The last four weeks have been incredibly busy and have
absolutely flown by at the middle school. We’ve jumped from fall sports to
winter, we moved the clocks back, and we just came to the end of the first
quarter. It seems like we just started and yet we are two weeks away from
Thanksgiving. In that blur of a month we have had some outstanding things
happening and a lot to be proud of.
On Friday, October 27th we held our 2nd
Annual WGMS PTA Halloween Spooktacular. Over 325
students (over half of our building) showed up to dance, play BINGO, shoot
hoops, sing karaoke, and eat a lot of foods not found on the 'whole-30 diet'.
It was a really terrific evening of fun! To pull off this type of event off you
need great planning and you need people willing to step up and volunteer their
time. We had both, and our parent & staff volunteers are simply awesome! I
received several emails from parents thanking us for putting this on for our
kids and many of our students were vocally appreciative as they thanked us
heading out of the building Friday night.
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| WGMS Team |
This past week was the District
Spelling Bee at Camillus Middle school. WGMS was very well represented with six
of the final twelve spellers including 6th graders Joe Paoli &
Cooper Corcoran, 7th grader Sophia Van Horn, and 8th
graders Connor Dunham, Cameron Hovater & Emily Pattermann. Our 6th
graders Joe and Cooper were the two finalists with Joe Paoli ultimately being
crowned Spelling Bee Champ.
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| District Finalists: Cooper & Joe |
Students of the Month
In an
effort to be more consistent at recognizing our students at each grade level we
created a building-wide ‘Student of the Month’ award recognizing two girls and
two boys at each grade level. This recognition is presented to students for demonstrating
exemplary work ethic, citizenship, character, compassion, honesty,
trustworthiness, responsibility, optimism and/or leadership in creating a
positive school environment. This isn’t about grades and athletic or musical
prowess, it’s about demonstrating all of the qualities associated with great
character that we value and celebrate. Last week we recognized our October
Students of the Month; 6th graders Sarah Adams, Karolina Lata,
Gabriel Farino and Joseph Paoli, 7th graders Kate Kuppinger, Emilie
Shoults, Gabe June and Daniel McManus, 8th graders Jessica Femano,
Julia Klazco, Matthew Murdock and Brad Smith.
On Friday, November 3rd we had our annual Career Fair for our 8th grade students. We had 41 participants representing 30 different careers. This was a terrific opportunity for our students to get a better understanding of what some potential careers are, but also what types of skills they will need to be successful regardless of the career that they pursue. The Career Fair is a great connection to Career and Financial Management which is a high school elective brought down to the middle school for the first time this year. A big thank you to School Counselor Cindy Kurz and our entire Counseling Department for pulling this together.
Camillus Optimist
Teacher/Students of Year
This next month will be just as exciting
and equally as busy as the last. We kick it off this week with our school
musical, ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ with show times of 7:00 PM on Thursday and
Friday evening, and Saturday afternoon at 2:00 PM.
Thank you for your continued support
of our students and staff. As always, please email or call me if you have any
questions or concerns.
Continued Success,
Steve Dunham
Twitter: @Sdunhamwgms
