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- Across the Principal's Desk
- Enrol Now for Prep 2026
- Parking and Consideration of Others
- From the Deputy Principals
- Mother's Day Breakfast
- Under 8s Celebrations
- Let's Chat
- Teaching and Learning
- Library News
- Ruby's Round Up!
- 2025 Year 6 Senior Trip
- The Sustainable Garden
- Term 2 Pastoral Care Focus
- 2025- Positive Student Recognition
- 5 Keys Collector Cards Celebrations
- ICAS Assessments 2025
- “Return-It Recycling Program”
- Queensland Engagement and Wellbeing Survey- Term 2
- Consent to Administer Medication Forms
- QParents
- P AND C Events
- Kedron State High School Expo
- The Gap High School
- Community Noticeboard
- P&C - Crown Hotel Partnership
Dear Windsor Community,
Last week we welcomed students back to our second term of learning for 2025. The focus on learning also extended to commemorating ANZAC day. At Windsor we provide a variety of opportunities for students to participate and understand the significance of this day in Australia’s history. Year 6 students and teachers attended the special Brisbane City ceremony for schools. This provides our most senior students the opportunity to participate in a formal ceremony attended by dignitaries, with the Premier and Governor of Queensland both in attendance this year.
Our school-based commemoration is an opportunity to teach all students how we remember and the way we can show respect through rituals and ceremony. For our senior students, poetry was researched and written and for all students, wreaths were made and ANZAC biscuits and story books shared. Our ANZAC parade which was relocated to the hall this year, was supported by our local, state and federal members and most importantly for me our families. Thank you to Jesse Hall, Casey Germain, Adam Tull and Callan Nickerson for your contribution this year. Our students connect more easily when they see and hear their own families participating in such events. We also thank local community member, Rosalie Raciti, and our incredible staff for their ongoing skills and contributions. I think we agree that our student performances and participation are always the highlight.
ANZAC Day itself invites all Windsor students to join our choir and student leaders, as we represent at Windsor Memorial Park. This year marked the centenary of the first Anzac ceremony held at this cenotaph which was constructed and funded by the Windsor town community in 1925. Of particular interest to us is that this is in the exact site of the original Bowen Bridge State School which then relocated across the road to become Windsor State School. Thank you to families and staff in attendance for your support and also to the Windsor Historical Society for their ongoing commitment to preserving the history of our Windsor community.
Playground Construction Updates
The fencing is up and works have commenced. Many excited little faces are watching as their new play space finally becomes a reality. The shared green space outside of classrooms will be limited for the next 8 weeks. For YMCA to function appropriately I will require all families who are picking up children to move off this early years green space at 3pm. Thank you for your support at we ensure safety for all during our playground construction phase.
Yours in Education
Shona
We know that parking around schools in all metropolitan areas in Brisbane and more broadly, poses a challenge. However, in order that our neighbours are considered and treated with common courtesy, we kindly ask that anyone seeking a park in the streets adjacent to Windsor State School always consider a couple of key things.
1. Please take heed of driveways and leave these spaces clear so that local residents can come and go as they require.
2. Please take heed of all parking signage and avoid parking in no-standing zones
We know that the community appreciate those parents and carers who think about others and show courtesy and respect in their driving behaviours.
P-2 Fun Run
It was a wonderful, sunny afternoon at our P-2 Fun Run on Monday. Our students gave the course a red hot go and should be very proud of their efforts. It was great to see so many smiling faces enjoying getting active and trying their best. House spirit was certainly on show as well!
Teaching kids to have confidence in themselves- Positive
Parenting Article
We’ve all been there. Lost opportunities, last minute re-thinks, lack of belief in our abilities and skills……and all because we lacked the confidence to take a risk, or be assertive, or tackle something new. In social-emotional development, self-confidence is a “biggy”. A healthy self-confidence means we’ll give something a try, believe we can give it our best shot, and come out the other end still feeling good about ourselves, despite any setbacks along the way. So how can we teach our kids to have confidence in themselves?
To find out more about helping to continue to develop and foster confidence with your child, please click here.
2025 Brisbane City Schools ANZAC Ceremony- A proud tradition
On Wednesday 23 April 2025, our Year 6 Teachers proudly took our Senior Cohort to the Brisbane City Schools ANZAC Ceremony. Upon arrival, we were greeted by a low over-head fly by from a fighter jet from the RAAF. We then paid our respects, as the audience was addressed by the Queensland Premier (David Crisafulli) and Governor of Queensland (Dr Jeannette Young) along with other dignitaries. We thank our students for showing their respect for others via this important annual opportunity to acknowledge our service personnel.
Prep Mother’s Day Breakfast
This year, our Prep students will be treating their mums or special people to a Mother's Day breakfast on Friday 9th May from 8.00am-8:45am in the Windsor SS Hall.
The morning will commence with a special performance from our Prep students and be followed by a small breakfast treat.
Of course, it may not always be possible for all our mums to attend and also recognise that families come in all different shapes and sizes. You are welcome to RSVP for yourself, or nominate another special person to attend.
We do ask that you use the following form to RSVP by Friday 2nd May and identify any dietary requirements, so we may cater accordingly.
2025 Prep Mother's Day Breakfast RSVP Form
On Thursday 22nd May from 9.00am – 11.00am, Windsor SS celebrates Under 8s Week with a morning of fun activities and experiences for our Prep, Year 1 and Year 2 students. From 11.00am, the school day will proceed as usual.
As class teachers are each responsible for running a particular activity, we very much welcome parent volunteers to support small groups of students in Prep, Year 1 and Year 2. If you are available to attend the morning and volunteer to guide a small group of students around the activities, please use the form below to register as a volunteer, so class teachers can plan student groups accordingly.
2025 Under 8s Celebration Parent Volunteer Sign-Up
All Prep to Year 2 students are invited to wear free dress on this day. Due to the nature of some of the activities, it would be great if they could come dressed in clothes that they can get messy in. Please also send along a small named bag for your child to carry with them to put any completed crafts/activities in.
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Year 4, 5 and 6 Families: Confident Bodies, Confident Kids – Let’s Chat Workshops and Parent Information Session
This year, Windsor State School has engaged with "Let's Chat - Confident Bodies, Confident Kids" in Term 2 to offer in-school sessions for all Year 4, 5 and 6 students as well as parent information night. The cost of this incursion is $12.50 per student and this cost also includes access to the parent information night. If you wish for your child to participate in the workshop at school, consent via QParents will be required. You will receive a QParents notification so please keep an eye out for this. Please read the below information about the parent night and student sessions. If you would like further information about the program/content, you are welcome to contact Lisa from 'Let's Chat' at lisa@letschat.com.au.
Year 4-6 Parents Only - Parent Information Night (Thursday 22nd May 6.00pm - 7.00pm WSS STEM Room)
Discuss normal and healthy developmental stages of sexuality, the importance of puberty, sexuality, and relationships education. As well as outline the content of the workshops the students will participant in. A great opportunity to discuss navigating tricky situations, supporting children and teens with online presence and managing the media, tips on answering questions as well as helpful resources and support.
CLICK HERE TO RSVP FOR PARENT INFO NIGHT
Year 4 Students - Healthy and safe bodies (Wednesday 28th May)
Students gain awareness of how their body begins to change as they grow up. Identify private and public body parts and places and become familiar with warning signs and gain tools to be safe and healthy.
Year 5 Students - Introduction to changing bodies (Tuesday 27th May)
This workshop encourages students to explore these, use correct language and discuss the private body parts to gain confidence to understand the changes they will experience. Students will be supported to identify physical warning signs that help keep them safe and ways to respond to unsafe situations as well as adults they can chat to.
Year 6 Students - Managing changing bodies (Thursday 29th May)
Students are encouraged to consolidate information about puberty by discussing the names and functions of the reproductive system and tools to manage those physical, emotional and social changes. We give tips and advice on ways to identify physical warning signs that help keep them safe and how to respond to unsafe situations as well as adults they can chat to.
Lisa Heard (Head of Curriculum)
Term 2 marks the business end of the semester and, if Term 1 is anything to go by, it will pass quickly. This term, all year levels are focused on studying information texts in English, ranging from information reports to procedures, recounts, and biographies.
A key change this semester is that report cards will be sent home at the beginning of Week 10. In previous years, they were distributed in Week 1 of Term 3. To accommodate this earlier timeline, our units have been adjusted to fit within eight weeks. Most assessments will be conducted across Weeks 7 and 8, meaning we are working hard to ensure that all key teaching and learning is completed by then. Students will engage in MODE B mini-units during Weeks 9 and 10 to apply and consolidate their learning from the semester. It’s full steam ahead — and as always, every day matters.
How Learning Happens
Continuing our unpacking of A Simple Model of Teaching, this week we turn our focus to the final components of Windsor State School’s teaching and learning model: driving thought, gathering and giving feedback, and ensuring consolidation.
When the conditions for learning are in place — including social, cultural, and structural supports, secured attention, and optimised communication — we can push students to think deeply about the learning intentions of each lesson and unit.
Driving thought means planning lessons around clear intentions and outcomes, with tasks designed to make students think about key concepts or procedures. As Daniel Willingham, a leading cognitive psychologist, reminds us, memory is the residue of thought — what students think about is what they will remember. Aligning our approach with Cognitive Load Theory, we focus each lesson sharply and ensure independent practice time is used effectively. Driving thought also involves ensuring all students are actively participating, held accountable for their thinking, and supported in building schema that connect new learning to existing knowledge.
Gathering and giving feedback is equally critical. Throughout lessons, teachers continually check for understanding — gathering responses during instruction and while circulating the classroom rather than waiting until the lesson is over. Responsive feedback is provided individually, to small groups, or to the whole class. Establishing a strong feedback culture is essential in helping students recognise feedback as a natural and important part of the learning process.
Consolidation ensures that learning moves into long-term memory. To achieve this, we regularly return to previous content through retrieval practice. Research shows that forgetting happens rapidly, so students must practise retrieving knowledge to make it 'stick'. This is embedded in our daily work through activities such as quizzes, daily reviews, mastery tasks, and making explicit connections. Effective retrieval practice draws on prior learning from ‘last lesson, last week, last month’ and reinforces foundational skills, including sentence structure, grammar, language features, punctuation, number facts, and number sense.
Through systematically embedding these elements in every lesson, we strive to help students become successful learners, build deep understanding, and fuel their motivation.
I hope this series of information bites has provided valuable insight into the detailed thinking and careful planning that goes into every lesson at Windsor. While we refer to our approach as A Simple Model of Teaching, in reality, great teaching is anything but simple. Delivering effective learning experiences is a highly complex process made up of countless small, strategic steps, in addition to the significant task of curriculum design.
Book Club
Book Club catalogues were sent out last week. Online ordering will close Monday May 5th.
All orders are to be paid for online, no cash orders please.
Thank you for your ongoing support when ordering from Book Club, every dollar spent comes back to the Library in the form of picture books, non-fiction books, early childhood books and fiction for older students to borrow
National Simultaneous Storytime
National Simultaneous Storytime (NSS) will be held on Wednesday May 22. It is an important event in the Library calendar as it reminds us of the many benefits of reading aloud to children of all ages. There will be several locations where students will be able to listen to the story being read aloud at first break. This year’s story is The Truck Cat written by Deborah Frenkel. It is a beautifully illustrated story that centres around the themes of longing and connection.
WE NEED YOUR HELP! If you have a cat, we’d love a photo of it, either by itself or with your children. It will become part of our Library display for National Simultaneous Storytime. Please email your photos to: smatt48@eq.edu.au
Premier’s Reading Challenge 2025
Get ready for the Premier’s Reading Challenge! This annual challenge is a statewide initiative that aims to improve literacy skills as well as fostering a love of reading in our students. This year, we are hoping to include some house competition within the Reader’s Challenge. More information regarding this initiative will become available in the coming weeks.
Welcome back to Term 2 Everyone. I hope you enjoyed the holidays and the nice weather. I went for some nice walks and had some sleep in’s, but I am very happy to be back at school and getting all the pats and attention from my friends.
Just thought I would share some photos of the last days of term 1 with you all. It was a busy last week, and I got to go and look at some great work in Show and Shine time and meet the Easter bunny at the Fancy hat parade. I was very good about letting someone else who is white and fluffy get the attention for a while.
Looking forward to a great term.
Love Ruby
Canberra: Parent Information Evening Slide Show
Our Year 6 Cohort are greatly looking forward to embarking on their 2025 Senior Trip to Canberra in August.
To view the Slide Deck from our recent Parent Information Evening, please click here.
This may provide a reference point for our current Year 6 families, but also a chance to hold discussions with students for those in Years 3-6 who are building up to our senior trip through their 1 night, 2, night and 3-night camps prior to reaching their graduating year. We greatly value and appreciate the opportunity that our camping program and senior trip affords our students to build our 5-keys to social-emotional success, which are: resilience, confidence, persistence, organisation and getting along skills.
Did you know? ...
On Wednesday we had a flurry of parent volunteers and hard-working students weeding and watering the garden to get it back into shape after the holidays.Students planted lettuces in one of the garden beds alongside marigolds. Lettuce is a magnificent plant to connect children to growing their own food as it grows quick and can be eaten in many ways.
Did you know? ...
Ginger is growing in the garden and it has produced a flower. Ginger can be grown in pots or in the ground and is a hardy crop that has many delicious uses.
Have a Great 5Rs Week!
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“Relationships” with a lens on ‘Getting Along and Organisation’
During Term 2, each Thursday afternoon, our teachers will be conducting Pastoral Care lessons with students that focus on ‘Relationships’. Particularly, we will be looking at the social-emotional keys to success of ‘Getting Along’ and ‘Organisation’.
Parents and carers can support this focus at home by taking opportunities to discuss and teach students about the importance of:
- Following rules
- Thinking first
- Accepting everyone
- Social Responsibility
- Time management
- Setting Goals
Thank you to those parents and carers who help promote ‘The Windsor Way’ with their students.
The Windsor Way & the revised Student Code of Conduct
The 2025-2028 Student Code of Conduct is available on our school website, here.
We would love to share some images of families celebrating students bringing home a card during the year by making a photo collage of celebrations, however they may look in your household. If you would ever like to share an image of either one-card coming home, or a completed set, we would love to see them shared via the below email address!
5_Keys_Collector_Card_Celebrations@windsorss.eq.edu.au
Thank you to all parents and carers who have sent through images of their students celebrating their receipt of a 5 Keys Collector Card to the following email address:
5_Keys_Collector_Card_Celebrations@windsorss.eq.edu.au
It is great to see students taking pride in their demonstration of our 5 Keys to Success, which are:
- Persistence
- Resilience
- Organisation
- Getting Along
- Confidence
Optional Extension and Enrichment Opportunity (Years 2-6)
In 2025 we are offering the following optional opportunities for students in Years 2-6 to engage in the extension and enrichment opportunity that the ICAS Assessments afford:
- English: 7:45am Friday 15 August
- Science: 7:45am Friday 22 August
- Mathematics: 7:45am Wednesday 27 August
Each optional ICAS assessment incurs a $20.95 charge, which is payable directly to ICAS.
To find out more about the ICAS Assessments, including how to register a child for these optional extension and enrichment opportunities, please click here, or visit/share the URL below:
An easy way for parents/carers & families to support our sustainable garden project
The new drive-through pick-up-zone on the old Officeworks site is in close proximity to the purple ‘Return It Container’ situated under the fig trees.
With this container now so accessible, we would love for parents and carers to support our developing sustainable garden project by donating any acceptable containers for change to our school.
If you are placing a bag inside the container, or wish to credit your returns to Windsor State School, you can simply add the Windsor State School code to the bag, and the recyclables within the bag will be credited to our P&C.
The Windsor State School Code is: C10158718
If you would like to learn more about the types of containers that can be recycled, please visit the following website: https://www.returnit.com.au/
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Information for parents and carers
In Term 2, students in Years 4-6 will be asked to take part in the Queensland Engagement and Wellbeing (QEW) Survey.
We know that wellbeing and engagement are important parts of your child’s life at school. The QEW Survey is designed to measure how students view their wellbeing and engagement across different topics. The information we get from the survey helps us better understand and support our students.
If you have any questions, please contact the school. More information, including FAQs, can be found on the Education website: (https://qed.qld.gov.au/publications/reports/statistics/schooling/students/queensland-engagement-wellbeing-survey).
You can contact the QEW Survey team by email: QEWSurvey@qed.qld.gov.au.
Please note, that if your child requires to have school staff administer medication for them whilst they are at school, you will be required to follow the processes embedded within the below hyperlink for each child and for each medication that requires administration:
Please Check Accounts Weekly for Payments and Permissions
QParents is the main portal for school payments and for school event permissions. The first residential parent listed in One School is invited and the parent who nominated 100% responsibility for fees during enrolment will see any amounts outstanding in QParents (unless you have approached the school to request a split agreement, eg. 50-50 responsibility).
We greatly appreciate those parents who regularly check into their QParents accounts to provide any permissions outstanding and to address any invoices outstanding.
If you need help setting up your QParents Account, we are happy to assist at admin@windsorss.eq.edu.au
For assistance, go to: Q Parents help page: https://qparents.qld.edu.au/#/help or phone 13QGOV
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Support the school whilst having a meal at The Crown
The partnership for 2025 has been extended with The Crown Hotel for another year, which means the Windsor State School community can continue to wine and dine and support the school.
How does it work?
Simply order your food and drinks via the App, and ensure you have entered the code: WSS in the backend.
The app can be used at all Aus Venue Co locations and WSS will continue to earn money as part of the agreement. Other venues include Port Office Hotel, The Regatta, The Boundary Hotel, Everton Park Hotel, just to name a few...
App Rewards & Benefits
> $10 Welcome credit for all new members
> 10% off at The Crown Hotel
> Earn 10 points for every $1 spent on the app
> Earn 2000 points and convert for $20 credit
The best part is - every dollar you spend helps to support Windsor State School!
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