Celebrating a Creative and Inspiring Term in Performing Arts

This term in Performing Arts has been filled with creativity, collaboration, and outstanding student achievement across all year levels.

In Year 10 Drama, students explored the art of directing, studying influential directors from various times and cultures. They applied their learning to develop their own eclectic directorial styles, culminating in the staging of short scene excerpts. The class has now begun an improvisation unit, experimenting with 'chair duets' inspired by the renowned physical theatre company, Frantic Assembly. Their work has demonstrated remarkable leadership, critical thinking, and insightful artistic analysis.

Our Year 6 students have completed their music units on composition and guitar. They successfully applied music theory to create original compositions and explored songwriting as an extension of their learning, showing both technical skill and creativity.

In Year 7, students completed the Page to Stage unit, where they worked collaboratively to analyse scripts, apply acting techniques, and perform selected scenes. Their enthusiasm and teamwork brought the texts to life on stage.

Meanwhile, Year 8 students produced powerful short films addressing issues of personal and social significance. Through their use of filming techniques and collaborative storytelling, they showcased creativity, critical thinking, and empathy.

It has truly been a remarkable term of analysis, creativity, performance, and reflection.

Congratulations to all our Oakleigh Grammar performers on their incredible work!

Rebecca Bettiol

Learning Leader - Arts

Art Explorations in Junior School

Our students have been immersed in a comprehensive art program, fostering creativity, cultural awareness, and artistic development across our three phases.

In the Engage phase, our Preps, Year 1, and Year 2 students had a blast exploring art! Highlights included:

-Preps creating 2D and 3D caterpillars, introducing fundamental art concepts

- Year 1students making vibrant landscapes inspired by Kandinsky’s abstract expressionism

- Year 2 nuanced ice cream cone paintings, demonstrating understanding of colour theory

These activities fostered creativity, fine motor skills, and artistic techniques.

In the Explain phase, our Year 3 students embarked on an exciting art journey, exploring Maori art and culture through their unit "Kiwis". They:

1. Created observational drawings of kiwi fruit using oil pastels.

2. Developed animated drawings, unleashing their imagination.

3. Are now crafting pinch pots inspired by the kiwi fruit shape.

This project fosters creativity, cultural awareness, and artistic skills.

In the Elaborate Phase, our Year 4 and 5 students pushed the boundaries of artistic expression through projects inspired by influential artists.

- Year 4 students created artworks inspired by Judy Watson's style, titled "School Camp", exploring Aboriginal art techniques and cultural narratives.

- Year 5 students developed artworks inspired by Yayoi Kusama’s avant-garde style, experimenting with clay, oil pastels, and collage.

These projects encouraged students to explore different artistic styles, mediums and techniques, further developing their creative voice and artistic expertise.

Vibha Tripathi

Visual Arts Teacher

MYP Product Design/Design at Oakleigh Grammar: Building a Kinder, Smarter Future

This semester in MYP Design, students across Years 6 to 9 have embraced empathy, creativity, and innovation to respond to real-world challenges through their unique design projects. With a shared focus on sustainability, environmentalism, user experience, and kindness, each year level has explored how design can improve our lives and our world.

Year 6: Time Through Another’s Eyes

Students explored the concept of time and its role in our daily routines. By using the design cycle and putting themselves in the shoes of others, they created original clocks that reflected different user needs, whether a calming clock for someone with anxiety or a playful clock for a young learner. These clocks were a beautiful first step into human-centred design.

Year 7: Sustainable Toy Cars That Spark Joy

Year 7 students combined recycled materials with creative propulsion systems to design and build sustainable toy cars. This unit challenged them to think deeply about both user engagement and the environmental impact of toys. The result? Cleverly crafted cars that zoom forward with minimal waste and maximum fun.

Year 8: Artefacts from the Future

In a unit driven by purposeful innovation, Year 8 students imagined artefacts from a speculative future. Each artefact told a story, solving problems yet to come or celebrating positive futures shaped by today’s sustainable choices. These designs were thoughtful, imaginative, and deeply rooted in environmental empathy.

Year 9: Designing a Solarpunk Building

With a big-picture approach and strong sense of global responsibility, Year 9 students designed solarpunk-inspired buildings that reimagine how we live in harmony with nature and one another. Their work combined eco-conscious design, architectural thinking, and empathy to create places where communities could thrive.

Across all year levels, students have shown a commitment to the MYP curriculum and that of empathy, kindness, and sustainable thinking. They have used technology and creativity not just to make things, but to make a better future.

Congratulations to all our designers this semester. Your ideas, care for others, and willingness to dream big continue to inspire. 🌟

Inneke Smit

MYP Design Teacher

The Year 12 Visual Communication Design students are continuing working on their School Assessed Task as part of their SAC and folio work for this year. They are generating ideas through rough sketching and exploring with different media, methods and materials to create prototypes to show the class their work as part of their critique this week. Here are the student’s working on their prototypes below:

The Year 11 Visual Communication Design students are working on their finals for their Outcome 3 SAC after presenting their critique to the class with their ideas for feedback. Students are now refining their ideas in their folio and documenting the progress of making and creating or drawing their final designs, along with isometric drawing and third-angle orthogonal drawing of their USB stick that is repurposed into a new design. Here are some examples of their work:

The Year 10 Visual Communication Design students are redesigning their own toy as an isometric drawing and a 3D print and printing them on the 3D printer, along with a planometric drawing of their toy store. Below are some photos of student’s final presentation boards:

The Year 9 2D Art Students are exploring developing their skills in lino printing. This Term, we researched different printmakers that are traditional and contemporary and generated some sketches for their environmental prints that they will be printing onto their water-coloured backgrounds. Below are some examples of student’s work:

The Year 7 Visual Art students are painting using acrylic paint a tree as part of their environments studies and for them to practice their painting skills before their landscape painting unit next term. Here are some examples of student’s work this term:

The Year 6 Visual Art students are using different mixed media and techniques from different art eras of their portrait drawing of someone they know from their community.

Below are some examples of student’s work this term:

Emily Sacco

Visual Communication Teacher

Grammar News

Empowering young minds

Issue 5 · 03 Jul 2025

In this issue