CHARACTER EVENTS
Students of the Month - December
Chatham Middle School honors students who display positive character traits with the selection of Students of the Month from each grade and the encore team. For the month of December, CMS would like to recognize Shelby Ford (5th grade), Joe Intrieri (6th grade), Kayla Tator (7th grade), Carl Aladin (8th grade) and Jacob Avens (encore) as our Students of the Month.
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Leadership Club Pull Tab Drive for Ronald McDonald House
Ronald McDonald House is a home away from home for families for seriously ill children. We are asking you to spread the word and help change a child’s life by supporting the PULL TAB program, called ”Pulling for Ronald McDonald House.” Please collect and save the pull tabs off Aluminum cans (soda cans, soup cans, juice cans, cat food). One Hundred percent of the dollars raised form the redeemed pull tabs will be given to the Ronald McDonald House. We will have big Buckets in every grade level hallway. Please help the leadership club--- let’s fill a bucket with pull tabs to help support the Ronald McDonald house!!
Students Celebrate Each Other with "Five Minutes of Fame"
Sixth graders focused on each other’s interests and hobbies with classroom show-and-tell sessions held in December. Students brought in items from home and discussed their favorite activities - from riding motorcross to collecting rocks, from baking cakes to studying wild animals - one student even presented a slide-show about her trip to Africa. The five-minute presentations helped students get to know and better respect one another.
NJHS Hosts Senior Luncheon
This December,
Chatham Middle School's National Junior Honor Society (NJHS) hosted a Holiday Senior Citizen Luncheon in the school cafeteria. This yearly holiday gathering provides seniors with food, entertainment, and a way to connect with the young people in their community. NJHS membership is for students in grades six through eight who have an average of 90 or better in all core subjects and demonstrate outstanding qualities in character, service, leadership, and citizenship.
Adopt An Angel
In coordination with CCSTA, the Leadership Club is sponsoring an Adopt an Angel fundraising drive for the Make-a-Wish foundation. This holiday season, our student leaders are selling angels everyday at lunch, the proceeds from which will go to grant the wishes of terminally ill children in our area.
Students of the Month - November
Chatham Middle School would like to recognize Triston Schermerhorn, (5th grade) Zoe Dyer (6th grade), Noah Summers (7th grade), Hunter Wallace (8th grade), and Aaron Keller (encore) as our November Students of the Month.
CMS honors students who display positive character traits with the selection of Students of the Month from each grade and the encore team. In November, CMS focused on the positive aspects of gratitude. Read more...
2011 YOUTH SUMMIT
CMS Leadership club students, along with student leaders from CHS, traveled to Russell Sage College in Troy to participate in the 10th Annual Northeast U.S. Character Education Youth Leadership Summit, held December 1st. The students participated in many workshops regarding leadership, diversity and anti-bullying. To practice leadership and intervention techniques, our students worked with a drama instructor to develop role-playing situations. As many area school districts also participated, our students were able to interact and discuss pertinent school issues with other young leaders from the capital district.
CMS Recognized at National Character Education Forum
During the 2011 National Forum on Character Education in San Francisco, Chatham Middle School was recognized as one of only three middle schools nationally to receive the distinction of "National School of Character." CMS received the honor in 2011 following numerous other character education awards. CMS guidance counselors Jackie Hoffman and Cyndi Herron, with technology teacher Sara Murray, attended the forum and accepted the award on behalf of CMS. They also presented a workshop on "Creating Character through Serving Others" and participated in several professional development events. Read more...
Mix-It-Up at Lunch
Students in the CMS Leadership Club hosted a school-wide mix-it-up event on November 17. During lunch, all students were given assigned seating that placed them at tables with other students they usually did not socialize with. To stimulate teamwork and conversation, each table was tasked with developing, as a group, lyrics for a song, the best of which would be sung by Ms. Barkman during morning announcements. The activity was designed to challenge social boundaries and foster communication between different student groups.
I'm Grateful For...
Recently, CMS has focused on the positive character trait of being grateful. As part of their English Language Arts studies, sixth grade students were asked to write essays on what they were most grateful for. Impressed with what the students had to say, interim principal Ms. Annemarie Barkman shared some of their essays with the entire student body during morning announcements. Read what students wrote about being grateful...
Veterans Day Assembly
Chatham Middle School honored local veterans with a Veterans Day assembly, held November 10 in our auditorium. Each year, CMS invites veterans from the community to attend the ceremony, and those veterans in attendance were asked to stand and be honored. For well over a minute, applause rang through the house as the entire school showed their appreciation for the veteran’s service and sacrifice. Read more...
Students of the Month - October
Each month, Chatham Middle School honors students who display positive character traits with the selection of Students of the Month from each grade and the encore team. The CMS positive character trait for the month of October was gratitude.
October's students of the month are (from left to right):
Front: Corey Dexheimer, Katherine Verenazi. Back: Kristian Tampasis, Megan Sweet, Annemarie Barkman, and Kaylin Meyer.
CMS and MED Students Build Literacy Skills Together
Sixth graders took a class trip to MED to share their reading and storytelling skills with some of Chatham's youngest learners. This service-learning project paired each sixth grader with a first grade reading buddy. Together, they talked about books and took turns reading to one another. Reading together not only benefited the elementary students, it benefited the middle schoolers as well, putting them in a leadership role and giving them an opportunity to gain confidence in their own literacy skills. The sixth graders also showed off their oral storytelling talents by relating tales they had developed with storyteller Barry Marshall, who recently held a week-long residency at CMS with the sixth and seventh grades.
Mentoring Program Harvest Festival
Students involved in the CMS mentoring program and their adult mentors hosted a Harvest Festival for local preschool children on October 26th. The event was held in the CMS gym, where middle school students paired up with their preschool buddies for a morning of fun and games, face painting, arts and crafts, and more.
The Harvest Fest is an annual event at CMS, and hosting it gives students the opportunity to build leadership skills, connect with their community in a meaningful way, and have a lot of fun in the process.
Students of the Month - September
Each month, Chatham Middle School honors students who display positive character traits. Students of the Month are selected from each grade and the encore team. The CMS positive character trait for the month of September was respect.
September's students of the month are (from left to right):
Mackenzie Rogers (8th grade), Connor Ahern (6th grade), Devin Kopec (encore team), Daryon DeGroff (7th grade) Mikey Moore (6th grade) Read more...
Helping Greene County Students Get back to School
Students and staff at CMS participated in a District-wide effort to collect school supplies for Windham, NY schools. Donations of pens, pencils, notepads and more were brought in from home to support fellow students in Greene County whose schools lost everything following the flooding there.
Together with CHS and MED, we helped collect several cases of school supplies, which were delivered to hard hit schools in Windham on September 23rd.