Head of Junior School
The da Vinci Decathlon
Last Thursday over 1100 students from across the State in Yrs 5 and 6 participated in the annual Knox Grammar NSW da Vinci Decathlon. The Decathlon celebrates the academic gifts of young people by providing a stimulating and challenging competition run in the spirit of an Olympic Decathlon. Students competed in teams of eight across ten disciplines: Engineering, Mathematics and Chess, Code Breaking, Art and Poetry, Science, English, Ideation, Creative Producers, Cartography and General Knowledge.
With the day divided into three sessions and many tasks running concurrently, both the Redlands Yrs 5 and 6 teams demonstrated excellent collaboration and took a group approach to problem solving. With more than 50 teams in each age group, the Yr 5 team achieved noteworthy results in English (5th), Code Breaking (8th) and Cartography (8th). The Yr 6 team are to be highly commended for achieving 1st place in the General Knowledge section of the competition. Well done and congratulations to all participating students and my thanks are also extended to Mrs Hibbert and Mrs Rugg, who prepared and accompanied the students.
Yr 5 – Chloe Bailey, Piper Bradley, Iona Gait, Remie Gibbs, Krishna Gupta, Michael Havryk, Liam Petersen, Callum Zhu
Yr 6 – Mischa Barac, Arya Gapaillard, Ahnu Guan, Rafferty Heard, Benjamin Palmet, Conor Petersen, Mitchell Travers-Wolf and Melinda Wright
Redlands Cross Country Team Success
On Tuesday morning our Redlands Cross Country team set off in darkness for Orange to compete in this year’s HICES Cross Country Carnival, competing against other coed independent schools from across the State. With over forty of our Junior School girls and boys running, the event was certainly one that needed a combined team effort and our team ran with great spirit and determination, which resulted in them defending the Division 1 Shield again, coming 1st overall for the third year running.
We are very proud of all of the girls and boys who competed and I also extend my gratitude to our many parent supporters who made the long journey out to Orange to support the children. We look forward to celebrating their achievements in our next Junior School assembly.
AFL State Champions
We were delighted to hear of the success of Yr 6 students, Isaac Brooks and Gianmarco Pradel, who were part of the Combined Independent Schools of NSW team in last week’s State competition. The boys competed against the best of the State over the course of the week in Bateman’s Bay and their team gelled superbly to emerge victorious as State Champions for 2018. Both boys played important roles in their team and then travelled back on Friday for Isaac to compete for the Chess team on Friday afternoon and then both boys pulled on the Redlands AFL jersey on Saturday morning to play with their school mates again.
Yr 3 Camp
As I shared briefly last week, I had the pleasure of joining Yr 3 on Camp last week, a wonderful experience and opportunity for them to enjoy time together and create memories together. With perfect weather, the outdoors environment certainly helped to facilitate some engaging experiential learning for students and many also commented on making new friendships too; one of our hopes for our camp program.
As our Junior School camps conclude for 2018, I acknowledge the immense preparation and student care on all four camps, which has provided every students with some wonderful memories.
You Can Sit with Me – Friday 1 June
Tomorrow, the Junior Campus is encouraged to wear a touch of yellow as part of the You Can Sit with Me inclusivity and kindness campaign, which our Junior School students were given more information about in our assembly. Our Junior Campus buddies will also enjoy sitting with each other and having lunch together.
Mr Ari Guha
Head of Junior School
aguha@redlands.nsw.edu.au
9953 6022