Sir John A. Cumber Primary School students are ending their academic year on a high note after earning a spot in the top 20 schools in the world on the digital learning platform Languagenut.
“It’s very nice and emotional… it’s very exciting to see the name of your school and your country when you open the website,” Spanish teacher and author Gema Brett told the Cayman Compass in a recent interview.
The platform is a resource tool that allows students to learn languages, but they can also complete challenges which earns them points while helping them to improve their skills.
For the young students, like Melayiah White, deputy head girl at the West Bay school, reaching the top 20 was rewarding.
The 11-year-old said the best part of the accolade is that the entire school shares in the celebration.
“We went from position less than 1,000th and we made it all the way up to the top 20, and that is just an achievement for everyone, even for the Reception [students]. They may not be playing on Languagenut but they are still able to experience what we’re experiencing because, overall, if we fail, we fail as a team. If we achieve, we achieve everything as a school and as a team,” she said.
Brett said when the school made the top 20 this week, she wrote to the Languagenut administrators to have the Cayman Islands flag added to the school name.
For Melayiah, seeing the Cayman Islands flag in the top 20 when students log on the platform was amazing.
A win like no other
Brett described the achievement as “remarkable” on many fronts for the Cayman Islands and the West Bay primary school, as the students not only beat all local schools to get to the top 20, but they surpassed schools from around the world.
“When you open the website and it’s on the right-hand side, you see there the 20 best schools in the world, and it’s been dominated by UK schools for the last [couple of] years, to be honest. Our goal, which was something that we didn’t believe we were going to be able to achieve before the end of the school year, was to make it to the top 20, and we did, we made it to the top 20, and now we are in position 17,” she said.
The platform, she said, is a learning tool, but also allows the children to complete challenges which helps to improve their language skills.
“Learning a new language is always tough. It’s not always exciting. Sometimes it gets boring if you don’t know how to use the resources that you have as a teacher for your students to learn and to have fun at the same time while they’re learning. They work very, very hard,” she said.
In fact, Brett said, it was the first time she has seen primary school students asking her for homework to take home “because the more assignments they get, the more activities they have, the more games they get to play and the more points they get, and [with] more points we get higher up on the ranking.”
Riley Edwards, 9, said she enjoys doing the challenges and was happy to see her school’s name in the top 20.
She also topped local schools in her year group on the platform.
“It feels great [because] I get lots of encouragement… it [also] means that I could do [more] to improve, I could do more tasks and get more points, but I also want others to get first place to feel what it like,” she said.
She said she likes Spanish a lot and practises it often. She also greets her friends with a hearty “Hola!.”
Head girl Bella Persaud, 11, said the platform makes learning a new language fun, and she is happy to have contributed to the top ranking.
She too earned top spot on the platform and said seeing the excitement in her fellow schoolmates made her feel proud.
Both Melayiah and Bella will be off to high school in the next academic year, but they are committed to helping the school keep its spot in the top 20, or even move further up, while they still can.
“We’re not gonna be here to help them, but I can assure you that Year 5s, Year 4s, even the Year 3s, they will be playing to help us bump up,” Melayiah added.
However, Bella urged students at the school to “just keep on trying, keep working hard, keep on having faith in yourself, and don’t let anyone else or yourself down, including our school”.
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