From the Senior School Principal Mr. Alexander Abraham

Even as I write down these words for the newsletter, many excited young Pathwaysians are busy packing up and getting ready for the Adventure Camps to various locations in the hills around Delhi NCR. These camps are a learning experience where our students learn to build personal as well as interpersonal skills and thus build on strengths that will last them a lifetime. These camps are designed by the school together with well-known Adventure Camp organizers to build personal as well as team skills and are seen as a necessary part of the learning process here at Pathways. These camps which are mandatory for all students from Form 4 upwards are also seen as a wonderful opportunity to relieve stress and be in a non-formal environment where learning takes place very effectively.

The Students of Form 10 and Form 12 have completed their Mock Exams and have really worked hard at giving a good effort for the Practice examinations. It is heartening to see that they are sincerely at work now that the Internal Assessments have been completed. They are focussed and extremely committed to their exams and we are confident that they will do well this year in the IB and IGCSE exams in May- June. We are also extremely glad to share that many of our Form 12 students have received offers from many prestigious universities from many countries. University of Warwick, St. Andrews’, King’s College- London, University of Essex, University of Manchester, University of Virginia, Illinois Institute of Technology, Baylor University are some of them. It is also really good to share that some of them have been offered very good scholarships to their programmes.

‘JHAROKHA 2014’

was held on Thursday, 6th of March and this was such a runaway success. This year the day comprised an amalgamation of Science Challenges and Art Exhibition which made the day such a composite display of the wealth of talent and abilities that our students possess. The Science Challenges were in 3 Levels and were wonderfully planned and laid out by the Science Faculty and ably supported by the DT team and the Administration team. The students took up the challenges with great aplomb and endeavoured to take on the challenges and explain the process and the Science behind it all.

The sight of students working in groups and taking on the tasks with great enthusiasm was fantastic and we were so pleased to have so many of our parents and guests come in and enjoy the delight and happiness of our students as they succeeded in meeting the challenges with innovative ideas. The students of Form 3 had put up and excellent Sound and Light show and this enthralled the audience in three creative shows where they told the story of a little child who journeys to China. Using apt props and effectively conveying the story through shadow play and music, the young primary students made everyone marvel as the whole effort was their initiative.

The Secondary block Quadrangle wore an absolute fabulous look with the bamboo frames bedecked with Art works of varying hues and mediums ranging from Poster Colour works, to Ceramic and Pottery

designs, to 3 dimensional art designs and even stencil drawings which displayed the talents of the young artists of Pathways with able mentoring by the Art Department. As one parent conveyed, “The works of Art and the Science challenges completely took my breath away.” How aptly put, for that conveyed the general mood of how comprehensively the young Pathwaysians were able to convey their sheer plethora of creative ideas and abilities.

To top it all the Interact Club had a Bake Sale and had cookies, cakes, puddings, Crème Brulee and so much more to offer and all for a good cause as the proceeds that were collected will go for social causes. What was so absolutely delightful about the effort was that all the Bakes were prepared by our own students! What a terrific job for a noble cause!

Another aspect of this year has been that our student Council has been really very active in getting new ideas going. One of them has been having our own Student led in- house RADIO SHOW. Yes isn’t that exciting? And for this very committedly they have been auditioning and selected with teachers a core group of aspiring Radio Jockeys (RJ’S) who will soon ‘go on Air’ using the school Public Address system once every week! For this they conducted a workshop on a Saturday with a Radio Jockey from Fever 104 for our own RJ’s and soon Pathways will be ringing out its own radio show!

As we look towards the remainder of the term with our Form 12 graduation, Pre Term, IB and IGCSE EXAMS and our own Year ending exams there seems to be so much more yet to come. But that is what makes life so wholesome and exhilarating here at Pathways Noida and what enables our students to find education a comprehensive experience that empowers them as the Pathways Motto says so fittingly to - “Learn. Work. Play. Think. LIVE!”

Best wishes 

Mr. Alexander Abraham

Senior School Principal

The whole school Window on Learning - ‘Jharokha’ 13-14

Primary School Jharokha Experience
                                     By Noyonika Gaba and Asmi Khungar – 5A

Jharokha was held on 6th March, from Primary school, every student from grade 3-5 had to participate in it. We all had different projects/challenges where we got a parent and a teacher’s support and we were successful in meeting our challenges after a lot of trial and error

Grade 5 came up with very interesting projects and they really were a huge success. My challenge was 'Make a water clock which tracks two hours of time'. You must have heard about a 'sand clock', it was just similar to that. It seems easy but it was very difficult! We changed 3 bottles on the final day!

It was all going a flop until Mr. Amit Nigam came. He gave us an idea of using a beaker and a holder. It really helped us and it lead us to success! Then we sat there with a stop-watch and tracked every five minutes. The most tricky part was when we had to present it in front of everybody there!

    

Other challenges were- 'Make a rocket which goes 20ft high', 'To make a system to carry stationary items from Ms Beena's office to K.G on the 1st floor' and many more. They were trickier than mine! I saw everybody with a lot of patience doing hard work. After the preparation time was done. we started receiving guests and you must have been one of them! Everybody had a lot of patience to listen about our challenge after which they gave their comment.

Some of our parents also started crying when they saw the projects and the work we did. We did a lot of hard work and it was worth it. This was my first time so I enjoyed it a lot. We also had a bake sale there for eating snacks when we feel hungry and the money will go to charity! The school was looking so beautiful. This 'Jharokha' was awesome!

A CAR CREATED FOR JHAROKHA RUNNING ON ALTERNATE FUEL

Kshitij Upamanyu, Aryan Srivastava, Shamik Majumdar, Stephen Abraham and  Aninda Siddique

Form 9

To us, “Jharokha” was a perfect platform for minds to come and to display their talents. To us the challenge of building a car powered by an alternate fuel was simply exciting. The challenge given to us was to create a car which was either powered by solar, wind, mechanical or hydro energy. Our car was designed to overcome the challenge and to break records. The car’s body was made of Lego pieces with its own bumper. The body was fitted with two axles and 4 wheels, 2 on each axle.

We then had a coke bottle as our fuel tank and fastened it on a scaffold with the cap facing downwards. There was a hole present in the cap, small enough for an air pump pin to fit in. The fuel we chose to use was water and we filled the bottle with the fuel. We then inserted our pin into the hole and pumped air in it. When we felt that no more could be pumped we positioned our car and then pulled out our pin. When this action took place, water is propelled out through the pin because of the high pressure present. Thus we used partly hydro and mechanical energy. The phenomena which this experiment follows are Newton’s 3rd law which states that every reaction has an opposite reaction. We thus achieved in creating a car which was a whole new fun filled and learning experience.

JHAROKHA - My Experience . . By Vanshika Goel       6-A

On March 6th we held our 3rd annual Jharokha fair. The term ‘Jharokha’ means window, and it certainly was our window into a new world of art, experiments and creativity! This year we had the theme of science challenges. Grades 3-11 participated in these tasks. Grade 3 students performed light and sound shows and other innovative work to entertain the guests. The busy schedule started off with all the finishing touches being put to the art displays and

stall signs and at 8:30 am, all the participants were told to assemble in the atrium for a pre-Jharokha group huddle. What came next was one huge wave of excitement. There were groups running here and there in a hustle to gather things that were needed for the various challenges and teachers trying to maintain discipline. At 8:45 a.m., the teams made their way to their allocated stations to set-up, it was frantic!!! People asking for tape, asking for spare material, the rivalry was fierce yet pleasant natured!!! And then the bake-sale opened, who could forget!??! Talk about a feast fit for a king. The tables were laden with sweet treats such as Nutella cupcakes, brownies, crème brulee and iced-tea. All the money raised by the bake-sale went towards funding the upcoming prom for Grade 12.

It was two goals achieved by one good Feast. On one hand, we got delicious goods and on the other hand, money was also being raised. Back to the set-up, the stations were spread out across the 2 floors of the secondary school building. How the time flew. Before the participants knew it, it was already 10:30 and that was an even bigger rush than before. The entire quadrangle of the Secondary Block was spread with Art works of varying hues and styles.

It was absolutely so breath taking to see the amazing works of varied types put out on display. As soon as the clock struck 11, guests started flowing in and Jharokha had officially begun!!!

There were 5 judges who came too, and as a participant, I can tell you, it was nerve-wracking. The only way we could differentiate between them and the other guests was that they either had a 9th grade personal assistant or they were holding a PSN folder. After lunch, 2 or 3 of us were allowed to go and explore the other areas while the other group took care of the stall, but I’m sure, no-one really wanted to leave their stations!!! The day ended with everyone having to clean-up . . . as usual, and I’m pretty sure that some of us even lost count of the time and missed our buses!!! But who cares, you only have a Jharokha/science challenge fair once in a year!!

Jharokha By Tavishi Gupta Grade 11

The new manner in which Jharokha was organized this year has to definitely be one of the new traditions we Pathwaysians have set.

The challenges taken up in Jharokha were originally a list of science inter-house challenges, that I had set up in the hope that it could be taken up as an inter-school event later this year. Dr. Advani soon incorporated this to fit Jharokha just perfectly. There were more challenges thought out by the teachers, which indeed widened the scope and provided more motivation for the students!

Jharokha was held on 6th of March 2014. All students had to pick their challenges out of the 3 levels available. If the team was able to meet the challenge as given in the instructions, explain the design and process of making the project and also explain the main concept, scientifically; they would be awarded with both a participation and commendation certificates. We were delighted to receive eager participation, with 26 teams registering for various challenges. Also, the entire forms 3,4 and 5 participated! The school building was full of enthusiastic students, working in groups (3-5 students), getting their projects ready for the exhibition.

The Senior and Middle School students were marked by 5 judges, namely, Mr. Sudhir Narang, Mr. Salil Kumar, Mr. Anubhav Singh, Mr. Manish Gupta and the student co-ordinator, which was me.

The Primary School too presented their models, but were not marked. Also, Form 3 had a light and sound show which was brilliantly conducted with flawless performances by the little stars!

As the challenges were taking place for the first time, this was an amazing start!

Now coming to the art exhibition of the very talented artists of our school. This too was a part of Jharokha.

There were wooden cars, aeroplanes, photography, portfolios and loads of canvases painted with the utmost care and precision to create beautiful art pieces. The paintings were all put up on bamboo frames; 3D models, skulls artistically

tied with threads, wooden planes tied with ropes and painted cutouts of colourful hand gestures added to this wonderful environment! Every work of art was a masterpiece which we are all proud of!

None of this would have been possible without our hard-working science and art teachers who made every aspect of this day a big success with parents, teachers and students, all loving and enjoying the experience, which we proudly call  Jharokha.

Jharokha by Jae Woo Oh Grade  11

Rohan, Ayush and I chose to make a mechanical arm (grabber) as a challenge for this science fair. It seemed a bit difficult but later on after I learned how to make an arm from NXT (Material given to us to make robot arm), my friends and I could make the arm successfully. The arm which is built up with Lego blocks has 3 motors. The three motors are to move the arm left and right; another one to move up and down and the last one is for grabbing an object. Also, Ayush had constructed a program for operating the robot arm. After three hours of hard work we could finish making a fancy mechanical arm

To show how effectively our arm works, we prepared a ball and two tires so that we could put the ball on the top of the tire. Our ultimate goal was to move a ball placed on tire to another tire on the other side using only the mechanical arm. Most of the time, we could successfully shift the ball. However, there was a minor problem which we had to grapple with. Since the arm is not moveable, we had to place the tire carefully considering the range which the arm could move. Probably we would have been able to successfully move the arm more freely if we had a bit more time.

Anyway overall, it was amazing and the learning we all achieved was tremendous.

Thoughts on OFS MUN, Singapore

Eight of us Middle school students went to this year’s OFSMUN which was held in Singapore and it’s been an experience worth sharing. 

We started our journey to Singapore from Delhi on Thursday evening and there was a feeling of excitement and eagerness around us as if we couldn’t wait for the trip to start so that we could have a blast and I’m pretty sure that even though this was the first time we were flying international without our parents we were still really thrilled.  When we landed there in Singapore we all were very animated and couldn’t wait to go explore the whole place so the whole day on the 21st of February, we were going to places for shopping and sightseeing and it was a fun filled day. The next morning we all woke up fresh and filled with joy as that day was our first day of the conference.

When we reached the venue we were sent off to our own committees and mine was a special committee where we debated and discussed for solutions which could solve the problem of water shortage and its bad quality in some places. In these 2 days we had huge debates but in the end we finally passed 4 out 5 solutions which gave clear solutions about solving water issues. In these 2 days we leant a lot, we learnt different styles and ways of debating in a MUN, we got to meet

with other children  from different schools and share their opinion on the MUN and the topic as per the committees. I even made some really good friends from the schools that came for the MUN. These two days passed away so quickly and none of us realized that it was already time for us to come back. All of us were pretty sad to leave that place but at the same time we were carrying such good memories back with us that it made it up for everything. Finally it was time to bid goodbye to Singapore and return home. The whole trip was a lot of fun and a completely new experience and I wish the school will continue to give us such wonderful experiences which provides for great learning along with a huge amount of fun too.

 Ramsha Khan Gr 8A

A team of 8-10 students from our school had gone to Singapore to attend an MUN conference at the Overseas Family School. It was a great pleasure being a part of the OFS MUN. All of us young folks got a lot of learning by attending this MUN.

Addressing agendas like “Securing Primary Education for all children and Right of Palestinian Refugees to return” are big challenges in itself. The MUN conference taught me a lot of things. It gave me confidence to speak and address a committee. We got to know about the internal and the external affairs of our country. Speaking in front of 50 delegates can be very challenging but the experience has made us so much more confident. Whenever points of information were raised against me I thought how I will tackle the questions of the other delegates. But then this experience taught me a lot and I have developed a whole new skill set of debating, discussing and coming to a agreement on issues. 

Uday Kapoor Grade 7

NewsX Visit by Gaurav, Siddhant, Abhay & Pranav Form 11

Media has always impacted our lives in a big way. The way we think, the way we dress, the choices we make, in short our personality is to a large extent governed by media be it print media or the television. As students studying the Language B course, communication and media forms part of our curriculum. Bias, sensationalism and censorship in media are topics that are part of our core curriculum.

To gain a practical insight into the above mentioned topics and to discuss and debate on the same, we visited the premises of the NewsX channel, one of the leading news channels in the country.

We were given a complete tour of the premises by Mr. Shantish Mohan Nyle who is the Head of production.

He briefed us on the basics of producing a TV show. It was amazing to note how five to six hours of coverage can be edited to a 20-25 minutes final production. We were also taken to the main hub of a news channel, the studio where news is produced, edited and telecasted live. The pulse of the studio was almost infectious with so much happening at the same time. We saw the news being telecasted live.

Next we were introduced to Mr. Rahul Shivshankar, Managing Director, NewsX.

We were instantly impressed at the ease with which he engaged us and interacted with us on a multitude of topics ranging from Bias to censorship. This was one of the most fruitful discussions that we had. He gave us an insight into the nitty gritties of the functioning of a media house and also spoke of how the political parties in a country have a bearing on the freedom of media. We were completely awe struck by his straight forward comments on the same.

After a very engaging interactive session, we were next introduced to Mr. Pankaj Vohra, Editor of the Sunday Guardian. Mr. Vohra is a very senior person with a vast and immense experience of being in this position for long. He briefed us on the nuances of reporting and writing a news report. It was interesting to hear him share Behind the Scene activities that are so much a part of their everyday lives. 

He also explained at length the process of news prioritization and how that affects the placement of news in a newspaper. The session was very informative and engaging.

After having spent about two hours with such senior people, we were thoroughly impressed with the way they explained such vast topics with so much ease and clarity. It was a very fruitful and gainful insight into the world of media.

“Food, Glorious Food!” - Interact Club Bake sale for a Social Cause by Khanak Mehta (Form 11) and Divya Tyagi (Form 9)

“Yummmmm!” That’s the one word you can’t resist saying, after savoring the lip smacking delights at the Bake Sale, held on 6th March, 2014 during Jharokha. Great art AND great food? Bring it on! Chocolate Brownies, rainbow cakes, blueberry muffins and cheesecakes, orange crème-brulees and Nutella and red velvet cupcakes were just few of a myriad of freshly baked delicacies Pathwayzians were longing for.

The Bake sale not only brightened up faces, but also displayed the enormous amount of passion that the students upheld for baking for a noble cause. The Bake Sale was the very first initiative taken up by the newly appointed Interact Club members. After weeks of running around, planning, and putting up posters (not to mention the long-standing debate between iced-tea and lemonade), the success of the event was lucidly visible on the new Interact Club President, Shreya Gupta, and her team members’ faces as they raised Rs. 62.4 Thousand from their very first fundraiser. Fully charged up with zeal and ardently working on their feet, the Interact Committee, with the help of generous sponsors and supporters made this event a raging success. The funds collected will go towards aiding the Sai Bal Sansar School in U.P. A big thank you to all the parents and sponsors who made this event, one to remember. Cheers to the new Interact Committee, and here’s to many more successful events!

Form -3 Field trip to National Science centre and Sun dial by Ms.Aruna Jha Form Tutor-3A

Every unit students are provided an opportunity to explore through field trips. Students of form -3  went on a field trip to  ‘National Science centre’.

Various galleries on science, technology, anatomy at National Science centre provided an opportunity  to  recap  facts  familiar to them and observe some new concepts. Some galleries had working models which were tried with great enthusiasm. Exhibits with interesting literature  helped understand ways to operate the models. Most models were simple and doable which enthused the learners. Students were quite amused and were anxious to operate them.

 The walk through all the galleries still did not tire our learners and amidst  heavy traffic and elevated road of the city we halted at the beautifully designed metal Sun dial.

The newly constructed three dimensional structure  was an entirely new experience for  students. Students enthusiastically  tried to observe the shadow and how the colorful structure could be used to calculate  time and  length of the shadow at various time of the day. They were led to observe  distance between the numbers from one to twelve and

make scientific connections with the learning in class. They did after prompts come out with the fact that  direction of the sun helped know  time and determine  length of the shadow.  Students were still bubbling with energy and tried to solve their curiosity with interesting questions.

They enjoyed  packed lunch in the green lawns of the  Sun dial park

and sang songs with energy all through their way back to school. The trip was definitely a learning experience for all and exploring the newly constructed SUN DIAL, a prized construction of today’s generation was surely a great experience.