The Quarterly Update: July

• Wednesday 19 July 2023
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This year has flown by so fast you’d be forgiven for thinking it was still April! (And no, this isn’t some belated April Fool’s joke.) Despite the speedy passage of time, we’ve been working hard on some great projects these past few months. As the saying goes, time flies when you’re having fun—and that’s definitely true for all of us at Prim-Ed and R.I.C. There’s nothing we love more than creating exciting new products for you all and seeing them brought to life in the classroom. Ready to find out more about what we’ve been getting up to? Let’s dive right in.

Our team has been hard at work in the Perth office—and it’s safe to say that winter has well and truly taken hold. Despite the chilly temperatures, the team has been working on some exciting projects, one of the most recent being the creation of our new 2023-2024 workbook catalogue.

Lots of hard work and creativity went into developing a fabulous new catalogue in time for workbook season. Available in both print and digital format, the Australian and New Zealand workbook catalogues can now be viewed on our website—so, get ready to practise, consolidate, and reinforce year-round!

May saw the beginning of our exciting collaboration with the renowned Gurindji Waanyi artist Sarrita King for National Reconciliation Week. In case you missed it, we created a series of freebies centered around an incredible, unique artwork that Sarrita created just for us! We were also lucky enough to sit down with Sarrita to hear more about her work and her interpretation of this year’s Reconciliation Week theme, ‘Be a voice for generations.’ You can still check out our blog post, Sarrita King’s creation for reconciliation, to hear more from Sarrita and to download your Reconciliation Week freebie pack—learning about the importance of reconciliation should happen year-round.

Recently, a few of our team members attended the National Education Summit in Melbourne, enjoying the great opportunity to connect with school leaders, principles, and educators during a weekend of workshops and interactive seminars. It was a great success—just look at their smiling faces!

If you missed us last time around, we’re pleased to announce we’ll be visiting the east coast again this August. Register for the National Education Summit Brisbane Conferences now—we'd love to see you there!

For the rest of the team, putting the finishing touches on Australian Curriculum Science has been the center of our little universe. Stay tuned to hear more about this newly revised series soon, or you can pre-order Australian Curriculum Science now!

On the other side of the globe, temperatures have been creeping up and the team has been enjoying the change of weather.

We're pleased to announce that our team in Ireland has grown by two! Please join us in welcoming Colum Kavanagh, our new Full Stack Developer, and Finbarr Murphy, the new Sales Account Manager! Both team members are off to a great start and are settling into their new duties brilliantly. We’re very pleased to have two more dedicated and passionate workers on our team.

As a well-established company that understands the needs of our community, our team has been focused on the continued development of our presence in the digital landscape lately. We understand how digital resources can be such a valuable asset in a teacher's toolkit, and so we have developed an awesome workbook microsite. Practise, consolidate, and reinforce all year with this easy-to-navigate collection of our bestselling workbook resources.

Plus, have you heard about our innovative educator planning platform, Let's teach! yet? Our teams in Ireland and across the globe have been hard at work putting the final touches on this bespoke digital platform built by educators, for educators. Be the first to catch a glimpse of Let's teach! by signing up to get the latest news on beta, launch, and full release now.

As part of our continued commitment to listening to our community, we’ve recently created a complete guide to Sound in Focus which can be easily found on our blog! Learn more about the science behind our bestselling literacy series and all the exciting elements bursting from each incredible book.

We’d also like to wish you a very happy and safe school break!

Phew—the South African office has been busy over the past few months! In very exciting news, we welcomed a brand new office baby in May. Congratulations on the newest addition to your family, Robyn!

We were happy to partner with WCED to provide a day of training in reading for meaning for 100 Grade 7 educators across the Western Cape. Being able to improve and simplify teaching methods for educators in our community is such a privilege and something we are so passionate about—it’s why we've stuck around for over three decades! Our boxed literacy resources—The Comprehension Box, The Comprehension Strategies Box and The Literacy Box—are such valuable aids in reading comprehension, especially with the reading crisis in South Africa. It was an absolute pleasure to showcase this product to the attendees.

The brave Fabiana and Rozaan weathered the Western Cape floods in June and attended the ISASA conference at Houw Hoek. They made some wonderful connections and arranged many follow-ups for the third term. After such a successful event, our team is more excited than ever for the national conference in September!

 

We also held various Sounds in Focus workshops across the country. See some of the participants’ feedback below:

• ‘The whole session was very informative. I would like to learn more and would definitely incorporate it in my classroom.’ – Hillside Primary School
• ‘The activities were lovely. I enjoyed that they were interactive and kept the workshop fun.’ – J.S. Klopper Primary School
• ‘I love that this program was used to help teachers teach phonemic awareness in a practical way. Thank you!’ – Blouberg Ridge Primary School.

Lastly, we are beyond excited to introduce our freshly translated STEM Projekte series. The translation of one of our bestsellers into Afrikaans is highly anticipated in schools and we can’t wait to see it in your hands.

And that’s another quarter of the year done and dusted. From all of us at Prim-Ed and R.I.C., we wish you all the best going into the second half of the year and want to remind you that, much like the best fairy godmother ever, we’re here whenever you need us! See you in October.