Barkly Highway State School eNewsletter

Principal's Welcome

Welcome back, to all our students and families!

I hope your children had a refreshing break and are now enjoying the excitement of school life, both in the classroom and on the playground.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve welcomed 5 students from 3 new families to our school and Mount Isa community.

Did you see the following communication?

Semester 1 Academic Reporting emailed to families on Friday of week 1.
Term 3 Class Overviews sent home on Friday of Week 1. If you did not receive this, please get in touch with your child’s classroom teacher. These overviews include important information about the class curriculum and key events planned for the term.
Facebook posts – including Spinifex State College transition meeting details, school events including 100 days of prep, space-based learning, classroom-based activities each teacher has posted on their classroom Class Dojo
NAIDOC Activity Day – 2 hours of fun outdoor activities, topped off with puftaloons covered with syrup!

It’s already shaping up to be a busy and exciting term, with both students and staff looking forward to the events ahead including –

School photos
Rodeo dress-up
Book Week – book character dress-up parade
2026 Prep transition – playgroup, open day
Gala Day - Touch, Cricket
2026 Year 6 Spinifex State College transition day
Instrumental Music Recruitment Concert
Year 6 Tallebudgera Camp

Year 1 Phonics Check

As advised by the Director-General on 17 July 2025, all Queensland state schools are to trial the implementation of the Year 1 Phonics Check in all schools in 2025. It has been designed as a quick and easy check-in to understand students’ decoding skills to be administered and designed for use at a convenient time in Term 3.

With the strengthened focus on phonics in the updated curriculum, all state schools will use the Year 1 Phonics Check as a universal screener to determine students’ phonic knowledge and phonemic awareness. Year 1 teachers are currently working with our DP (K-2) Mrs Candy, to ensure consistency of practice when administering the test in the next two weeks.

The Year 1 Phonics Check is intended primarily as a screening tool. As such, it is important that schools also continue to monitor student progress according to the school’s phonics scope and sequence. This involves tracking students’ knowledge of taught grapheme/phoneme (letter/sound) correspondences, as well as their ability to blend and segment these correspondences. See the attached document “Year 1 Phonics Test” for more information”.

Kind regards,

Fiona Kropp

K-2 Deputy News

Reading Together at Home: Why It Matters

Reading aloud with your child is one of the most important things you can do to support their language and literacy development. This is called shared reading, and it simply means reading a book together and talking about it along the way.

When you pause to ask questions, talk about the pictures, or discuss the story, you're helping your child learn new words and ideas. These conversations build strong language skills that support reading success.

Books with rich pictures and engaging stories are perfect for shared reading. It can be anything your child enjoys! Even if your child can’t read the words yet, hearing stories helps them grow their vocabulary and understand how language works.

So, grab a favourite book, cuddle up, and enjoy a story together. You’re helping your child become a confident and curious reader one page at a time!

Getting Ready for Prep!

Starting school is an exciting milestone, and our weekly Pre-Prep Playgroup is a great way to help children feel confident and comfortable about the transition from Kindergarten to Prep.

These fun, play-based sessions give children a chance to explore the school environment, meet some of the teachers, and build friendships with other children who will be starting Prep next year. It’s all about helping them feel at home and excited about what’s to come!

Our Pre-Prep Playgroup has now started and will continue weekly for the rest of this term. We love seeing the smiling faces and growing confidence each week. If you have a child starting Prep with us in 2026, please be sure to come along on Wednesday afternoons from 2:00-2:30 in our ECDP area on Urquhart Street.

Kind regards,

Mrs Roberts' Report

School Opinion Survey

The suite of School Opinion Surveys is undertaken each year by the Department of Education to obtain opinions about our school from families, school staff and students in target year levels (4, 5 & 6). The surveys will help identify what we are doing well and understand where we can improve.

The survey invitation was emailed in the week beginning 21 July and is titled School Opinion Survey for parents and caregivers, 2025. Each school family will receive one email invitation from the Department of Education to complete the Parent/Caregiver Survey.

The survey is anonymous, and the results are not reported in ways that an individual’s response can be identified by the school. Parents/Caregivers are encouraged to complete the survey. The survey can be completed via computers, tablets or smart phones with an internet connection.

For Parents/Caregivers who do not have access to the internet school computers/tablets will be available. Parents/caregivers who experience difficulties accessing the survey can request a new survey from the School Opinion Survey team via email schoolopinionsurvey@qed.qld.gov.au.

It’s important that as many parents/caregivers as possible complete the survey, so we would appreciate if members of the community would raise awareness of this survey with other parents and caregivers.

Can’t find your invitation? If your family has more than one parent/caregiver, check that they haven’t received the invitation and/or check your junk email folder.

Rodeo Time!

Rodeo Season kicks off on Wednesday night with our entry in the Mount Isa Street Festival. If your child/ren would like to participate in the parade and walk with staff – please meet us in the grassed area near the round about on Isa Street at 5:30, for a 6:00 start (look for our school flag). Students are to be collected promptly after the parade at Bambinos.

With the cancellation of our Queen Quest visit/Dress up parade on Wednesday, 06 August we have moved our Rodeo Dress up parade to Thursday, 07 August at 8:30 in the Parade area, however this will just be a Dress up Parade with no Queen Quests entrants visiting.

Kind regards,

Kamrynn Roberts

STEM

Solid Pathways Programs for Year 4 and 6 in Term 2

Last term, several of our students in Year 4 and Year 6 were invited to participate in the Solid Pathways Program.

Year 4 students were learning to code on the Deadly Coders platform. They were creating a variety of projects aimed at promoting the 12th UN Sustainable Development Goal. Our students had lots of fun learning to create characters and animate them through the coding app.

Year 6 students were learning about simple machines through a number of fair tests. They explored Newton’s 3 Laws of Motions, looked at the unit of force – Newtons, and started exploring the physics concept of ‘work’ that they then used, when investigating the effectiveness of simple machines.

3 Weeks in 5/6 Gold

Cricket with 3/4 Gold

Last week, our 3/4 cohort had the privilege of participating in a school organised Cricket Workshop. We learned and practised correct throwing, catching and hitting form as well, as a range of games to play in pairs, small groups and as a class to put these skills into action.

3/4 Gold loved this opportunity! What a treat to be at school! 🤩🤩🤩

Week 3 with 1/2 Gold

It’s been a busy week in 1/2 Gold

We started constructing planning posters to help us structure our presentations.
This term in maths, we have been learning how to measure length, mass, and capacity in informal units. Now we’ve begun measuring the duration of activities. Students made a poster to represent the types of activities that can be measured by different units of time. They also measured and sequenced three different games.
In HASS on Friday, we added to our interactive learning space. This term we have been learning about the features and purpose of a place. Today we added constructed and managed features to the pump track.
In our reading groups this week, we have been focusing on identifying language features and using them to add details to our sentences. While our English unit is a speaking task this term, it is still important to develop the skills to expand upon our ideas.

Book Club#5 was handed out and ordered last week and we are now awaiting delivery.

Book Week Dress-up Day is coming!

Our school will celebrate Book Week with a Book Week Dress-Up Parade at 8:30 on Friday 22 August in the UCA. We would love to see all our students take part and dress-up as their favourite book character on that day. We can’t wait to see what fabulous ideas you will bring to life! From traditional fairytale characters to the more recent characters, let your imagination run free! There are so many wonderful and cherished characters to choose from, so start brainstorming with your child/ren to help them create their favourite book character! What a great opportunity to read some books together….

We can’t wait to see what amazing book characters our students will bring to life on parade this year!

See below for a bit of background information regarding CBCA and what Book Week is about.

This year’s Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) theme is ‘Book an Adventure’. The CBCA presents annual awards to Australian books of literary merit for outstanding contribution to Australian children’s literature.

The CBCA was founded in 1945 in a time when Australian children’s books were few, and Australian authors and illustrators were virtually unknown. The following year, 1946 the The Book of the Year Awards, an annual award to promote books of high literary and artistic quality was established. These awards are now the most influential and highly respected in Australia.

Each year, across Australia, the CBCA brings children and books together celebrating Children’s Book Week. Throughout the year, the CBCA works in partnership with authors, illustrators, publishers, booksellers and other organisations in the children’s book world to bring words, images and stories into the hearts and minds of children and adults.

Australian children’s literature enriches our nation and reaches children across the world through international editions.

Voluntary Contributions

Thank you to the amazing 49 out of 197 families that have made contributions so far this year.

Your donations will support improving Student Wellbeing and Engagement, having Technology in the Classroom and Enhancing Learning Programs.

Voluntary Contribution envelopes were distributed to all students at the start of Term 3 with payment options being our online QKR! platform or returning the envelope with cash enclosed to the school office where you could also pay by EFTPOS in person.

P&C News

Our P&C have unfortunately had to say goodbye to one of its executives this past term, with Al Grubb, our trusted and very knowledgeable Vice President leaving Mount Isa to the northside of Brisbane. If you are interested in joining our team for the rest of the year, please contact us at pandc@barklyhighwayss.eq.edu.au

We have a meeting coming up on Tuesday 12 August and we would love to fill this position and help our team run smoothly until the end of the year.

We would like to say a MASSIVE thank you to our team in the tuckshop, as unbeknown to most on Monday 23 June our tuckshop ladies faced a 5cm deep pool of water throughout the WHOLE tuckshop. Sometime over the weekend, the hot water system let go, and water went EVERYWHERE. We had nothing damaged amazingly, and no power leads in the water, but it was a case of 'all hands on deck' to make sure that tuckshop orders for the day were made and the tuckshop was back in working order for the rest of the week, including the sports days. We moved some appliances to the Science room, we printed off paper copies of orders, and we made it work. Jenny and Shellea were amazing, with Kate our Treasurer lending a hand as well. With the vacuum from Tiger Carpet Cleaning, we filled 3 of their tanks with the water, sucking up as much as we possibly could. The school was amazing at getting a plumber in to turn off the water quickly and also getting them to fix it that afternoon. Thank you all again. It went so smoothly, our Secretary, Leah, didn't even realise it had happened! 🙂

In saying that, whilst this term has started well, we do want to put our thoughts towards our Tuckshop Convenor Jenny who has had to take sick leave this past 3weeks for surgery and recovery. Wishing you all the best and a speedy recovery and see you back when you can.

Thank you, Shellea, for maintaining the tuckshop service during this time.

Thanks everyone, hope to see you all around at Rodeo!

Tuckshop Service Feedback

We hope you find our Tuckshop Service to be convenient and we want to keep it as healthy, affordable, tasty and exciting for your children and our Teachers and staff to enjoy. We are always looking to improve, so we would like to invite you to share your feedback with us via this survey.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZBMX6DR

Thank you very much for your input.