We are coming up to the last few
weeks of the school year and as students go into exams and final assessments
this will be the last newsletter of this year. As temperatures shoot up I must
appreciate the administration department of the school for all their hard work
in ensuring that power backups in the school function and that there is
sufficient water to keep the campus green and dust-free. Anyone living in India
knows that maintaining these areas requires a great deal of planning and hard
work. Board exams for the IGCSE have begun and IB exams begin next week.
Secondary students go into school exams in the middle of May and Grade 5
students are busy planning for their PYP Exhibition.
MYP
Work on preparation for the
introduction of the MYP continue at a good pace. Four teachers attended an IB
training workshop in Bangalore.
On Saturday and Sunday teachers are in school
all day at an MYP training workshop. This is being conducted by the IB workshop
leader Natalie Kunst from Discovery College in Hongkong and despite heroically
working through the weekend, our teachers are looking forward to the new
learning which this enables. It is this passion for development which makes our
teachers at Pathways Noida into great educators.
Multiple Learning Opportunities
Last Friday saw an unusual
combination of learning events coming together on a single day which
unintentionally captures the multiple
learning approaches at the school.
1. The interact
club did a superb exercise coordinated by our CAS coordinator Ms Indira and
spearheaded by a Form 11 student
Shreya Gupta
to organize an Eye camp in the neighbouring Sadar Sarai village in Sec
46 Noida with the support of I – Care hospital in Sec 26 Noida. At this camp ,
free eye check up was offered and also cataract surgeries and spectacles were
sponsored to those who needed them for free
from the Interact funds. What
made the exercise even more special was how it involved different communities
of our school – some of our own bhaiyas and didis who helped to set it up,
maintenance and administrative staff who helped with infrastructure, teachers,
students from the Interact club and even some parents who came and generously
donated towards the fund.
2. In middle school
we had Personal Project
presentations by Form 8. As usual there were a number
of ingenious and creative projects. It’s a reminder of how much hard work and
how much talent is possible to showcase when students are inspired to take
charge of their own learning.
3. Primary school
students created sculpture out of junk
materials in an inter-house event. The
buzz of focused attention, the clever way in which they put their pieces
together was a delight to watch.
TRIP TO NASA, MIT & HARVARD
On the 6th of June 32 students
from middle and senior school leave for an educational trip to the US. They
will visit NASA where they will have the opportunity to work under the
supervision of eminent scientists and astronauts and interact through space shuttle mission
simulations, tours of NASA’s space centers. They will also visit the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston and Harvard University which will
include an orientation lecture at the Admissions Department followed by a
student led tour of the campus, giving the children an overview of the life and
culture at some of the best universities in the world. Finally they will have a
guided tour of the MIT Museum and workshops on Robotics using Lego Mindstorm
Kits and DNA Structuring and Harvard Museum of Natural History with workshops on Climate Change. Their learning from such a
trip will be exciting and we are looking forward to hearing all about it when
they return.
Music Assembly
Secondary school students put up
a superb show of western and Indian music dazzling as always with a variety of
talent. In a unique feature, all the announcements and information were sung
rather than spoken. Performances of flute, keyboard, table and drums were
accompanied by excellent singing.
Summer Programmes
It has been good to see the
interest among parents in the proposal for opening our sports facility to
families. We will be sending out more information later this month. Meanwhile
registrations are coming in for our summer camp Rediscovering Minds open to our
students and those from other schools. We will also be running an early morning
sports training programme for those interested in different sports.
Dr. Shalini
Advani
School
Director
