This week in our middle school morning meeting, we focused on the topic of advocacy. We began by talking about self-advocacy, which I believe is especially important as students transition into their teen years and beyond. Learning to find their voice and stand up for themselves is a skill that will serve them well throughout life. We also revisited the Peace Wheel, a tool we use at The Cooper School to help students navigate and resolve conflicts with their peers.
Next, we shifted our focus to advocating for others and standing up for what they believe in. I continued the conversation later in the day, asking students to take three minutes to reflect on what they’re passionate about and the problems they see in the world that they’d like to help solve. Their ideas truly wowed me—everything from organizing a sports equipment drive to support under-resourced schools, to building a community Blessing Box that we could help maintain. I can’t wait to see these thoughtful projects come to life. Big shine on our middle schoolers!!
-RO
ELA- This week, 5th grade transitioned to the first writing unit on literary essays. We broke down the basics of essay writing and reverse engineered several real student pieces to define the key building blocks of essay structure! With that knowledge, students began to develop their own original thesis around their most previous reading of Hello, Universe! Cursive instruction was also started with great enthusiasm, and I know our final drafts will be something to take great pride in.
Next week, students will organize evidence and reasoning across an outline and get to rough drafts! They can also expect a vocab test on 9/24, which they began preparing for this week.
Science- This week in science, 5th grade explored how fossils are created and what they can tell us about the past. Students used clay, plaster, and shells to create their quick fossils. When we unearthed our fossils, we discovered why paleontologists have to be careful extracting fossils from rock and discussed the differences and similarities between our fossils and real fossils. Next week we will start digging into topographic maps and how we represent different elevations of landforms.
Social Studies- They have begun our unit on United States geography this week! This is a fun unit where they will not only learn about our geography and states and capitals, but also the human impact and the role that geography has in shaping our culture. We have begun with a fun state game and learning the political map. Next week we will dive into how states coexist and how we rely on each other.
Math- This week, 5th grade mathematicians continued their study of fractions and their meaning as we learned how to divide fractions by other fractions, relate fractions to area tables, and decompose fractions for area tables. We also began gearing up for our next unit, where we add and subtract fractions using equivalent fractions.
Next week, we will finish up our fraction division exploration before moving on to our end of unit assessment on Friday. They’ll be assessed on their ability to apply fraction problems to real-world scenarios using the skills and strategies we’ve learned. They’ll also be assessed on their mastery of seeing fractions on a diagram.
