This time of year at The Cooper School is pure magic! The rooms are buzzing as elementary and middle school students put the finishing touches on projects that show off all the incredible learning they’ve been doing.
I love watching ideas take shape—groups working together, sketching, building, testing, and sometimes realizing they need to pivot and start again (even when it means more work!). Those moments are where the real learning happens.
Everyone jumps in to help—teachers supporting teachers, students lending a hand to classmates who need it. It’s teamwork and community at its best.
As a parent, I often find myself so happy that I get to be a fly on the wall – lucky to witness it all. Trust me—it’s even better than you can imagine!
-Rives
ELA- 5th grade readers finished their novel study in The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo, completing vivid figurative language posters. 5th graders then watched an animated adaptation of the story, comparing and contrasting the two mediums. Their grammar test has been postponed due to the Halloween schedules and our upcoming field trip – students can plan for an open note grammar test on Monday 11/10.
Next week, 5th grade will transition to a personal narrative unit where they will flex their creative writing muscles! We will move into a new vocabulary unit, as well.
Science- 5th grade finished up their soil and landforms unit by researching four famous landforms and learning about what geological processes created each one. Students created a small poster with drawings of their selected landforms and the data they collected about each one. Students also took their unit test this week. Next week we will jump into talking about living systems. We will start by talking about what a system is and exploring the four Earth systems.
Social Studies- Fifth grade has begun our next unit, which is Europe through the ages. We will study both geography and human geography of the continent throughout time and reflect on how it has changed over the centuries. This will be a fun unit and we will be starting another project similar to the state project in which each student will research an individual country on the continent.
Math- This week, 5th grade mathematicians worked towards multi-digit multiplication fluency before moving into multi-digit division and fluency there – using multiple strategies like standard algorithms, area models, and partial products/quotients.
Next week, we’ll apply our division mastery to real-life examples in which we explore knowing which number is the divisor and which is the dividend, and understanding what our quotient means for the scenario.
