The Ryde Community inFocus is a simple way of communicating some insights and observations from the weeks past. It is written to celebrate and share the work that we do and to connect with community around some thoughts and insights into the learning culture at Ryde Public School.

Our School Vision

Lifelong learners- How good can we be? Strive today, succeed tomorrow

At Ryde Public School we believe that every student should be challenged to learn and continually improve in a respectful, inclusive and engaging environment of high expectations.

Our vision is to be partners in learning and collaboratively empower all students to become confident, resilient, self-directed and successful learners.

Wellbeing is the bedrock for all activities across all strategic improvement strategies, reflecting our core beliefs that success and acceptance breeds a culture where all stakeholders feel valued and cared for and prepared to take on challenge.

Lifelong learning, excellence, and happiness are the states of mind promoted in classrooms with the ever present question of 'How good can we be?' being asked across our community daily.

School Holidays

Monday 22 December - Monday 26th January 2026

Staff Return - School Development Days - 27 January - 30 January

School development days are used by schools to build on the knowledge and skills of our teachers, school leaders and school administrative support staff through a targeted professional learning program. These will operate the way they always have. Students do not attend on these days as there are no timetabled lessons so staff can engage in professional development and planning.

K-6 Students Return Monday 2nd February 2026

The Best Education Money Can't Buy...You can find it here at Ryde PS.

Did you know you can still enrol your child in Ryde Public School for 2025-2026 classes?

If you have a friend or a neighbour who is unsure about enrolment eligibility, please share this link or tell them to call us. We are here to help!

https://ehub.enrol.education.nsw.gov.au/schoolenrolment/?schoolCode=3021

Click ENROL NOW to start! Its never too late!

.......and this is what parents are saying about Ryde Public School:

School Captains' Report

On Wednesdays from week 1 to week 3, year 5 students took part in the Walking and Riding Routes to School Initiative incursion. They learnt about mapping skills and safe routes to school.

On Thursday of week 3, 20 students from the Opportunity Classes spent their dat at Waitara Public School for the Gifted Games. They participated in many challenges including STEM, target number and general knowledge.

We saw lots of different and unique Halloween costumes on Friday of week 3. Students were very creative with their costumes. In the afternoon, we had the Halloween Disco run by the P&C where students got to show off their dancing skills!

The City of Ryde Remembrance Day Service will take place on Tuesday 11th November to remember those who have fallen and have sacrificed themselves for our country. The school leaders will represent Ryde Public School at this event and lay a wreath.

Attendance Matters!

Let us know if your child is absent

As we head into the  end of school year, it remains important that your child attends school every single day. School is the best place for students to learn as well as to build social connections and life-long skills. 

We understand that families are eager to see and reconnect with loved ones and take a well-deserved break, or simply avoid travelling during peak times, but please remember that planned travel should only be taken during scheduled school holidays.  

Students should be at school every day during the school terms, until the end of term, unless they are sick or are absent for a justified reason.

Consistently going to school has countless benefits – from learning, to creating social connections and improving wellbeing through access to support and quality education.

Our staff are here to support you and your child to come to school every day. If you have any concerns or questions please talk to me, the front office staff or your class teacher. 

Thank you for working with us to support regular attendance., and wWe look forward to a successful and enjoyable end of term.

Sincerely,

Thanh Ta

Principal

Special Events at Ryde

City of Ryde Remembrance Service

Three of our school leaders proudly represented us at the City of Ryde Remembrance Service held at Memorial Park Meadowbank. They were Raleigh Richards, Elijah Yap and Hansen Toh. Raleigh had a speaking part which involved joining other schools in reciting a poem. The three leaders laid a wreath in remembrance of those who lost their lives in service to their country.

Gifted Games

The 2025 Gifted Games, hosted by Waitara Public School on Thursday the 30th of October, was an exciting competition where teams of Opportunity Class program students from multiple schools came together to test their knowledge, creativity, and teamwork.

Our day began with a fast-paced General Knowledge quiz that challenged us on everything from mythology to geography. Next came the Music and Ideation rounds, where we composed tunes inspired by a short film and brainstormed imaginative solutions to real-world problems. After a quick break, we moved on to Art, Poetry, and STEM — designing balloon-powered cars and writing poems about perseverance and success. The afternoon wrapped up with fun challenges in a workbook and a tricky timeline puzzle before the closing ceremony.

Medals were awarded to the top three overall teams, and certificates were also presented to the highest-scoring teams in each event. Many Ryde students proudly took home both medals and certificates, bringing the joy of victory back to our school.

By Elsa Z (5T) and Christian S (6C)

Maths Olympiad

Seventy-three talented Stage Three mathematicians proudly represented Ryde Public School in the 2025 Maths Olympiad Junior Competition. Competing in three teams, our students completed four challenging papers across the year, tackling problems that drew on their knowledge of number, algebra, geometry, and logical reasoning.

All participants demonstrated persistence, teamwork, and a love of problem-solving throughout the competition. We are delighted to share that our 5T and 6C teams both placed in the top 10% of participating teams — a fantastic achievement! Notably, the 6C team ranked 16th overall, an outstanding result within this top group. Even more impressively, four students from 6C achieved perfect scores, placing them among the top 0.56% of all participants.

Congratulations to perfect scorers Brian K, Brian L, Jordan W, and Jeremy X for their exceptional results, and to all our students for their enthusiasm and excellence in mathematics this year.

Ms Cardillo

Year Six Opportunity Class Teacher & Maths Olympiad Coordinator

Opportunity Class Science Fair

The Year Five and Year Six students in our Opportunity Class program participated in Ryde Public School’s inaugural Science Fair at the end of Term Three.

The students learned about the scientific method and worked in pairs to design, plan and conduct an experiment linked to one of the three areas of science studied so far this year. The classrooms were abuzz with curiosity and discovery as students tested hypotheses, collected data and analysed their results.

In addition to conducting their experiments, each pair prepared a written report and created an engaging display to present to judges, parents, carers and special guests at the Science Fair. The students confidently explained their projects to our visiting judges, senior students from Marsden High School, who were impressed by the creativity, depth of understanding and scientific thinking on display.

Well done to all students who participated in the Science Fair, and congratulations to our winners in each division:

Year Five Division:

First Place: Does sunlight and water affect plant germination rates? by Keziah L and Olivia X

Second Place: What liquid does an egg have to be submerged in to be able to bounce without breaking? by Teo K and Jeremy L

Third Place: Why does oobleck react differently to varied forces? by Claire K and Ann S

Year Six Division:

First Place: Which coastal protection structure most effectively mitigates tsunami flooding in a town? by Anna L and Vanessa T

Second Place: How does the amount of baking soda and vinegar used affect the height and distance of the lava flow in a model volcano? by Arthur C and Eric Y

Third Place: Is it the large amount of salt in the Dead Sea that causes people to float? by Beatrice X and Emily Z

Thank you to all the parents, carers, judges, staff, and community members who helped make Ryde Public School’s inaugural Science Fair such a success.

Ms Cardillo

Year Six Opportunity Class Teacher & Science Fair Coordinator

What we have to offer....

Visual Arts

The Visual Arts Group has been working on completing their final piece on still art. THe students are extremely excited as they will be participating in the Mural In A Day Program. A mural artist will come in to complete a mural with our students, celebrating the diversity within Ryde Public School. Students will work closely with the artist, learning all the skills needed to use spray paints. We look forward to sharing photos of the process and the final result at the end of the year!

K-2 Junior Choir

Exciting News! Our Junior Choir proudly kicked off the Wishing Tree Appeal with a joyful performance at Kmart. Their beautiful singing helped spread festive cheer and encouraged the community to contribute to this wonderful cause. Thank you to all who came along to support our young performers and make a difference this season!

3-6 Senior Choir

We are so proud of the Senior Choir for their AMAZING performance at the Ryde Schools Performing Arts Festival. After our year of practice it was finally time to sing at the Sydney Opera House! All of the students did a fantastic job singing and sometimes also dancing to the eleven songs. Their voices sounded beautiful and we are sure that their big smiles could be seen all the way in the back row of the concert hall. Well done Senior Choir! Such a wonderful opportunity for you all.

3-4 Junior Dance

The junior dance group has had so much fun learning and building on our dance skills. We have worked on two dances this year and we can't wait to perform them at the end of the year. We have made new friends and have had a blast this year. - Reet Year 3

Miss Kumar and Miss Tierney helped us so much this year and were very nice to us. - Utsah Year 3

5-6 Senior Dance

In Week 4, Senior Dance students finally performed at the highly anticipated Ryde Schools Performing Arts Festival. Our dance students performed phenomenally and showcased their incredible dance skills after months of practice and preparation. They truly dazzled on stage under the lights as they performed Helicopter and the Finale together with our Senior Choir. We are so proud of all our dance students and are sure they will continue to amaze their audience at the upcoming CAPA Showcase in Week 7.

Gardening Club

After 4 weeks of extreme weather (heat and rain), we were finally able to do some gardening! This term, the stage 3 students are going to be focusing on growing cherry tomatoes. We weeded the garden in preparation to plant the cherry tomatoes. The students planted the seeds in small pots, and we are waiting for the seeds to sprout before transferring them to the garden beds. The strawberries plants have been producing heaps of strawberries! At the end of each gardening session, students look forward to picking the strawberries and eating them. We learnt about the importance of washing and fruit or vegetables before eating them.

Music/Band

Our band students have been working hard in preparation for the Band Demonstration for Years 2 and 3, as well as for new students. This special event took place on Tuesday the 11th of November, and the band was very excited to share their music and welcome new members into their program.

Both the Junior and Senior Bands are now looking forward to performing in the Creative Arts Showcase on Tuesday the 25th of November. In addition, the Senior Band will also be performing at both the Band Demonstration and the Years 3–6 Presentation Day on Thursday the 11th of December.

Our students have shown great dedication and enthusiasm in their rehearsals, and we are very proud of their progress. We look forward to celebrating their achievements at these upcoming events.

Technology

Over the last few weeks, we have been hard at work on a major website refresh. We are on the home straight now and expect our new website to go live in the next couple of weeks. This should make our website easier to navigate and surface important information for our school community.

SRC

This term, our SRC members have been working hard to make a positive difference across our school. Their efforts have focused on three key areas: improving our school environment, strengthening student voice, and supporting student wellbeing. Through thoughtful consultation and collaboration, the SRC has developed several long-term initiatives that will be referred to the school executive. They are hoping for these initiatives to be implemented from this term and carried forward into next year. We’re proud of their commitment to creating lasting change and making our school an even better place to learn and grow.

Library

Ryde Public School Library will be hosting a Book Fair from Tuesday 25th - Friday 28th November! This is a wonderful opportunity for students to explore a wide range of books and other fun gifts, and foster a love of reading.
Students will have a chance to browse and explore the options available to purchase from the book fair, and parents will have the opportunity to visit and purchase throughout the week. Purchases help support our school library gain more resources.

The Book Fair will be open for families to visit and make purchases on:

Tuesday 25 Nov (CAPA Showcase day) - 11:00-11:30am
Wednesday 26 Nov - 8:30-8:50am
Thursday 27 Nov - 8:30-8:50am & 3:00-3:30pm
Friday 28 Nov - 8:30-8:50am & 3:00-3:30pm

The Book Fair is also a wonderful opportunity to find gift ideas for your family; books always make meaningful presents.

Thank you for your support!

Diverse Learners

What a fantastic start to the new term it’s been for our diverse learners! Everyone has settled in so well and jumped straight into their learning with excitement and big smiles. The classrooms have been full of energy, curiosity, and creativity as students take on new challenges and explore different activities each day.

It’s been wonderful to see how proud everyone feels of their hard work — from trying new things in literacy and tackling tricky maths problems to planting sunflower seeds and learning all about the plant life cycle. Our learners have joined in classroom projects, art sessions, and school activities with great enthusiasm, and it’s been a joy to see their confidence and excitement for learning grow.

Early Stage 1

This term in Visual Arts, our Kindergarten students embarked on a journey of creativity and cultural exploration through a diverse range of projects:

Rangoli Suncatchers: Students made bright suncatchers to explore Diwali using folded paper and colourful craft pieces.
Spooky Bats: Students cut out bat shapes and painted night skies with glowing full moons to create spooky scenes.
Chalk Pastel Jellyfish: Using chalk pastels, students drew glowing jellyfish and bubbles on black paper, blending colours to make their art shine.

Throughout these projects, students practiced listening carefully to multiple instructions, used a variety of art materials, and honed their cutting skills to create their beautiful artworks successfully. These activities helped students explore new art materials and express their creativity in fun ways!

Stage 1

This term in Stage 1 Visual Arts, our young artists have been exploring photography and perspective. Students have experimented with portrait and landscape photography, learning how to use light, angles and composition to bring their photographic work to life.

Stage 1 students have also taken on the interesting challenge of representing a 3-dimensional perspective on a 2D surface. Students learned how to illustrate a foreground, midground and background when creating our paddock landscape artworks. Inspired by the wonderful and wacky works of Yayoi Kusama, they created pumpkin artworks, using different-sized polka dots to create a 3-dimensional effect.

We are thrilled with the enthusiasm and progress our Stage 1 artists have shown this term and look forward to seeing how their skills continue to grow!

Stage 2

Stage 2 has been off to a flying start in Term 4. We’re really looking forward to all of the events that we have coming up. All of the students are enjoying the new programs and we’re hooked on our English text “200 Minutes of Danger”. There’s 10 short stories in one novel and we’re using our detective skills to link all the evidence together. In maths we have been working on Fractions and challenging ourselves to make composite, equivalent and mixed fractions.

Stage 3

Students in Year 5 have had the opportunity to participate in the Active Routes to School Project initiated by Transport NSW. Over the course of 3 weeks, students learnt about the environmental impacts of carbon emissions from different modes of transportation, and how they can reduce this by promoting safe walking routes to school. Students were highly engaged in mapping activities, determining the best routes that Ryde Public School students can utilise in the future. Stage 3 students have also been learning about bush dances in sport. It is so wonderful to see our students collaborate with each other, taking on dance moves and techniques and applying it to their compositions!

Year 6 Farewell

Fundraising Update

Our Year 6 students have continued to show great dedication towards fundraising for their Year 6 Farewell celebration. The P&C have donated $300 from the Father’s and Special Person’s Day Stall towards the Year 6 Farewell.

Collectively, all fundraising efforts have generated an impressive total of $8192.

The Year 6 students would like to extend their deepest gratitude to the P&C, parents and fellow students for their ongoing support, which has been invaluable throughout the fundraising process.

We encourage you to check out our fundraising thermometer to view our progress!

English as and additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D)

This year, we introduced take-home readers for our EAL/D (English as an Additional Language or Dialect) students in Years 1 to 6. This new initiative aims to support and develop their reading skills in a fun and engaging way.

We are thrilled to share that we have seen excellent progress in our students’ reading abilities since the program began. Regular reading practice has not only improved their vocabulary and comprehension but also boosted their confidence and love for reading.

Thank you to all the parents and caregivers for supporting this program by reading with your children at home. Your involvement makes a huge difference and helps make learning a shared and enjoyable experience!

P&C Report

Dear Parents and Carers,

We have had such an eventful start to Term 4 with a wonderful morning tea and appreciation tree for World Teachers Day and a spooky, fun Halloween Disco all on the same day!

I want to say a big thank you to all the RPS families who donated a gold coin to our World Teachers Day fundraiser and helped their children draw, colour and cut out the leaves for the appreciation tree! We raised $361 through gold coin donations, which allowed us to perfectly cover the costs of the coffees purchased by teachers from The Smelly Cheesecake as well as fill the staffrooms with sushi platters and Iranian pastry sweets! Teachers constantly spoke to me about how much they appreciated the coffee and morning tea but especially how much they loved the tree – which is why we left it up over the whole of the following week! The leaves have now been taken down and turned into little books for each teacher to take home. I want to also thank the school for working with us so seamlessly in printing and distributing the leaves!

Next, let’s talk about the Halloween Disco! The P&C had been hearing over and over that this is something the students at RPS really wanted to see return this year. Our aim as the P&C is to enhance students’ experiences at school and so this was something we were committed to putting on. Despite it being on the same day as Halloween and the allure of trick or treating, we had 219 tickets ordered which equates to almost 45% of the school’s students attending! It was a really fun afternoon and was made possible through the incredible support of all the P&C volunteers who came in and spent hours decorating the hall, cooking food, selling glow sticks and supervising the dancing! We are keen to repeat this again next year – so if you didn’t help this time ‘round, join in next year!

Something that I think deserves special mention is that we raised $301 through ticket donations (which covered much of the $459 that it cost to hire the entertainment) despite making our tickets free for families. In fact, through ticket donations and food and glow stick stall sales, we almost completely covered the costs of running the event. Making this a free event was important to us because we wanted it to be accessible to anyone who wanted to come so thank you for coming along and donating if you were able.

In terms of ticket sales, we know that many families had difficulties with the QR code or had challenges with accessing direct links to the Qkr! App through Sentral. Our sincere apologies! We found most issues could be solved by accessing the app directly on your phone and then navigating to the correct page so we won’t be using QR codes or direct links to Qkr! pages in Sentral in the future. We are happy to work with families to set up the app just reach out via email or our WhatsApp group.

Lastly, our AGM and final general meeting of the year is fast approaching on Wednesday, 3 December at 7pm. Please save the date and reach out if you’d like to be more involved next year!

Kind regards,

Cathrine Isaacs
P&C President (RydePandC@gmail.com)
WhatsApp P&C Group chat: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HqR6AoxC3CS5evWIWeDxgL

Community Information

Keyboard Lessons

Chinese Club

This term in our Chinese club, the students dived into the classic story The Tortoise and the Hare all in Chinese. To make the learning fun and memorable, we turned the story into a mini drama where every child took on a role.

With lots of enthusiasm and plenty of laughs, they practised speaking and listening in Chinese while rehearsing the performing. They used simple expressions, worked together as a team, and brought each character to life on stage. Through acting, they not only understood the storyline but also learned the important moral behind it.

Our classroom was filled with smiles, energy and a true sense of joy. The students were fully engaged, learning Chinese through play, movement and creativity. It was wonderful to see their confidence grow each week.

The Northern Centre

Giving us Feedback

There are many ways that you can give us feedback, such as:

Emailing the school (ryde-p.school@det.nsw.edu.au). Your email will be forwarded to the appropriate staff member through the office.
Access our feedback link via the school website or
the Community inFocus. It looks like this:

High quality feedback from the community helps us to improve. Your feedback is important.

Compliments lets us know what we are doing well and the positive impact it is having on the community.

Your suggestions helps us to evaluate and review our practice and where possible, make adjustments to improve our service.

Please click HERE: Compliments and Suggestions High quality feedback from the community helps us to improve. Your feedback is important.

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