Head of Junior School

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We’re Back!

It has been just wonderful to welcome the vast majority of our students back this week. In some ways, it felt like the start of the school year again; in other ways, it was like we have never been away.

Our Monday morning assembly (still via Zoom) focused on reconnecting and looking out for one another with the wellbeing of students and staff our first priority as we adjust back to routines here at school. Our Junior School Captains, Leda Subasi and Jacob Cartwright, spoke positively on behalf of the student leaders and shared a wonderful video that the student leaders had created, which staff and students enjoyed immensely.

Whilst there have been some necessary modifications to the daily routines, there is also much that is familiar to the students and overall, they have settled back very well and we look forward to this time back together.

My continued thanks to staff, students and parents as we have navigated this return to On-Campus Learning which has been a joy.

Staffing News

This week, we have welcomed back Mrs Jessica Richards to take over from Mrs Snooks who commences her maternity leave from the start of next week. Mrs Richards is a highly experienced teacher and is returning to Redlands after her own maternity leave and we are thrilled to welcome her back. We thank Mrs Snooks for her care of her students and preparing a very thorough handover with Mrs Richards this week and of course, we look forward to hearing news of her impending arrival later this term.

Road Safety

With increased cars around the school at drop off and pick up, please be reminded to never choose convenience over safety. We have had a couple of near misses and in particular, please be aware that the speed limit around schools is 40km/hr. Alarmingly, a number of cars have been seen speeding up Allister St, the major road for pick ups for the Campus.

World Champions!

Once again, our Junior School students have been involved in a global online learning competition organised by Education Perfect (EP), a website and app that students use to learn languages. Since its inception, it has expanded considerably and now has self-guided units of work and other subjects besides languages.

Each year Education Perfect holds two major competitions that Redlands Junior and Secondary language students take part in; the EP Languages World Championships and the EP NSW Languages Championships. In both competitions, the goal is to answer questions correctly in Spanish and other languages over a period of seven days. It is an engaging and rewarding competition and students answer thousands of questions. Participation is entirely voluntary, except for their one hour Spanish lesson during the competition week (which was remotely for many), so all this additional language learning takes place in the students’ own time. 

In this year’s World Championships, Redlands students answered over half a million questions with Junior School students answering a staggering 370,000 questions in Spanish!

Since 2015, Redlands has been placed 1^st in Spanish in the NSW Championships but this year, we were awarded 1^st in Spanish in the World Championships out of 1,377 schools from across the world, a phenomenal achievement! Our Junior School students earned 61 of the 83 awards for individual scores above 500 points for Redlands and I congratulate every student involved and Senora Colagiuri for her inspiration and contagious energy.

The following students will receive a $30 giftpay voucher for achieving the highest scores in Spanish in their Year Group for our Junior School Spanish competition: Roy Rivera Yr 6, Lilyah Rafferty Yr 5, Ina Guan Yr 4, Wesley Rinaldo Yr 3. The class with the highest score was 5 White with 23,329 points who also came 14^th globally for Spanish in the competition. 

Below is a list of Junior School students who scored Silver and above in the World Championships. Congratulations to Christopher Stevens and Roy Rivera (both Yr 6) on achieving the highest possible Elite award with over 10,000 points. In addition to the two Elite awards, the Junior School achieved 6 Emerald (over 5,000), 8 Gold (over 3,000), 5 Silver (over 2,000), 17 Bronze (over 1,000) and 23 Credit (over 500) awards. These certificates won’t arrive for several weeks and they will be distributed to the winners when they arrive.

Story Telling

During the period of isolation, Yr 10 student, Isabella Kendrigan contacted the Junior School Teacher Librarian, Mrs Wiebe, with an idea to video herself reading stories for Junior School students. Isabella selected a range of picture books which have become a big hit as many of our students absolutely loved them and kept asking for more; so much so that Isabella kept providing them and has now read six stories in total.

Bella has created her own YouTube account for students and families to hear her read these stories and I thank and congratulate Bella for her initiative and making a difference during this period of time.

Mr Ari Guha
Head of Junior School 
aguha@redlands.nsw.edu.au
9953 6022