement in your child’s education makes a difference! To make a booking, please click on the following link: https://eightmileplainsss.schoolzineplus.com/view-session/1

If you are not able to make a booking or require an alternative date or time, please contact your child’s teacher directly.

We look forward to connecting with you on Tuesday, 1 April 2025 and working together to support every child’s success. 

Supporting Positive Behaviour at Eight Mile Plains State School

At Eight Mile Plains State School, we are committed to creating a safe, respectful, and inclusive learning environment where all students can thrive. Our approach to behaviour management is guided by our Student Code of Conduct, which outlines clear expectations and supports for students to make positive choices.

Our behaviour management strategies focus on:

✅ Clear Expectations – We teach and reinforce school values, ensuring students understand what is expected of them.
✅ Positive Reinforcement – We celebrate positive choices through recognition.
✅ Consistent Consequences – We apply fair and appropriate consequences when needed, ensuring students learn from their actions.
✅ Support & Guidance – We work with students to develop self-regulation skills, problem-solving strategies, and respectful interactions.

We encourage all parents and caregivers to review our Student Code of Conduct (2024–2027) to understand how we support student behaviour at school. You can access the document here.

By working together, we can ensure our school remains a positive and supportive place for every student to learn and grow. Thank you for being part of this important partnership!

From the Deputy Principal - Mr Horridge

Newsletter Term 1 Week 8

2025 GRIP Student Leadership Conference

Recently all the EMPSS student leaders attended the GRIP student leadership conference with over another 50 schools and 300+ students. It was wonderful to see our leaders engage, not only with each other, but with students from many different schools.

This is unique conference in that it concentrates specifically on training student leaders for their role as SCHOOL LEADERS. The style, topics, and content of this conference all focus on what the students can do RIGHT NOW.

Students worked through a number of topics throughout the day in order to enhance their leadership skills, understanding and ideas.

Topic 1: The Responsibilities of a Student Leader

Senior students often hear people say “you’ve now got a big responsibility”. But what does this responsibility look like in a practical sense? Whilst this will differ for all schools, this topic will explore four key responsibilities that link to this year’s conference theme: the responsibility of being an example, a voice, a helper, and being willing to do what the school needs.    

Topic 2: Leadership Through Friendship

Being a leader is not about privileges, it’s about people. Using roleplay, stories and discussion, this topic will explore a personal leadership approach that all students can implement. These strategies include a focus on personal conversations, sharing responsibility, and making school life enjoyable for everybody.

Topic 3: New Ideas to Help Others

If students are going to put time and effort towards new ideas, it is important that these ideas help others in a meaningful way. This practical workshop will showcase dozens of impressive ideas that students have implemented at other schools, which are also realistic and meaningful. Activities during this workshop will enable students to have discussions with other schools, to share experiences and generate new ideas together.

Topic 4: Achieving Your Idea Before the End of the Year

This topic equips students with the strategies needed to take ownership of their ideas. It takes a practical look at prioritising, being realistic from the start, breaking down an idea into stages, and working on it as a team (without leaving everything to the teachers!) Students will take the first steps to planning their idea during this session.

Our students left the conference enthused with a clear vision, a solid understanding, and dozens of ideas for their time as a leader.

Grip Leadership

From Head of Cirriculum - Mrs Simpson

NAPLAN – 2025

Over the past week, students in Years 3 and 5 participated in the national NAPLAN testing. Students have now completed all components of NAPLAN.

We would like to congratulate all participating students for their efforts during the testing period and acknowledge staff who supported the test administration.

Parent-Teacher Interviews – Tuesday 1^st April 2025

Academic reporting involves communicating information to parents, carers and students about student achievement and progress for each learning area. At EMPSS, opportunities to share information are provided through Parent-Teacher Interviews, Student-Led Conferences and Report Cards throughout the year.

This term, parents and students are invited to attend a Parent-Teacher Interview.

To access the booking system, please click on the link that will be sent to families via email, next Monday.

We would like to encourage all parents/carers to make a time and attend the Parent-Teacher Interviews. Parents who are unable to attend this time are encouraged to speak to their child’s teacher to make alternate arrangements.

Interviews will involve students, parents and teachers coming together to formally discuss the student’s educational development and goals. There will also be opportunities for parents to share information about their child’s learning needs.

Please note: Time is limited to 10 minutes per interview. If parents have additional concerns they wish to discuss, we would like to encourage you to organise a time to speak with your child’s teacher throughout the term.

Street Science Incursions

This year, our school will be engaging with the Street Science Team, who provide incursion programs for students at schools. Street Science conduct engaging and fun science experiments and activities aligned to the current phase of the Australian Curriculum. These activities aim to enhance each participating students’ learning experience.

This term, Year 1 and Year 6 students have the opportunity to participate in the following incursions:

- Year 1: Cheeky Changes Workshop on Tuesday 25th of March 2025.

- Year 6: The Energy and Electrical Circuits Workshop on Tuesday 25th March 2025.

Permission forms have been sent to Year 1 and Year 6 families. We look forward to having the Street Science team visit our school.

News from Chappy Sonia

Chappy News

Would you like to support our Chaplaincy Service at our wonderful school as well as having a delicious meal?

Well...... now you can!

Eight Mile Plains State School is running a Subway/Sushi Meal Deal on Tuesday 18th of June(week 10 of term 2) Orders close on the Friday the 14th of June.

Please copy and paste the below link to order your Meal;

https://myschoollunch.com.au/eight-mile-plains-ss-traffic-selector 

At the end of your order, you have the opportunity to make a donation to the Chaplaincy service.

Thank you.

Love Chappy Sonia 

News from Mr Minchin - HPE Teacher

Dear Parents and families,

The EMPSS Cross Country will be held on Thursday, April 3rd on the school oval.  We welcome you to join us and support our runners on the day - feel free to bring a chair and make yourself comfortable!

When you arrive, please make your way to the Undercover Area and the adjacent marked grass area – please do not walk onto the running track to take photographs.

Our junior students are running in their class year groups. Only students eligible for Logan District trials will be competing in their year of birth. Please see the timetable below for approximate race times (note: this is a guide only as we cannot guarantee the exact times for each event on the day).

We look forward to seeing you there,

Brenton Minchin
HPE Teacher

News from 3A - Mrs Niciejewski

3B Taxonomists in Training

This term, 3B students have become taxonomists in Science. Taxonomists are scientists who study groups of living things. They planned and conducted an investigation of the animal groups present in the leaf litter around the school grounds. 3B enjoyed wearing goggles, gloves and using a magnifying glass to search.  Students also observed drawings of specimens and organised them into groups based on observable features. 

3N Photos

Year 1 and Year 6 Street Science Incursions in Term 1

Hello there fellow biologists, physicists, chemists and astronomers. Professor N here with a Street Science Incursion update.

The final payment day for the Year 1 Cheeky Changes Workshop, Year 6 Energy & Electrical Circuits Workshop and the Combined Year 1 and Year 6 Signature Show is this upcoming Friday the 21st of March.

If you haven't already done so, please make your payment and send the signed permission form back to your child's classroom teacher. 

Want more?

The World Science Festival celebrates its spectacular 10th anniversary in Brisbane from 21–30 March 2025.

There are many free and paid events happening at South Bank and the Queensland Museum which are fun for the whole family. Visiting this festival would be beneficial for any child who has a love for learning in Science. Hope to see some of you there. 

Professor N 😉

News from Year 4

Year 4 News

This is just a very short newsletter article to let you know that all of our students have returned to school safely after our visit from Cyclone Alfred.

Students have resumed learning and we are doing our very best to catch up on missed time.

Unfortunately, there are a few jobs that haven’t been done so we will submit a full newsletter article in a fortnight when the Junior School newsletter is published.

In the meantime, stay safe and we look forward to sharing your child’s learning with some of you at Parent/Teacher meetings. It is preferred if you bring your child with you so they can share what they are learning and inform you of things they may need to work on.

News from 5A - Mr Gibson

Students have been learning about Earth's Place in Space. 

In small groups, they researched the reasons why we have satellites in space.  Students collaborated and constructed their own satellite with its various functions.

5A Space Gallery

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News from 5B - Ms Sipos

We survived NAPLAN! 

Congratulations to the wonderful kids in 5B who were superstars during NAPLAN.

Not only did they apply themselves to their tests, but they were patient with staff and students as they navigated the NAP app. 
We are deep into assessment time and are hoping to have all assessments completed by the end of week 9. This will help us get a head start on term 2 and catch up on any content we need a little more work on. 

There has been a lot of discussion around extreme weather after Cyclone Alfred gave us a mid-term break from school. The kids have had a great time investigating how satellites helped us during that uncertain time! Our space scientists designed and created their very own satellites to deepen their understanding of space discoveries. 
This Friday is Harmony Day, and we have been discussing how lucky we are to live in a country with such peaceful diversity. We are very excited to celebrate all our cultures and beliefs!

5B Photos

News from 6B - Mrs Walker

6B With Miss Walker

Wow! It’s hard to believe this term is almost at an end. Time flies when you’re having fun! The students have been very busy forming some everlasting friendships as well as taking part in lots of fun and exciting learning experiences.

A large part of our curriculum this term has been learning about our history. We have spoken and researched about Immigrants, The Suffragette Movement, The White Australia Policy, just to name a few. This led into our excursion to Parliament House where we got to take part in a debate/ referendum on whether sport or computer games are more important. I was surprised to see sports coming through as the top vote.

We have a few upcoming events to look forward to. One being Harmony Day which is happening this coming Friday the 21st where we will celebrate the many cultures at Eight Mile Plains. Street Science will take place this coming Tuesday, the 25th of March.  Students will get to take part in lots of fun and exciting science experiments. Gala Day will take place next Friday the 28th of March.

Parent teacher interviews will take place on April the 1st in the library. These meeting will be 10 minutes long. Please ensure you are on time for your appointment.   I look forward to meeting with you all.

If you are unable to attend a meeting during this time, please don’t hesitate to email me and we can schedule another time that suits, rxwal6@eq.edu.au

Take care, be safe and enjoy the rest of the term.

Miss Walker

Rochedale State High School Year 7 Enrolment for 2026

Key Calendar Dates - Rochedale SHS Year 7 Enrolment 2026

Harmony Week - Eight Mile Plains SS

Celebrating Harmony Week at EMPSS

During March 17 and March 21, Eight Mile Plains SS will be celebrating Harmony Week,
a special occasion that promotes inclusiveness, respect, and a sense of belonging for
everyone.

What is Harmony Day?
Harmony Day is an annual event celebrated across Australia, encouraging people to embrace
different cultures and respect the many backgrounds that make up our society. The theme
‘Everyone Belongs’ highlights the importance of inclusivity and unity.

How Will We Celebrate?
At EMPSS, we have planned a range of exciting activities to engage students and foster a
deeper understanding of different cultures across the week, including:                                                                    •Lunchtime Activities: Students will take part in storytelling, art projects, and
discussions focused on diversity and respect every break in the Library.
• School Art Project: Every class will be contributing to a school wide art project
which will be displayed in the Library.
• Cultural Dress and Wear Orange Parade: Students may choose to wear traditional
clothing that represents their cultural heritage for our Parade at 9am on Friday
March 21. 

Students and staff not choosing to wear their cultural dress are encouraged
to wear orange, the official colour of Harmony Day.

How Can Families Get Involved?
Families are encouraged to support Harmony Day by:
• Talking to children about the importance of diversity and respect.
• Attending our Harmony Day Parade on Friday March 21 at 9am.
Harmony Week is a wonderful opportunity for our school community to celebrate what
makes us unique and appreciate the values that bring us together. We look forward to sharing
this special day with you all!

Thank you for your support in making Harmony Day a memorable and meaningful event!
Belinda Fisher

2025 Uniform Shop Hours

The uniform shop hours have now returned to normal trading. 

Hours are every Thursday from 8am - 9am for all of your school uniform needs.