Every January when we return from Winter Break, students and staff both begin thinking of a word they want to define their year. We kicked this off in our Middle School Meeting last week, and we thought of a few questions to help guide us towards our words. We considered:
- What’s important to me and what do I value?
- What do I need more of this year?
- What do I need less of this year?
- Does this word feel grounding or overwhelming to me?
We then spent an afternoon in our advisories brainstorming words. Watching the Cooper middle schoolers set their intentions for the year is one of my favorite parts of the school year. Here are some examples of middle schoolers’ words from last week:
- Refined – “I want to push myself to get better at the things I love to do.”
- Resourceful – “I want to reuse things more, but I also want to use the tools around me when I need help.”
- Committed – “I want to be more committed and intentional about giving more attention and effort to the things I care about.”
- Brilliance – “I want to value the education I get here at Cooper”.
- Mindset – “I want to be less negative and look on the brighter side of things.”
- Self Aware – “I want to be more intentional about the things I say and do, and slow down to notice how I’m feeling and reacting to things around me.”
Hopefully these few examples will inspire your intentions for 2026!
-Allison Gold
Upcoming Dates:
- January 19 – Martin Luther King Jr. Day (No School)
- January 23 – Progress Reports
- January 23 – 7th + 8th PE – Ice Skating
- February 13 – Valentine’s Day Bake Sale and Bingo (1:30pm)
- February 16-17 – February Break (No School)
- Please fill out this form for James Island County Parks. We will be doing PE there starting in February!
ELA: 7th grade writers had a blast drafting tales of high school, new kids, and teen drama in our genre writing labs this week. We looked over the writing from our horror and coming of age studies and decided on the piece we would extend, rewrite, and publish. This week was full of discussions about efficient and clever rewriting techniques. 7th grade also took a vocabulary test on Thursday and will have a test grade in their folders this weekend!
Next week, 7th graders will write and rewrite with creativity and precision until their genre writing is polished and ready to share on the 22nd. They will also begin unit 5 of grammar.
Science: This week in Science, our 7th graders continued their investigation into producers by exploring how energy is transferred and used within ecosystems. Through a carefully guided lab investigation, students examined the energy stored in food by burning cheese balls and capturing the released energy as a change in water temperature. Using their data, they calculated the number of calories contained in the snack, making a clear connection between producers, energy, and the food we eat.
Next week, students will wrap up their study of producers with an assessment on Thursday, January 22nd, and begin exploring trophic levels within ecosystems.
Social Studies: Seventh grade did a fantastic job this week with our discussion on the three branches of government and how they all operate. We also talked about voting rights and the Constitution. The class also participated in two fun games which taught them about how to learn about voting and other responsibilities associated with being a citizen and the other game was becoming President of the United States. I will say this class got the highest score EVER when it came to being President! Great job! Next week we will be wrapping up the federal government learning about the checks and balances of the three branches and how it all works.
Math: This week in math, 7th graders dove into calculating slope from a line, a table, or two separate coordinates to help us create slope-intercept form equations and graphs! We also connected these tables to stories and real-life scenarios involving rates of change. Next week, we’ll explore the solutions to linear equations and what they mean for a scenario before we take our mid-unit quiz on Thursday.
