Friday, December 31, 2010

Pathways – The Year That Was!

The celebrations for Christmas were barely over and the world is now excited about the advent of yet another new year. This is a time to reflect back on the year gone by, be proud of our achievements, learn from the challenges faced, and above all, move into 2011 with a new sense of purpose.

For us here at Pathways, it was a historic year with the launch of two new Pathways schools. There were lots of challenges, emerging opportunities, long hours of collective hard work, and a great deal of excitement and enthusiasm to flow in a new direction. Both new schools began classes on 20 October 2010. Congratulations to both the schools and a wonderful journey ahead.

This year was also eventful for our flagship school which has come a long way since its birth n 2003. In this short time period, six batches of students have already graduated from the school and made us proud by enrolling in various reputed universities around the globe. The school organized and participated in several programs this year like Pathways Rediscovering Minds, Udeesha, founders weekend, and is currently looking forward to the first ever Pathways production in New Delhi set to be held in March.

In addition to being consistently ranked among the top ten international schools in the country for the last few years; this year, Pathways World School was also ranked as the best International school in the region by two surveys conducted back to back by Hindustan Times and Education World. Congratulations to the entire team and our best wishes to scale even higher peaks in times to come.

The New Year will see many more achievements, joys and successes. But for Pathways, what matters the most is the love and support of our parents and students; the hard work and dedication of our teachers to make every event a success and bring out the best in our students; and to raise the bar each time.

On behalf of the entire Pathways team, we wish you all a very Happy and Joyous New Year…

http://pathways.in/

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Day of Sharing | Pathways School Noida

On 21st of December, as the end of the term celebrations, Pathways School Noida commemorated a “Day of Sharing”. As part of their Community Action Service initiative the school runs a programme christened ‘Prabodhan’ or ‘Awakening’. The staff and the students are engaged in teaching and interacting with around 50 children of labourers who live around the campus. This programme was a ‘shared’ platform for the school students and these children.

In her inaugural speech Director of Pathways School Noida, Dr. Shalini Advani, stressed on the shift in educational thought, from competition to cooperation. Mr. Praveen Jain, Director, expressed his satisfaction at how Pathways School Noida was blossoming as a socially sensitive and academically strong institution. Dr. Kiran Dattar spoke on behalf of the Board of Governors. She talked from her experience as an educationist and was happy to see how the Jain family was committed towards excellence, creating children and citizens of the future through the Pathways institutions.

The festivities commenced in the traditional fashion with a dance to a Ganesh Vandana. The core of the programme was presentations by the labour children from the ‘Prabodhan’ programme. They recited rhymes, performed skits and danced to the ever popular ‘Bam Bam Bole’. The Pathways students showcased their talents with the choir performing Hindi songs and Christmas carols. The middle and junior school performed a well choreographed dance. The festivities ended with the Pathways students sharing gifts which they had bought for the ‘Prabodhan’ children. In return the ‘Prabodhan’ children too shared small tokens of love with the Pathways students, now lovingly addressed as dadas and didis.

By- Sudripta Tagore
English Teacher- Pathways Noida

http://pathways.in/noida/

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Pathways Gurgaon Students and Teachers Visited the Bookaroo Festival | An Exciting Time Indeed!



The children of grade 7 and 8 were fortunate to be a part of the ongoing ‘Bookaroo’ festival which was being celebrated at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts. It is established as thefirst Children’s Literature Festival in India. It is considered to be plural, multilingual festival, showcasing the best in International and Indian children’s literature. It aims inpromoting Children’s literature both locally, regionally and globally to encourage cultural exchange and dialogue, education and development.

The children were excited to meet the prominent teen author, ‘Anthony Horowitz’, who spoke about his series of books titled: Alex Rider. He gave an insight into what interests the teens world over, calling ‘Alex Rider’ a phenomenon to deal with. He spoke about how parents can become part of ‘One family reading together’. He highlighted the importance of reading time as a family bonding time and reiterated that his series of books give plenty of opportunity to enjoy that time together even with children aged 12-16, as his books have all the adventure and freshness for the child and seriousness and newness for an adult

The children also enjoyed, ‘The art of Pop Ups’ by ‘Robert Sabuda’ who is the creator of intricate and magical pop-up books. He appears regularly on television to share his enthusiasm for creativity, art and books with children. He showcased what it takes to create a popup book, what earlier seemed too childish to an adult. He was generous enough to regard the hard work of all the men engaged in giving the book its shape in which it reaches the readers. He showed how his work is truly global; how the work is created and contributed by people who live across continents and get to the readers world over who read and savour the elements of the creative spirit imbibed in the books.

By: Ambika Roshan
English Teacher, Middle School
Pathways Gurgaon

http://pathways.in/gurgaon/

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Pathways World School Does It Again! | Ranked amongst the top 10 International Schools in the country!

It gives us immense pleasure to share the wonderful news of Pathways World School being ranked amongst the top 10 International schools in India. The survey which was conducted by Education World has ranked Pathways as thenumber 1 International school in Delhi NCR, and number 2 in the entire North India region.

The Award was received by Dr. Sarvesh Naidu, the School Director of Pathways World School.

Pathways has also been adjudged as the best International School in the region by another survey conducted by Hindustan Times.

Once again we are extremely joyous with this recognition. This continues to motivate us to set even higher benchmarks for ourselves and reinforces the exceptional efforts put together by the entire team at Pathways.

Follow this link to take a tour of the school.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Literary Week Celebrations at Pathways Noida

Teachers Play

Role Play by the PYP teachers on essential elements of a book and teachers personified each element. The highlight of the play was teachers dressed up as characters from different genres.

Book Fair by Scholastic

Children learnt how to choose books of their level and interest and we saw them reading blurbs!!

Sharing a story with Early Learners and we saw most the children from KG and Grade buy the same book at the Book Exhibition.

Assembly

Form 5 introduced the happenings in the Book Week to the whole school in a special assembly on Tuesday.

Buddy Reading

Two children reading to one another. If the child was younger, student tried and picked up cues from picture.

As a finale of the Literary Week, children dressed up in their favourite book character and enjoyed introducing themselves.

Literary Week

Reading is the basic foundation on which academic skills of an individual are built. You can read almost anything including encyclopedias, novels, dailies, magazines…the list is pretty long, but that hardly matters, as long as you like doing it. Whether you like fiction or non-fiction is not important, but whether you like reading or not is! But children are often too busy with their computer games and television, whereas adults are glued on to their computer screen, amassing the wealth of knowledge through Internet search engines. Reading does have its loyal fan following, but the fan base is rapidly decreasing. We at Pathways, have made a studied attempt at increasing this fan base through our literary week celebrated from 4th December to 10th December.

The growing Caterpillar

A Caterpillar’s was put up in the school Aangan. Every time a child read a book. He wrote a little reflection on a pre cut circle that was added to the Caterpillar’s face, thus grew the caterpillar. He had his own spurts of growth. If his length is any indicator of the success of the reading week, we have succeeded with our objective.

Take a tour of the Pathways Schools here http://pathways.in/

Thursday, December 16, 2010

First Educational Field Trip for the Students of Pathways Gurgaon|Harappan Gallery-A Close Look



Saturday, 27th November, was a day on which all the planning and preparation for the visit to the National Museum in New Delhi would be tested. Students and teachers had all geared up for the ‘First Educational field trip’ keeping in mind how curricular understanding and skills taught in the different subjects could support their understanding of Historical Sources.

The students prepared for the trip by first surfing through a wonderful website http://web.singnet.com.sg/thiens/story1.htmwhich helped them get a glimpse of what they would be studying at the museum. The history teacher had visited the museum and created a slide show which she showed. There were discussions about the sources. Teachers and students together designed a field book keeping in mind the current objective of the History curriculum –a study of primary and secondary sources of historical information through their upcoming unit the ‘Harappan Civilization’.

On the way to the museum, the students marked the route from their homes to the Museum on the map provided to them in the field book. On reaching the Museum their attention was captivated by the magnificent Chariot displayed right at the entrance.

We entered the Harappan gallery where the students spent time carefully observing the details of each display and reading up the write ups. Students were curious and surprised to see the displays which depicted the similarities to modern times – the utensils and the ornaments, the layout of cities, games, embellishments on drapery. They appreciated the miniature and skilled craftsmanship of the artists and were inquisitive about burial practices, and tomb offerings, the tools used for agriculture and the scales and weights used for measurement during the 2700B.C. all of which gave them an insight into how such artefacts are used to draw historical conclusions,

Next the students got down to recording their learning on related task sheets and completing the questionnaires that they themselves had made, prior to the visit to set the focus for the visit. They moved from one corner of the gallery to the other to ensure that they were very precise and accurate regarding the information which they were noting and had not missed out on what they had intended to find out about.

A long conversation and discussion with the curator Mr R.S Atal (Lecturing and Education Department) was the next activity. It helped the students to go deeper to understand the uniqueness of the seals that depicted the lifestyle of the people living during those times, which we as lay people might have ignored. He was very passionate in explaining to the students the various techniques used during the Harappan civilization in art-the color technique and the model making. He also discussed with the students how it is important to differentiate between prediction and reality when we study History. He shared with us how these terms are different but yet interrelated.

Students asked questions regarding scientific integration in History and how Science was used during the Harappan civilization. The question and answer session would not have ended if teachers had not intervened in order to maintain planned schedules.

Students returned having learnt the skill of using community resources to enhance their learning and armed with information to proceed with their project.

Article by: Tanwinder Kohli
Social Sciences Teacher
Middle School- Pathways Gurgaon

Visit Pathways at http://pathways.in/

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

The International School Perspective in India | Pathways Schools

Various international schools are cropping up through out India, parents are enrolling their kids to these schools. An article published in TOI few month ago spelled out clearly about what an international school consist of:

International Curriculum, International faculty & International student body. It is very important for parents to check the affiliation of school before enrolling their kids. All international schools must be affiliated with at least one international Curriculum.

Pathways World School in Gurgaon, Noida and Aravali is open to year-long admissions for the session of 2011-2012. Pathways is a truly international school with all modern amenities like fully air-conditioned classrooms, an advanced international curriculum and a set of highly qualified and dedicated faculty. Pathways World School Gurgaon, Noida and Aravali invites applications for admission from nursery to graduation. The school imparts practical methods of Montessori to implant values of self discipline and cultural awareness.

In India parents & kids are under the assumption that international schools are meant for foreign students only but in reality it is not true. International schools enroll students from all parts of the world. These schools train students from international perspective. Students from such schools can easily mingle in multilingual culture, so, they wont face any difficulty when they move out from one country to another, either for higher studies or jobs.

Yes, International schools help student for Globalised culture. These students interact with students of other countries and know about their culture, traditions and values. Another feature of truly international school is the academic year which coincides with rest of the countries outside India. When students switch from one country to another without compromising on losing a term or reapting a term.

Looking at the success of international schools in India, many school following syllabus ICSE & CBSE affiliated schools have started proclaiming to be international schools.

For more information on Pathways Schools visit: http://pathways.in/