This past Wednesday our Middle School students competed in their first Orienteering competition on the hills of the Seih Sou forest, which overlooks the city of Thessaloniki. Before the start of the competition, students were divided into groups of three or four and each group was armed with a map and compass. The object of the competition was to race quickly through the forest to find as many of the 17 pre-positioned flags as possible in a one-hour time limit.

We were so pleased to witness students working together without the help of their teachers and chaperones - with their heads bowed over their maps in order to determine their next destination and all the while encouraging each other to do the best they can! This teambuilding experience saw students working their brains and bodies to accomplish a common goal.

The top three team results of the competition, as tallied by our guide, Mr. Kostas Koukouris, are as follows:

• Maria, Galini and Carolina - 14 points

• Marina, Karah and Niya - 14 points

• Ben, Felice, Niko and Hikaru - 12 points

Congratulations to all students who displayed wonderful team spirit throughout the day. We’re all looking forward to the final Orienteering event, which will take place at Thermi Park on May 30^th.

1/8 

   

This is the second year that our students will be participating in the European Maths Challenge.
Last year, Pinewood was the top scoring school in Greece with Dan Isaidis earning the top score.

Students can practice for this event over the next couple of days. During this warm up session, students
can practice math concepts to prepare for day 1 of the challenge, and warm up their mental
maths skills in preparation for day 2 of the challenge.

Day 1 – Curriculum Mathletics (00:00am to 11:59pm) Monday, May 14

Students will be given a challenge specific course comprised of adaptive Mathletics activities
testing their knowledge and ability on mathematical concepts. 10 points per correct answer
is awarded. A maximum of 300 points per activity can be achieved and a maximum of 15000
points can be earned from day 1.

Day 2 – Live Mathletics (00:00am to 11:59pm) Tuesday, May 15

Students have their mental maths skills challenged across 10 levels of 60-second races against
other students. 1 point per correct answer is awarded.

Good luck everyone.

Ms. Mary Tsoulfa

Mathematics Coordinator

Outside the classroom, our students are richly talented in music, the arts, sports and other areas and many of them spend countless hours practicing these talents. Alexander Vezenkov, Grade 11, an accomplished basketball player, is one such student.

Basketball has always been a part of Alexander’s life. His father was an international player with the Bulgarian National Team, so Alexander began playing in Cyprus, where he was born, at the age of six. He attended Greek primary school and a British international high school in Nicosia before moving to Thessaloniki in 2010 when he started playing for ARIS Basketball Club…and also began attending Pinewood.

With commitment, enthusiasm and hard work, Alexander has already generated an impressive list of achievements. He won the Pan-Hellenic Basketball Championship with the ARIS Cadet team and was named “All 1^st Scorer” and “All 2^nd Rebounder” in the European FIBA Basketball Tournament for U16 with the Bulgaria National Team.

This year, he was promoted to the professional team of ARIS and played in a number of games against famous basketball players. He also led the effort of the ARIS U19 team all the way to the final. This summer, he will be leading the Bulgarian U19 team in another European tournament in Latvia and Lithuania.

Alexander is a steadfast example of the student-athlete. He practices more than 4 hours every day and still manages to maintain very good grades. For example, in his first year at Pinewood, he was eligible for National Honor Society, received Honor Roll recognition and received the Departmental Award for Excellence in Physical Education.

Although only a junior, several top universities from the USA have approached Alexander with full scholarship offers to play NCAA Basketball after graduating from Pinewood next year. This is a promising sign of great things to come.

We wish Alexander the best in his career path as a college and professional basketball player and thank him for being such a prized role model to his Pinewood classmates.

Grade 1 has just finished a very creative project where they wrote and illustrated their own book. This began one day when we were acting out a story we had read in class. Their imaginations took hold and the idea for their own story “An elephant and a Mouse” was born.

The children learnt a great deal by putting this book together. A lot of discussion and planning was involved. They had to be careful about presenting their work neatly so that others could read it and thus had to conform to the conventions of capitalization and punctuation. They became very comfortable with words such as: illustrator, narrator, title and cover page.

Not only did they develop their writing skills but also their artwork. They even had to draw upon their mathematical skills when organizing the layout of the pages.

Our First Graders have a clearer understanding of how a book is put together with the addition of extra pages at the beginning and the end of the book with further illustrations.

Note how their work is acknowledged by the inclusion of copyright titles at the beginning of the book and pages added to the story with which tell another tale… The last page sees the zoo keeper running after the elephant and the mouse!

The final stages of the book project were helped greatly by our Art teacher, Mr. Dimitris Michalaros, who gave the children a wonderful lesson on how to mount their work in an attractive way. He allowed the children to give rein to their imaginations in designing their own clouds on which they pasted a page of the book and then illustrated the clouds in any way they wanted.

Each child was then given a magic pencil by our Art teacher which should only be used when doing very special artwork! The work is displayed on the main noticeboard opposite the secretary’s desk. We hope you enjoy your children’s efforts.

Ms. Marianne Dundon