Year 8

Upcoming Events

Pockets

Students who earned a Pocket may drop their certificate and blazer at school on Thursday or Friday to be embroidered. If students miss this opportunity, please keep the certificate and bring both the certificate and the blazer at the end of Term 4 to be embroidered over the summer holidays. 

Yearly Examinations

The Yr 8 examination block is Term 4 Week 4. A detailed schedule will be posted on Redlands Pulse for parents and the iLearn Pastoral page for students as soon as it is available. Similar to last year, students will complete a couple of examinations each day with breaks at Recess, Tutor and Lunch.

End of Term Awards and Recognitions

  • Well done to Yr 8 debaters who made the Grand Finals, finishing strongly last week: Jiaqi Guan, Rafferty Heard, Sholto Mirrlees-Black, Jack Petering, Krishan Price, Scarlett Thorp, Jocelyn Wang and Annie Zhang.
  • Congratulations to Johnny Wang for earning the Elite Language Perfect Certificate where he placed in the top 0.2% of 181,000 competitors from around the world. Well done, Johnny!
  • Congratulations to ICAS Science recipients Mischa Barac, Jiaqi Guan and Jack Keogh who earned Distinctions; Conor Petersen, Mitchell Travers-Wolf and Jocelyn Wang who earned High Distinctions. Congratulations to all students who took on this challenge.
  • BEBRAS Australia is an international initiative aiming to promote Computational Thinking among school students. For the past couple of years, all students in Yr 8 had a chance to participate in this challenge which is conducted by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). This year, the following six students from Redlands have been awarded High Distinctions in this challenge: Isaac Brooks, Harry Fenton, Flynn Kieran, Conor Petersen, Scarlett Thorp, James Stuart and Christopher Szeto.

Netflix Documentary – The Social Dilemma

With students in Secondary School being more infatuated than ever with social media and peer approval on a much larger scale than in years past, it is not a surprise that we might have come to be in this situation due to the very platforms used daily in society. While these platforms may have had extremely positive intent from the outset in the early 2000’s and 2010’s, we are finding the various impacts of these platforms and devices to be quite confronting more each day. 

Netflix has put out a new documentary titled, The Social Dilemma, with fascinating interviews from the creators and top executives themselves speaking about their various creations, the research that was conducted to build these companies and the moral debate around whether these platforms are doing more harm than good.  

This documentary was brought to my attention by a parent in our community. While it is rated PG-13, it may not be appropriate for students at this age as the topics are quite heavy. I am, however, including it in Note Day as a suggestion for all parents and carers to watch over this term break as it is educational, thought-provoking, confronting and empowering. It brings to light many areas of concern around social media.

Wishing all families a restful and restorative term break!

Ms Alissa Ynson
Yr 8 Advisor
9968 9863
aynson@redlands.nsw.edu.au