Fun Fair at Pathways School on 19 Dec 2012

Cutting the inauguration ribbon

 

 

 DAY OF SHARING: Combined fun Frolic and Langar with our Didi's & Bhaiyas

 

 

 

 

 

Food Festival at Pathways on 20 Dec. 2012

Starting the show with Christmas carols

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the Director's Desk

The end of the year is upon us, bringing to an end an eventful and very successful semester. Over these months there have been enormous changes though most transitions have happened so smoothly, that there have been minimal jarring changes. In the last 12 months the school population has gone up by thirty percent, twenty five new teachers joined and there were significant additions to the administrative team. What we hope has not changed as the school has grown, has been the attention to each child, an understanding of their needs and a commitment to educational quality.

Over the semester our students have had in various important experiences – from inter-school matches, new IPads in primary classrooms, guest speakers, public performances of music, dance and drama. Most senior school students are now sitting exams, Middle and Primary school are winding up units of work.

PYP Authorization Visit

As a part of the IB authorization of the Primary Years Programme we were happy to welcome the IB consultant who spent two days in the school, examining the teaching and learning, interviewing teachers, collecting evidence from students and parents on how the school is doing. We are delighted at her positive feedback. Her preliminary comments are as follows:  I truly enjoyed meeting your faculty and community. Your school has a parent, board and student community that is committed to being a PYP school, each group had only positive things to say about the school and especially the faculty. Your team has made great strides in being successful but like most schools in the first 2 years of PYP it is a reflective process. 

Reports

Teachers in the primary, middle and senior school are busy writing reports for the first semester. Grades reflect students work throughout the semester and in the case of students from Form 9-11 also include the semester-end examination. The final reports will be made available to parents in the week after school closes. These are created on Veracross and you will receive an email with a pdf version. New parents need to know that we do not provide hard copies. You may download and print them if you wish.

Fund Raiser & Sharing

Next week the student-run Interact club is hosting a fun fair, wholly run and organized by the students themselves. You will have received various communications and appeals for contributions from the Interact President in the Senior School or the Primary President.                        School didi's performing

The proceeds go to a recipient chosen by students themselves. Special invitees at the Fair are all the support staff of the school – bus drivers, cleaners, office boys and didis who will participate alongside. This will be followed by a langar lunch where everyone sits and eats together, served by senior students.

                                                             Langar

All the earnings from the Fun Fair will add to the splendid earnings from the Readathon which has already raised over 60,000 rupees.

All of these events focus on making our students learn to contribute to a culture of sharing and to appreciate the work done by others in making their lives easier.

Food Festival

The organizing group of parents for the Food Festival have been working really hard to make it a day worth remembering. The Core Group coordinated by Mr. Manish Gupta have been meeting, sharing recipes and planning the layout of the serving area. There is always something special for students to have their parents plan interesting menus and cook for them and this event is a perfect example of the community coming together to have fun.

December and January Schedule

This is the last newsletter for 2012. School closes for students on Thursday 20th December. School re-opens for students on Wednesday 16th January. As is our practice for January, school timings are from 9.30 am.

Thank you to all parents for your wonderful support over this semester. All good wishes to you and your loved ones for a very happy 2013.

Shalini Advani

School Director

From the Primary School Principal

Khushnuma Ferzandi, our consultant appointed by the IBO, was at the school on the 6^th and 7^th of December. She was here for the verification visit and we opened all our doors to her. In preparation of her visit the teachers worked very hard to get all the paper work together. November amidst all the festivities had them working through most Saturdays. We are very happy and relaxed to know that all the hard work of last 2 years has paid off as her report assured us that we are on the right path, most of our processes are in place and our parents and students are most pleased with the school deliverables. This is very reassuring. We will continue to refine and put all her suggestions into practice in order to make the school one of the best PYP schools of Delhi. Some of the suggestions included a separate Primary School Library and more time for form tutors to prepare for their classes. She specially congratulated us on having the most dedicated, enthusiastic and motivated faculty. Well done teachers!!                                                   Children's Day Celebration

Amidst all the excitement that the above visit brought, students continued to celebrate and enjoy the festivals that November usually brings with it. The children’s day had the teachers enact a play on the weird wizard. The students of Form 5 are busy on working out details to put up a Hoopla ring stall at the school fun fair to raise funds for the underprivileged members of our society. We will continue to support the NGO- Goonj. They also ran a Read-a-thon where students of Form 4 and 5 read books to raise funds for Goonj. They collected Rs 2 7,8000. The collection is certainly very impressive but what they learnt out of this experience is priceless. They stretched themselves for a cause. Reading certainly is a big area that we are always pushing our students in.

There will be a book fair in school on the 20^th so that parents and students can buy books to read during the winter break. A great time for the whole school community to read together as winter is a time to snuggle into warm quilts with books.

                                                             Busy on the Ipad

Our early learners have been working very well and excitedly with I pads, which we had introduced this term as a pilot study to see how well the students use it for learning in Pathways. We are now intending to get many more into the school.

I wish you all, on behalf of the Pathways Primary School faculty, a very happy, memorable 2013. Let us together provide the best learning opportunities to the wonderful students of Pathways.

 

I would also like to thank each one of you for supporting Pathways and its philosophy.

 

Usha Lamba

Primary School Principal

Food Festival

Dear Parents,                           
As you all know the Pathway School NOIDA food festival 2012 is scheduled for December 20, 2012 at the school premises. You will recall this is an annual event planned & executed solely by Pathway’s Parents, if I may coin that term                                          Primary students escorted by the Form tutor

This years theme being Christmas, and rightly so, the event consists of an international fare of food and beverages complete with Korean style pizzas from the far east to tarts & cakes from the far      west and (non alcoholic) mulled wine from Europe to celebrate the festive spirit in the air. We will also surprise the little ones with a live Santa, doling out goodies. Preschoolers lined up outside Santa’s Grotto will be quite a sight along with a parent’s carol group.

We are pleased to acknowledge that despite your pressing commitments, we have received an overwhelming response to contribute/volunteer towards the event by Pathways Parents.
                       Parents enjoying serving
Nevertheless, your contributions, suggestions & efforts  are most welcome, as the critical part is for US to execute to the event that WE have planned. 

I would like to reiterate that the operative word here is festival and not food hence, feel free to contribute in any way to the festivities. The core team is at your service to address your queries  and guide your contributions. Please do get in touch with us                       The Festive feel
for any clarification that may be. Needless to say this will be a milestone in developing the Pathways Community here.

Warm Regards,

Manish Gupta

(Parent - Form 6)
Coordinator – Food Festival Committee


 

Read A Thon

Read-a-thon- “Reading for a cause”

Students taking a pledge to read as much

There are many underprivileged people in our society, and it is our duty to help them out. Our middle school community service club organized a Read-a-thon, in which our motto was, “we read for a cause”. The readers, that is we the students of Grades 6, 7 & 8 collected money for every page they read, and that money went to a organization called GOONJ , which helps underprivileged children lead an easier life . The club also held bake sales and book sales to help raise money for GOONJ, during the readathon . The readathon caused quite a stir for the students; we met everyday at the secondary school building atrium and at the beginning of the session, we took a pledge to read. The pledge made everyone feel united and encouraged to read. We read for forty minutes each day.

Anya Lauria

7 A

 

The Read-a-thon started on 27.11.12 and ended on 7.12.12. The purpose of such an activity was to collect money to give to the organization called Goonj so that they can provide rescores to the unprivileged people. All of us got a pledge sheet where we wrote the name of our sponsors and kept a reading log to see how many pages we read every day. It was a joyful experience reading so many different types of books and collecting money for a noble cause. A very innovative activity that our community service group co-ordinated, was the muffins and the lemonade sale so that we could collect more money for Goonj.

I enjoyed it most because I liked reading with all my friends in the atrium while the music was on, we even got cushions to sit on and mats to lie on and read. We read in any position that we were comfortable in. We hope Read- a- thon comes every year.

Neha Gupta

Form 6B 

Golf and Squash Inter School Competition

Albatross International Junior Golf championship held at Jaypee Greens, Greater Noida

It is always a pleasure to update you all about the recent sports activities taken place in last week. Our 4 student have participated in Albatross International Junior Golf championship held at Jaypee Greens, Greater Noida from 20th to 23rd November 2012 and also 9 students in Noida District Squash Inter School Championship at Pathways Noida from 23rd to 25th November 2012. I am happy to say that all the students have performed well and some have secured laurels in the competition. The following are the details of student performance:

Albatross International Junior Golf Championship: The participants from different countries have participated in Golf championship.

1.Tanmay Rakheja – Form 5 – 3rd Position in Boys under 13

2.Aadhar Dewan – Form 11 – 25th Position in Boys under 19
3.Anandita Ralli – Form 2 – 3rd  Position in Girls under 10
4.Diva Chabara – Form 2 – 6th Position Girls under 10

The experience of Golf championship is shared by Tanmay Rakheja of Form 5:

It was a very good experience in the golf championship. There were more than 60 participants from outside the country. We had to play 54 holes over three days. The greens were very fast and the ball didn’t stop. It was a very tough competition in each category. One of the Indian players got a hole – in - one and a boy from Malaysia won the albatross. Whereas I have secured 3rd position in boys under 13 i.e. D group and lost the second position with one stroke to an Indian player from DLF, Gurgaon. All our team mates have performed well. We really learned and enjoyed the championship and I am looking forward to play again in the near future.

Noida District Squash Inter School Championship

 

All the details of competition will be available on the Noida Squash association website-

www.noidasquash.wordpress.com
 

The different schools from Noida have participated in this competition. The school participated are Amity International, Step by Step, Kothari International, Mayor School, Lotus Valley School, Genesis Global School, Delhi Public School – Noida, Delhi Public School – Ghaziabad, Apeejay School – Noida and host school Pathways School Noida. The entire players below are now a seeded player in Noida district.

1.      Parth Aggrawal  - Form 12 – 4th Position – Boys U/19

2.      Arunav Jain - Form 12 – 3rd Position – Boys U/ 17
3.      Pratyush Gupta –Form 11 – 2nd Position – Boys U/ 17
4.      Ifra  Khanyaree -   Form 12 – 4th Position – Girls U/19
5.      Apoorva  Bhiyani - Form 12 – 5th Position – Girls U/19
6.      Shivam  Khuller -  Form 12 – 7th Position – Boys U/ 19
7.      Agman Diwan –  Form 9 –  Boys U/ 15
8.      Saideep Ganesh  -  Form 6 - Boys U/ 13
9.      Dhruv Sahani -  Form 6 - Boys U/ 13

Deepak Thakur
Head of Physical Education Department

Frisbee Workshop

On 7th November 2012 a Frisbee workshop was held in Pathways School Noida. This workshop was held in the double P.E. lesson on a Friday morning. People came in from the Delhi Frisbee Ultimate Group.  At first we were reluctant to join a Frisbee workshop. We all were pretty sure we knew how to throw a Frisbee.  The workshop started and we were quickly proven wrong.

 

We started with a brief introduction and then quickly proceeded to the exercises. The instructors had us throw a Frisbee back and forth for a while. We realized that most of us could barely throw straight. The instructors corrected our stance and throwing styles. After this had happened for a while, we were split into teams. These teams were for the game Ultimate.

 

Ultimate is a game played with Frisbees. Teams throw the Frisbee back and forth and try to cross the opponent’s base line. If the Frisbee is dropped in the middle, it becomes the other teams. Fouls include tapping the Frisbee out of someone’s hands, trying to snatch the Frisbee and deliberately pushing someone when they are in possession of the Frisbee. We played this game until the end of the workshop.

 

The whole experience was enjoyable and it actually taught us some skills. The game was enjoyable and we also received free passes to the finals National level match which was held in Jawaharlal Nehru stadium on 18th November, 2012. I wouldn’t mind having more workshops on such sports. Though they are not as well known as sports like basketball and soccer, they are quite fun.

 

Ayona Sengupta

Form 8

From the Director's Desk

One of the presentations at this week’s school assembly by Form 9 was on the use of technology, especially Facebook.  In the quick survey which was done it was clear that almost every secondary school student, some in the primary school and almost every teacher is on Facebook. Until it is replaced by a newer version therefore, Facebook is a part of everyone’s life, whether we like it or not.  For many parents – many of who have FB accounts  too – there remains a big discomfort with the way your(usually teenage) child is using it and using technology.

 The assembly seemed a good time for students to reflect on how we are to live life in a Facebook world and I am using this newsletter for the same purpose. I shared with students how as a teenager I was often in trouble with my parents for endlessly being on the phone with friends.  Facebook allows  sharing and chatting with friends – but in a somewhat different way. A phone conversation is public – ie everyone can see you are on the phone and this makes it controllable by parents. But on FB, a  parent or an adult can be fooled into thinking that a child is completing homework or doing an assignment on the laptop. The ‘chat’ window can be quickly minimized to create the wrong impression of hard work.

Challenges of Parenting

This is why it is so essential that we develop in young people the self- discipline to monitor themselves. Because the freedom given by blogs and wikis and social networking is also its biggest challenge. Adults can only supervise and discipline to a limited extent. If a student does not understand the importance of concentration for quality, he or she will always have a chat or comment on status in the midst of writing an essay. And there is no way parents or teachers can prevent this.

It is therefore more important than ever before for us to focus on creating a sense of personal responsibility, of self- monitoring. To understand that it is fine to be on FB but also sometimes to not log in. In other words it has become very important is for a young person to understand how they learn, what helps their learning and what restricts it.
 

Our Learning Culture at Pathways

It is for all these reasons that we focus on teaching self- discipline and also self -reflection.  Parents of Form 6 and 7 will soon receive an invitation to the Student Led Conference in December. The primary school one follows later in the academic year. Throughout the school students write reflections on learning areas or on their own progress. They are encouraged to set personal goals and targets for themselves. I would be interested in hearing back from parents and students on any thoughts you have on this subject. Please feel free to email me at shalini.advani@pathways.in
 

Events Past and Upcoming

It was wonderful to see a number of Pathways families at the Kahaani festival. Over the two days there were over two thousand people at the various events. We hope to promote culture and performance on an ongoing basis at Pathways.

On our children’s day celebration, I was proud to see the care with which our senior students organized a special event for the children of Hazipur village school. This included sharing lunch with them and a sports events at which prizes were awarded.

The Inter School tennis event gave an excellent focus to this sport. This week we are happy to host the District Level Inter School Squash tournament.  Meanwhile inter-house soccer tournaments are beginning. 

Also beginning next week is the Readathon, a way of encouraging reading for a cause. And today we are looking forward to welcoming the Australian writer and illustrator Frane Lessac who is part of Bookaroo and is coming to school to talk to students from Form 5, 6 and 7.

A reminder to please fill in the form for the Parent organized Food Festival on 20th December, if you are able to participate. Our students thoroughly look forward to being spoilt and fed by their parents!

Shalini Advani

School Director

From the Middle School Principal

Education is not just academic learning, but also involves social, ethical and emotional competencies. Students at middle school are therefore exposed to multitude activities, both in the classroom and outside it.

Form 6 students have finished a unit in Geometry and are now composing a song to revise the math concepts learnt.  Well, Math need not just be numbers and shapes after all! In history Form 8, after having studied World War 1, are analyzing and writing their own version of the - ‘Treaty of Versailles’ -according to their understanding and historical perspective .

Students of Form 8 are working on their Personal Project where they will be writing a report based on their research and process. Ms Geeta Verma, IB coordinator therefore conducted a workshop on Academic Honesty. She reiterated the importance of original and authentic work where ideas and work of others is acknowledged and referencing of all sources is done.

Form 8 is also attending a dance appreciation workshop- Left Foot Right, conducted by ‘Gati Dance’. It is about joyful learning through dance and not just learning a dance form. The aim of the workshop  is to enable the students to experience and appreciate the arts, which develop values, skills and attitudes in a person.

               Grade 8 Dance Workshop

Frane Lessac, an author and illustrator of international renown visited and addressed  Form 6 and 7 students . She has well over 20 published books to her credit and was awarded The Muriel Barwell Award for Distinguished Service to Children's Literature.

 

Middle School also begins a Read- a- thon on 27th November,2012.The initiative is to support the underprivileged by raising funds in our own little ways .Read  for  GOONJ is designed for our children to read to raise funds  by getting sponsors for the pages read and thereby improve their own reading skills.

This year some of the middle school students have been initiated into Model United Nation and will also be training for it .Many of them will be experiencing and participating in Inter-school MUN which is going to be hosted by Pathways Noida. A team of five students will also be going to Singapore to attend International MUN in February .

We will continue to engage students in such activities which make learning interesting and more meaningful.

Sunanda Sandhir

Principal Middle School

Kahaani Festival

Kahaani, a story, a daastan, a tale, a narrative, are all synonymous with one word- entertainment. Since times immemorial stories have been an integral part of one’s growing up years.

Inauguration Ceremony of the Kahaani Festival                                      Are you Icky, Yucky or Mucky, story by Anita Roy

 

 Every child deserves the joy of telling tales and listening to them. Every child has a story where each day adds new twists and turns and the plot only gets better when there are others to share it with!

A Midsummer Nights Dream Theatre performance by Wide Aisle Productions

The Kahaani festival sponsored by Pathways School, Noida gave just the right opportunity not only to every child but also to the child within an adult. The festival brought children and storytellers together to weave a magical world with the wonder of stories. The festival enchanted and empowered audiences as they explored a multitude of narratives from India and around the world!

                                                                                                        Nagada Workshop

Stories were told through puppetry, poetry, music, written and oral traditions of all kinds. Audiences had the opportunity to create and share their stories and explore the various tools of story-telling; narration, writing, animation and traditional forms of illustration. Personal stories were explored and shared through festival workshops.                                            Bandar Bhalu ki Kahaani by Anupa Lal

Some of the storytellers and illustrators at Kahaani 2012 included famous personalities like Anita Mani, Prayag Shukla, Anupa Lal, Manisha Chaudhry, Smita Vats, Dr. Varsha Das, Atanu Roy, Subhadra Sen Gupta, Bulbul Sharma and Sachin George Sebastian. Performances by the Ishara Puppet Theatre - Dadi Pudumjee (Puppet), Katkatha– Anurupa Roy( Puppet), Akaar- Puran Bhatt( Traditional Puppets), Rene Singh (Music), SALTBUSH (Australia), A Midsummer Night’s Dream by WIDE AISLE PRODUCTIONS(Theatre) enthralled the audiences.

The festival rendered an opportunity for children to express, find their voice, explore, play and dance with performers providing a unique immersive experience, where the audience too became part of this visually beautiful journey.

Aarti Khurana

English Faculty
                                                                                        Theatre Performance - Mid Summer Night's Dream

What is a kahaani after all? My Hindi-English dictionary says “story,” - but this word just doesn’t seem to be enough. Kahaani has a sense of mischief, mystery, and mistiness to it. It is a journey into another land, it should

seem.           

             Music Performane by Rene Singh
 

So it was with the Kahaani Festival 2012 at Pathways School Noida, which was hosted on the 17th and 18th of November. This weekend-long storytelling festival saw

 us descend into unknown worlds. I myself witnessed, for the first time, a puppet show with audience interaction (think of enthusiastic kids pulling the screen on the puppeteers, who magnificently keep the show going!). Many of us participated in live workshops on the nagara, or historical discussions of the newspaper as a literary form. For the younger ones, a little dance floor was set up in our Primary Block. The highlight for many, of course, was a performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, executed by a small but masterful cast that took the audience in its sway. These entertainments and learning experiences continued throughout the weekend, attracting visitors from both our school community and afar. It was, in the truest sense, a memorable time for all of us. Events like these offer an insight into new art forms, reminding us of all that we have left to learn. For the Pathwayzian community, having events like this right at our doorstep is an invaluable opportunity.

Partha Sharma

Magazine Editor