Melanie has worked with us at Sentosa for the past 7 years as class core teacher. For the past 4 years, she has had very successful chapters teaching Year 2.

Melanie looks forward to bringing her experience and strong understanding of the programme to support our new Year 2 children commencing August. Melanie has a total of 13 years teaching experience, inclusive of 6 years international teaching experience in Melbourne Australia. She also embraced a leadership role there during this time.

Melanie obtained her Masters of Teaching (Early Years) from Australia and enjoyed living overseas to widen her experiences. Melanie originally became passionate about working with children during her time in Cambodia where she taught in a Kindergarten. The children’s laughter and positive response to her interactions affirmed her chosen career pathway.

Melanie is passionate about inquiry and projects. She views children as active participants and believes their voices need to be heard and seen in the programme for meaningful learning to occur. She aims to create and maintain a safe, supportive and inclusive learning environment that encourages children to take risks in their learning.

Melanie promotes a “never give up” and “have a go” attitude with any encounter and encourages children to feel a deep sense of pride in their efforts and personal achievements. She believes learning should be fun and honours a joyful teaching approach with children, colleagues and parents in her care.

Melanie takes responsibility to place core academic subjects (language & literacy, mathematics, scientific understandings) in focus throughout the week. She isolates stand-alone learning time to zoom into these key areas to ensure clear progress is made and learning objectives are achieved.

Melanie has immediate family living in both Singapore and Australia. She enjoys photography, art, boxing and singing along with her personal goal of becoming accomplished when playing the guitar!

Yvonne joined us from another well known International Primary School in Singapore two years ago. She brings an extensive 18 year career in Education with her and holds a Bachelor Degree in Primary Education with Honours. Yvonne has taught in Scotland, Brunei and Singapore. 

She has valuable experience teaching Primary Year 1/2/3/4/5 learners and feels very confident supporting our Year 3 grade level based on her class teaching and grade level leader experience. Yvonne had a positive year teaching Year 3 learners on campus at Sentosa during the past school Year and motivated her children to become well rounded thinkers.

Yvonne brings a background in teaching the U.K curriculum and the globally renowned and well known PYP International Baccalaureate Curriculum (IB).

Yvonne promotes high self esteem and self belief for the students in her care. She encourages them to take on roles and tasks that have responsibilities and engage a higher skill set. Yvonne feels outdoor learning and time in nature remains a vital part of older children’s daily schedule and comments how this support mental health, wellbeing and increased focus during classroom work. This aligns well with our nature school ethos.

Yvonne is an advocate for building strong academic and skill-based learners through stand-alone core subject learning time and integrated inquiry projects. 

Yvonne is a Mum to two girls and feels this further value adds to her work as a teacher and her partnership with families. Yvonne likes pulling on her class parents’ skills and talents via volunteer opportunities.

In her free time, Yvonne enjoys swimming, cycling and playing the Clarinet.

Alison originally comes from Scotland U.K, and has enjoyed an International Teaching career. Alison joined us two years ago from her teaching role in Primary Years, Dubai with high recommendations. Alison holds a Degree in Primary Education and brings 8 years invaluable experience teaching Primary sector classes.

Alison taught Year 4 during the last academic year at Sentosa and strongly connects to our nature school ethos and inquiry methodology. 

Alison comments how this links to her own childhood and experiences in Scotland. Alison is passionate about scaffolding Primary learners through inquiry, projects and focused learning with intentionality for core learning academic subjects. 

She advocates how effective questioning is a key skill that she employs to complicate learning for children. Alison believes children do best when they are treated as co-learners in the class and their voices are welcome, respected, and used to catapult learning further. Alison comments “I promote a strong ethos of inclusion and create a safe and secure learning environment in which learners feel relaxed and comfortable to voice their opinions and share their concerns.”

Alison highly values Language & Literacy and Mathematics as key areas to enhance daily through focused work. She comments how this supports children successfully accomplish experiences inside and outside of school.

Alison places emphasis on carefully planned experiences in these areas and takes personal observations to note any gaps in learning to offer further support as an accountable teacher.

Alison described her classroom goal as “guiding children towards full independence, as strong social and collaborative learners with research skills who enjoy investigation. Alison also views herself as a lifelong learner and constantly upgrades her knowledge and skills through workshops and courses, including obtaining her ‘NPQML’, middle-level leadership qualification with University College London.“

Alison values parents as key stakeholders and aims to ensure they are closely informed on their children’s learning through documentation shared with families online, informal chats, parent-teacher conferences, and more formal reports.

Alison looks forward to supporting our Year 4 / Year 5 composite class for the school year ahead!

Olivia joins us from EtonHouse Thomson with a Masters Degree in International Education, along with a Degree in Pre-School Education & Diploma in Art Management. Olivia’s Chinese name is Wang Hongbo. Olivia comes from Ji Lin province in China. She has been happily living in Singapore for 15 years and teaching for 11 years. Olivia describes herself as a confident and outgoing teacher who views teaching as her passion.

Olivia comments how “each child is an inquisitive and unique individual. As teachers, we should stimulate children’s interest and agency and cultivate children to inquire, question, wonder and theorize about themselves, others and the world around them.”

Olivia has valued experience with Primary and Pre-School students and loves building a positive disposition towards Mandarin by building rapport with children. Olivia believes a good balance of language exposure through formal and informal activities allows children to nurture their Mandarin. Olivia enjoys performing arts, games, visual arts and stories with children.

Olivia is fond of singing and dancing. She also enjoys reading books and exercise. In her spare time, Olivia also participates in concerts and musical performances.  

Olivia looks forward to working and learning alongside our EtonHouse Sentosa community.

Wu Yuchen comes from Tianjin, China. She moved to Singapore with her family in 2010 and now proudly calls Singapore her home. Wu Yuchen joined us at Sentosa when the school first opened with an Advanced Diploma in Chinese Language Teaching and a Diploma in Early Childhood Teaching. She believes in lifelong learning and later obtained her Masters Degree in teaching a second language. Her research direction was about Inquiry teaching methods in Chinese teaching.

Wu Yuchen has 12 years of teaching experience in education (in Singapore). She enjoys the positive challenge of teaching Mandarin to non-native speakers and believes her approach needs to be innovative and creative to gain the children’s interest.

Yu Chen is motivated and excited to support our Kindergarten and Primary programmes as Mandarin Coordinator. Yu Chen directly teaches Year 3, Year 4 and Year 5 students on campus. She is passionate about enriching the children’s speaking, reading, writing, and comprehension when using Mandarin daily. She believes her focus on close relationships with the children will provide a high-quality Mandarin programme as they need to trust and feel connected to their teacher.

In her free time, Wu Yuchen enjoys dancing as a skill and artistic expression. She has choreographed dance and children’s drama and feels passionate about performing arts.