Riverside Currents Week 2 Term 4 2025

From the Principal

Dear Parents/Caregivers,

Riverside – empowering confident, creative, independent young women

I am finalising my report from the sunny shores of South Curl Curl beach, attending a meeting of Secondary Principals to share ideas, thoughts and best practice, not to mention concerns and feedback through motions to Murat and the Department, to improve the learning and opportunities of all of our students and teachers in NSW public schools.

The main reason for me sharing this is that the meeting is taking place at Stewart House, a charitable organisation that provides temporary care and education to vulnerable students from across the state from their residential site and classrooms at South Curl Curl. Stewart House has been in operation since 1931, reliant on the generosity and support of public school teachers through fortnightly deductions, as well as the broader community keen to support the great educational and wellbeing work done by Stewart House to students in Years 2-8 across the state.

Being part of a cohesive, passionate professional organisation is a privilege and an enriching source of inspiration and validation for the work that we are doing at Riverside. As a member of Ryde Network and North Sydney Region, we are a member of an elite group of dynamic, high-performing schools that cater to students of all achievement levels and who aim to drive success for all students through quality learning, co-curricula and extra curricula programs and a learning culture of high expectations.

At Riverside, we aim to support all students and enjoy building positive relationships with our community. We appreciate our parents working with us to support the engagement of our students. Learning is a priority of our school as that is the key to post-school success for all students, regardless of the pathway that the student takes to get there.

As parents we ask you to work with us to support your daughters to achieve success by:

1. Encouraging and guiding your daughters to attend schools every day (unless they are sick or on approved leave)
2. Attend school on time every day
3. Wear their school uniform
4. Bring all of their learning equipment and resources
5. Be organised by packing their bags in the evening to ensure they can focus on just getting out of bed, eating their breakfast and getting to school on time in the morning
6. Reminding them of the behaviour expectations of Riverside – based on creating a productive, cohesive learning environment for all (including phones and airpods being off and away in the school grounds

This partnership between home and school and the reinforcement by parents and caregivers of the expectations of our school is a massive, high impact step to ensuring that all students achieve success at school – with the recognition that success looks different for all.

If you are unsure of our expectations or would like to discuss any of our learning or behaviour expectations, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will clarify your understanding or provide the underpinning Department of Education policy or procedure.

I would like to conclude by saying that we recognise that every child is different and every child has a different opinion of school. We are absolutely aware of this and work very stringently to accommodate this through the diverse, differentiated learning activities that we implement in every classroom, every day.

If you have any questions about your daughter’s learning or engagement, we would appreciate and enjoy a conversation with you as collaboration and shared responsibility between our students, their family and the school is the key to success for all of our students. And to this we are absolutely committed.

I hope you all have a great weekend and congratulations to every student who did something great this week.

Louise McNeil

Principal

Riverside Arts Night

To celebrate the outstanding achievements of our students across the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) and PDHPE programs, we are pleased to invite you to the Riverside Arts Night on Thursday, 13 November.

The Art Gallery will be open in the Gymnasium from 5:00 pm, followed by Music and Dance performances in the Hall from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm.

A food truck will be available on site for you to purchase light refreshments during the evening.

To assist us with event planning and seating arrangements, please complete the Google Form - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe04CdyU1i2EMgJO4YnEd_q3VRIensZ2BakabY4DorFxI_DjQ/viewform

We look forward to celebrating our students’ creativity and talent with you.

Faculty News

TAS

Bringing Our Characters to Life with 3D Printing and Design

Recently, our class took on a fun design project where we designed and 3D printed our own cartoon characters. We began by brainstorming the type of character we wanted to create, sketching out our ideas as concept drawings. After developing our characters, we moved into the digital stage, using Tinkercad to bring them to life. Learning all the new skills required for the different applications was challenging, but it was worth it in the end as we saw our characters come together—complete with custom packaging designed using Adobe Illustrator. Once the packaging was created, it was laser cut and assembled by hand. Skyler made a pigeon called Nibs, and Sophia created a gnome named Spotty. Overall, we really enjoyed the process of creating our own characters and gained lots of new skills along the way.

By Sophia B & Skyler S - Year 9 Design & Technology