8th grade just completed their reading of the classic coming of age novel The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton this week. Many of you may remember crying over Johnny and growing up with Ponyboy around this same age. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, the long and short of it is two boys losing their innocence to systemic violence that goes too far, only for them to fight for their childhood anyways. The book (and film) are littered with a kind of tug-o-war between childhood and adult imagery – the same kid who has left school for a full time job to support his brothers loves having chocolate cake as a meal. These juxtapositions are poignant reminders of the child that lives within even the most hardened or “experienced” kids. Johnny’s final reminder to Ponyboy is the iconic line based on a Robert Frost poem – “Stay gold, Ponyboy.” Johnny challenges Frost’s poetic thesis that all youthful things fade away and “nothing gold can stay.” Johnny implies that one can hold tight, even fight to stay golden, innocent, and young.
I’d say the Cooper School soundly agrees with Johnny. We love the tension that exists between expecting higher and higher levels of skill from our students while also knowing there is so much childhood to hold tight to. Our talent show was such a great example of that this week – what could be a festival of nerves and judgement was pure play, celebration, and fun. Our kids are gold to their core, and we will continue to honor and preserve that gold as long as we can. To the adults reading this, I believe we’ve all got a lot of gold left in us, and if you’ve any trouble finding that, just try looking to your very own middle schooler.
-MK
ELA- 5th grade essayists finished the cursive final copy of their literary essays this week. Their penmanship and well-reasoned novel theories really shined! We also tested our grammar skills on 10/8, so be sure to look out for those test grades and correction opportunities.
Next week, students will begin another reading study – cracking open The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo to enjoy a fantasy tale while studying figurative language. Students will also transition back to a vocabulary unit with a test planned for 10/22.
Science- Fifth grade is wrapping up their soil and landforms unit by talking about natural resources. Students explored natural resources and how we use them in our lives. Additionally, we started discussing renewable resources and nonrenewable resources. Next week we will make a class stepping stone to talk about how earth materials are used to create things all around us. We will also start reviewing for our unit test scheduled for 10/23.
Social Studies- Fifth grade is wrapping up our unit on US geography. We used this week to learn about the features that make us unique as a country and human interactions with these features. Next week, we will end the unit with the economics and impacts of these features and how we can plan for a better future with them. We will also be presenting our state projects!
Math- This week, 5th grade mathematicians worked with more generalized fraction multiplication within recipes and distances, including mixed numbers and fractions requiring simplification. We’ll also begin exploring fraction division, and they’ll learn my favorite acronym for math (keep change flip = KCF, which they always inevitably read as Kentucky Fried Chicken. Growing up in the midwest, my heart cringes – but I’d do anything to get them excited about fractions!)
Next week, we’ll spend our short few days after fall break working towards mastery of fractional multiplication and division before we wrap up this unit the following week. They’ll also take their ERB milestone on Wednesday!
