Welcome to Art for 2025

We are thrilled to kick off another exciting year of creativity and artistic exploration. This year, we have five dedicated Art teachers guiding students across different year levels and we wish to welcome Ms Anacona and Ms Waldron to the Art Team!

Miss Crane will teach Foundation

Prep Art

Our Prep students have had a fantastic start to the year, focusing on building relationships and developing a collaborative Art Essential Agreement. They've explored key topics such as expectations, safe scissor use, and classroom practices, all while getting to know me, their Art teacher. To celebrate Lunar New Year, they painted vibrant snake faces and traced their handprints, practicing fine motor skills and learning about their school house colour, belonging, and key art elements like line and colour. Well done Preps, I’m super proud of you all.

Ms. Ancona will teach Years 1 and 2

Ms. Mancini & Ms. Waldron (Tuesdays only) will teach Years 3 and 4

Ms. Fankhauser will teach Years 5 and 6.

In our first lessons, students have been introduced to their teachers, the Art program, and the creative spaces where they will bring their ideas to life. We have also discussed class expectations, Art room rules, and the IB Learner Profile Attributes, helping students understand how these qualities relate to their artistic journey.

To foster a sense of belonging, students in years 3 and 4 have collaborated on welcome displays, creating vibrant and inspiring artworks that reflect their connection to the Art space.

We look forward to a fantastic year of creativity, exploration, and artistic growth!

Mandarin

Meet the team

Miss Qiao will teach Chinese - Mandarin from Prep to Year 6 students this year. With a passion for language and culture, I aim to create an engaging and supportive learning environment where students can develop their Mandarin skills with confidence. I look forward to inspiring young learners on their language journey!

Miss Xiong will teach Chinese - Mandarin from Prep to Year 6 students this year. This is my second year teaching Mandarin at Saltwater P-9 College, and it has been an exciting journey! I am looking forward to seeing students grow in confidence and deepen their understanding of Chinese language and culture.

Prep students are being introduced to the Chinese language and culture in a fun and engaging way. Through games, coloring sheets, and interactive activities, they are gradually immersing themselves in a Chinese learning environment. They will learn basic greetings, numbers, family members, and key Chinese traditional festivals.

Year 1-2 students will explore topics such as greetings, pets, and emotions. By the end of the semester, they will make progress in their speaking and listening skills, gaining more confidence in using Chinese in daily conversations.

Year 3-4 students will build upon their previous knowledge and further develop their Chinese language skills. This year, there will be a stronger focus on sentence construction and improving their overall language fluency. They will explore a wider range of topics, such as language.

Year 5-6 students will focus on developing their reading and writing skills in Chinese. Engaging topics such as hobbies will help spark their interest and provide a strong foundation for further language learning.

Music

Welcome, friends! 2025 is off to an exciting start as our first cohort of students begins their musical journey in the Music Room. The first two weeks have been all about building connections and setting the foundation for meaningful learning by getting to know one another and establishing our classroom agreements.

In Lower Primary (Grades Prep to Two), students have been joyfully singing simple but delightful songs like Galumph Went the Little Green Frog, Do-Re-Mi, and Alligator Pie.

Meanwhile, Upper Primary students (Grades Three to Six) explored the variety of instruments available in the room, learning about proper care and the responsibilities that come with being a musician.

This year, all classes will dive into the exciting world of musical performance, developing skills and confidence along the way.

We can’t wait to see where this musical adventure takes us!

Physical Education

On behalf of the Physical Education team, we would like to officially welcome Saltwater P-9 College back for the 2025 school year. This year our team includes Kelleigh Evans, Eden Norton, Matthew Symmons, Will Barnett and Tearen Gleeson

Meet the team

My name is Ms Evans, I have been the PE teacher at Saltwater College since 2019.

I enjoy going to the gym and staying fit and healthy. I enjoy going to the beach and spending my time with my family and friends.

Hi, my name is Mrs Norton and I teach primary PE. I have been teaching at Saltwater College for the past three years and I am passionate about all things health and fitness. In my spare time I enjoy going to the beach, Pilates and walking my dog Benny the border collie.

Hi all! I’m Will Barnett, and I’m thrilled to be joining the Physical Education team at Saltwater College this year. Prior to this, I taught Grade 5/6 on the Mornington Peninsula. I have a background in Sport Science and have coached a variety of sports, including basketball, cricket, and tennis. I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone and being involved in such an amazing community.

Hi, my name is Matt Symmons and I am very excited to be teaching physical education at Saltwater College in 2025. I look forward to a very busy year ahead with many activities planned like, beach water safety, athletics carnival, swimming sports, cross country, and summer and winter sports. I live in Williamstown with my wife, Fi, two children Mia and Ben, Betsy the dog, and Molly the cat. I love swimming, surfing, camping and just relaxing by a river or a beach.

In the first two weeks of our program, students have been collaborating to establish routines though our ‘essential agreements’. Focusing on the learner profiles of respect, communication, caring, and risk-taking. This process has established a strong foundation for what Physical Education lessons will look, sound and feel like this year and will set students up for success.

Spanish – Welcome to Term 1!

¡Hola familias y estudiantes!

Welcome back to a new school year! We hope you all had a fantastic holiday and are ready for an exciting year of Spanish learning. We are thrilled to see so many enthusiastic students back in the classroom, eager to explore the Spanish language and culture.

This year, our Spanish lessons will be filled with engaging activities that make learning fun and interactive. Students from Prep to Grade 6 will be exploring Spanish through songs, videos, storytelling, and ICT-based activities. Our focus is to create an enjoyable and immersive learning environment where students feel confident using Spanish in meaningful ways.

During the first two weeks of Term 1, we have been having a great time revisiting and learning basic Spanish vocabulary. Younger students have been practicing greetings, numbers, and colours through music and games, while our older students have been expanding their vocabulary and reinforcing key phrases through interactive activities. Across all year levels, we are encouraging students to develop their listening and speaking skills while having fun.

As we progress through the term, students will continue building on their knowledge, learning new phrases, and discovering more about Spanish-speaking cultures. We are looking forward to an amazing year full of learning, creativity, and cultural exploration.

¡Vamos a aprender y divertirnos juntos!

Señorita Alejandra y Señor Pastén

MEDIA: With Mr. Brendan Howarth

Hello families!

My name is Mr. Howarth and I am teaching Media from Prep to Year Six this year.

In Media, we learn how we can communicate messages and ideas through different media mediums, including photography, sound, filming, advertising, visual narratives, etc. Students also analyse and interpret media texts with cross-curricular connections made with Literacy, Numeracy, Language and the Arts.

Our unit topics include migration, Indigenous history, our emotions, advertising, and Who We Are.

I am looking forward to getting to know all students throughout the year.

Hi all! I am Jess Petrusev and I am one of the Wellbeing teachers this year. I started working with Saltwater P-9 College in July 2024 and am very excited to continue my teaching career with this amazing school. I work alongside another lovely wellbeing teacher called Kristianna Economou. In our classes we encourage our students to participate, respect and be honest. We aim to create a safe learning environment where we as teachers need to ensure flexibility to meet our students needs. This term so far, we have focused on emotions and situations where our emotions may be negatively altere and how we can overcome these in a respectful and responsible way. I am very excited to see all our amazing students grow and develop positively this year.

DANCE.

Welcome back to dance for 2025! I am there dance director and teacher Phill Haddad…but also known as Mr H.

I hope you all had an amazing break and ready for a great year ahead! The dance program is off a great start already, as we’ve just finished auditions for the Wakakirri project and the Victorian State School Spectacular (VSSS) for this year!

Our 2024 Wakakirri performance and journey saw Saltwater College going all the way through to the very end, becoming one of the 20 national award winning schools from 180 selected! This honourable performance and recognition, also created a huge wave of interest from our Year 4, 5 and 6 students to audition and try out to be on board for the Wakakirri Project for 2025. We had over 170 students audition over two days for a selected 45 spots available. Due to the huge interest and talent that came through auditions, we ended up expanding our cast to 50 students for this year! Everyone that auditioned should be so proud as they all did an amazing job and made the process very difficult to decide. Well done to all!

VSSS auditions went well also with our Year 7 and 8 students dancing their hearts out for a selected cast of 16 students to represent Saltwater College this year! We would like to acknowledge and congratulate Eloisa Sierra-Perez and Michaela Goh who both auditioned and have been selected to represent our school and Saltwater community as principal dancers in this years Victorian State School Spectacular! This will be Michaela’s second year on the big stage, while Eloisa makes her debut performance along side her. We are beyond proud to see these two amazing students represent Saltwater in front of 10,000 people in September, and can’t wait to see them shine bight up there and show off their talent! Congratulations and well done again!

We also welcome the secondary school to the dance program this year working with Year 7, 8, and 9 students throughout the year. 2025 is going to be a big year and we can’t wait to share this journey with you all!

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