Riverside Currents Week 2 Term 1 2024

Dear Parents/Caregivers,

I hope you have all had a wonderful week. We have just finished Week 2 at Riverside and what a huge week it has been. Students continue to settle in and the uniform looks sharp. I routinely wander around the hallways during lesson time and the playground and library during lunch. It gives me such joy to see so many happy young people, interacting (mobile phone free) with each other, resplendent in their full school uniform. It also gives me great pleasure to visit and look into classrooms each day to see great innovative teaching taking place, in all subject areas.

Our teaching and learning focus for 2024 is Numeracy. Explicit teaching remains the focus for all classrooms, specifically concentrated around numeracy across the curriculum – in TAS, PDHPE, Dance, Science, English, HSIE and Maths! We are continuing to develop and finesse our common language around Numeracy to support students in opening their mind and their confidence to the understanding and application of numeracy, in all facets of their lives. Like PEEL in literacy, COPP will become the language of numeracy. We will keep you updated as the initiative rolls out across our classrooms.2026 is the first year of the HSC when it is mandatory that ALL students study Mathematics. Our current Year 10 students are the first cohort required to study Maths in Stage 6, something which they will be informed of during their Subject Selection evening later in the year. It is also a prerequisite in many courses at university. We work with our Year 10 students to ensure that they are aware of this type of curriculum information when we prepare them for their subject selections. In the meantime, we look forward to continuing our ongoing focus on numeracy.

O Week

O Week replicates a university O Week (for those of you who remember the days), and is a program of student-led activities which take place at recess and lunch to inform and engage students in the broad co-curricula and extra-curricula offerings we have at the school, as well as creating some lighthearted whole school competition in sport. O Week will take place at school next week and will include the set up of display booths promoting clubs and activities, such as Drama, Dance, ICT, Duke of Edinburgh, Cinema Club, Amnesty International, Knitting, The Stream and Saga; musical performances in the library to showcase our incredibly talented performing artists and a sausage sizzle in the quadrangle. It is a great event that brings our school community together for the first time in the year.

Swimming Carnival

We had a wonderful day at Drummoyne Pool on Wednesday. It is always such a joyous day, out in the sun (which finally emerged), swimming and/or cheering on our swimmers, student and teacher, in the spirit of competition and sportspersonship. Thankyou to Ms Haire and the PDHPE faculty for coordinating the day and to all of our students for demonstrating the true Riverside spirit in dressing in their House colours, showing up and getting involved. It was a magical, fun day with some outstanding swimming performances and records broken along the way.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Louise McNeil

Principal

School Photo Day

Faculty News

Science

In celebration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on Sunday 11 February, Science teachers took photos of some of the learning activities in their classrooms.

Our newest Riversidians learning to collect and analyse data using some of our tried and trusted Science equipment.