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- 8th grade moved into a reading unit this week, cracking open the YA classic The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. We built background knowledge on teenage subcultures and “greasers”, discussing our own identity “lenses”as we tried to define and track the identity of our narrator, Ponyboy.
Next week, 8th graders will continue tracking elements in the novel like social tensions and power dynamics, learning how to develop thoughtful “synthesis notes” to capture deep analysis. There will also be a vocabulary test on Thursday 9/25, which students began preparing for this week!
Science- This week in science, 8th graders reinforced their understanding of speed and acceleration by looking at some race data and calculating split speeds and acceleration. Students also completed a project to review and show their understanding of speed and acceleration. Next week we will continue our exploration of collisions and how kinetic energy changes with speed and mass.
Social Studies- Eight grade began our next unit on Latin American revolutions and the other revolutions of the 19th century. It is an interesting look at how our own revolution inspired and shaped other revolutions across the world. The next project will be choosing a nation in this time and doing a deep dive on their own revolution.
Math- This week in math, 8th graders finished up their first unit of study by practicing transformations and constructions to build different figures. They were assessed over these skills on Thursday, before moving on to unit 2 where we’ll apply this mastery to congruence and triangle trigonometry!
Next week, 8th graders will begin proving triangles and corresponding parts by exploring, using, and proving the side-angle-side theorem. We’ll connect back to our previous unit and mastery of rigid transformations to help us with our proofs.
