Cascade Canyon School has offered an outstanding, developmental
Kindergarten program for the past twenty-five years, taught by Peggy
Tunder, an expert in primary education and "magician" in the clasroom
when it comes to creating a love of learning, a kind and caring
community, and inspiring children's creativity. Peggy has taught the
Kindergarten program as a stand-alone Kindergarten class and as a
multli-age class, in keeping with the multi-age philosophy of our
school. Peggy is also a former co-director of Cascade Canyon.
Peggy currently delivers our Kindergarten program as a straight Kindergarten class in
order to provide our youngest students an extra special welcome into the school. Because of our
uniquely small Kindergarten class size, capped at 10 students, all students are able to receive the attention
they need to thrive socially, emotionally and academically in their
first year of school.
 Kindergarten
students at Cascade Canyon spend the mornings in Peggy's homeroom
classroom, integrating cooperative play, Sign Language, the arts and
kinesthetic movement with core academic studies in math, language
arts, and social studies (community and world studies). The
Kindergarten students participate in our reading and writing workshop program along
with the older students in the school, and they begin our Math
Expressions math program, supplemented with Marilyn Burns' hands-on,
problem solving curriculum, which continue through fourth grade.
In the afternoons, our Kindergarten students enjoy being a part of our rich specialist program,
with teachers who are specialists in the fields of art, music, science
and nature, theater, Spanish, and physical education. Aside from
offering a balanced curriculum, and addressing the needs and interests
of the whole child, another perk of our specialist program is that our
students get to know and work with their future first through eighth grade
teachers: just as their core teacher, Peggy, teaches specialist subjects
to the rest of the school in the afternoons (theater and Sign
Language), the other core teachers also teach specialist subjects to the Kindergrarten students in the afternoons. This staffing model builds cohesiveness
in the students' experience from year to year and fosters close-knit
student-teacher community.
 A
special added component of the Kindergarten experience at
Cascade
Canyon School is becoming a part of the warm, loving K-8 Cascade Canyon
School student community. Kindergarteners form special
relationships with the older students in the school through cross-age
reading buddies, weekly whole school community meetings, whole school
morning recess and lunch, school-wide performances and events, and traveling together on our overnight and
day trips. It is not uncommon to see our youngest children sitting on
our oldest children's laps during morning meeting, or to witness an
exuberant lunchtime soccer game with children of all ages playing
together.
If you are interested in enrolling your child in Kindergarten at Cascade
Canyon for the upcoming school year, please call our school office at
459-3464 or download an application from the "Latest News" section on
our Home Page. We begin accepting applications for our Kindergarten class in January: come visit our school at our fall Open
House, scheduled for November 6th, our winter Open House scheduled for
January 29th, or call the office to sign up for a Thursday morning tour.
Priority admission deadline is February 5th. Students who apply
before February 5th will be notified of their acceptance status in
March, after their school visit. The decision to offer a stand-alone Kindergarten classroom or a K-1 multi-age classroom, both of which have been
highly successful, is typically announced in late March/early April, and
is based on the best configuration of students across grades K-2.
A detailed description of the Kindergarten curriculum follows.
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Welcome to
first and second grade at Cascade Canyon! As a class, we
will explore Reading, Writing, Mathematics and Social Studies. We will build a loving and supportive
community that challenges each of us to be curious, to take risks and
ultimately to stretch ourselves as learners. In first and second grades, children build upon the academic and social-emotional foundation they have developed in Kindergarten. We will deepen our love of reading and ability to read independently and find wonder in the world of books. We will continue to develop pride in being authors with our new abilities to extend and revise our writing and to adapt our writing for audience and purpose. And we will continue our active exploration in math, through manipulative investigation, posing questions and solving problems, and understanding and applying algorithms. Making good choices, taking responsibility for our words and actions, and working well with others continue to be focus areas in first and second grades.
A detailed description of our curriculum follows.
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Welcome to third and fourth grade at Cascade Canyon School! This school year promises to be an amazing year of both academic and social growth in the life of your Room 6 student. I bring to the classroom over 20 years of experience in education with a true love and passion for teaching. My approach to education is deeply embedded in the belief that for children to learn they must feel safe, secure, supported, and enthused about the classroom they are in. From the first day of school, I individualize my approach to each and every student so that each and every child feels Room 6 is a place to learn and grow.
Although I have sketched out a general overview of the school year below, I do base much of what I teach on what I instinctively and intuitively feel are the collective and individual needs of the class. Having a strong backbone of curriculum, as highlighted in the following pages, allows for a true and full education for all of the students.
A detailed description of our curriculum follows.
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At Cascade Canyon, our fifth and sixth grade class is the beginning of our middle school program. We work with a greater focus, delving into deeper, more challenging content. We learn to write with greater sophistication and detail; to tolerate ambiguity; to weigh multiple perspectives; to recognize patterns; and to solve interesting problems. Perseverence, stamina, creativity and curiosity are key habits of learning in fifth and sixth grade. Socially and emotionally, fifth and sixth grade is an important time to reinforce the value and rewards of patience, listening, kindness, trust and confidence.
Classroom Environment
In order to create a safe and productive learning
environment, it is necessary for everyone to behave responsibly and
respectfully. When issues arise in
the classroom, I make every effort to resolve the problem with the students/s
individually. If we require more
guidance I may ask for parent involvement and support. Working together, we ensure success for
every student.
Guidance Procedures
Each year, the fifth and sixth grades students agree upon and adopt a set of community
practices. Through the course of the year, if a student chooses to break one
of these agreements, we will work together to determine a logical consequence
for the action. For example: If a student is disrupting his or her table
group, thereby preventing others from learning, he or she will make a choice to
either cease the disruption, or to change his or her location for a brief period of
reflection. If the student chooses
to continue the disruption, I will guide them in following through with the
agreed consequence that logically follows the action. All students are clear
about what is expected, and will be given ample opportunity to successfully meet the
expectations.
Positive behavior logically requires a consequence as
well! As a class, we agree to honor
positive behavior with consequences such as praise, extra break minutes, our
"make a difference" journal, friendly phone calls, and
preferred activity time.
This year's class adopted the following community practices:
- Be
Safe
- Be
Kind
- Be
Respectful
- Be
Productive
- Have
Goals
- Do
Your Best
A detailed description of our curriculum follows.
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WELCOME to our seventh and eighth grade class, the conclusion of the middle school program at Cascade Canyon
School! We have designed an exciting, engaging and integrated curriculum to
prepare our seventh and eighth grade students for the rigors of high school,
equipping them with a toolbox of critical thinking strategies and a wide array
of transferable skills in the areas of communication, problem solving, organization
and interpersonal development. On the social emotional front, students will
continue to grow and become more confident, learning to advocate for
themselves.
REWARDS OF PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION: Motivated to learn for
learning's sake, without the competitive pressure or external reward of
grades, our seventh and eighth grade students excel into confident
students, mature young adults, and leaders on our K-8 campus. Feedback
from the local and San Francisco high schools attended by our graduates
is excellent: Cascade Canyon students are recognized in high school as being comfortable with adults and themselves, confident
communicators, and capable and versatile learners - not afraid to ask
for help or for enrichment. Cascade Canyon graduates have an excellent
acceptance rate to Marin and San Francisco private schools, including
Marin Academy, The Bay School, Branson and Drew in recent years, and at
the Novato School of the Performing Arts, where admission is audition
and portfolio based. Many of our graduates choose to attend our
excellent local public schools, such as Drake, Redwood, Tamalpais and
Terra Linda High.
OUR EXPERT TEAM: We have made many exciting changes to our seventh and eighth grade
middle school program at Cascade Canyon School in the past few years, expanding the
core staff to two teachers, each of us playing to our areas of passion and
expertise: Aaron Feldstein specializes in the Humanities, teaching
English Language Arts and History, and Karen Sonnenblick is the lead
Math/Science teacher - as well as the science teacher for fifth and
sixth grades. We both bring a rich array of experience in
middle and high school teaching in our core subjects and in program
administration, including gifted education, outdoor education and
wilderness survival and ecology. The middle school team is rounded out
by our amazing specialist staff, most of whom also teach core subjects
in the mornings at Cascade Canyon: our Spanish teacher, Devin Eckert,
our theater teacher, Peggy Tunder, our music teacher, Jayme Pohl, our PE
teachers, Megan Marietti and Aaron Feldstein, and our art teacher,
Julie Pledger.
PREPARING TO TRANSITION: As middle school educators, we know that students face new
challenges as school becomes more rigorous, bodies develop, more sophisticated relationships emerge, and extra
curricular activities become more time consuming. To facilitate a successful
transition from middle to high school, students will participate in a Transitions Program, including a variety
of thoughtfully constructed activities designed to help them prepare for high
school socially and emotionally, as well as academically. We help students
develop school/life balance, with exercises that address time management, goal setting and prioritization. Students participate in a variety of "stretching"
activities, from our weekly morning meeting where we addresses social-emotional
issues, to completing a high ropes challenge course, to our 8th grade
backpacking trip, to an extended, semester-long service learning project, to running the Student Council and mentoring younger students, and more. Another important aspect of our Transitions Program involves high school placement. We actively support students through the high school application process, and help students find the high school school - or high school program within a school - that suits them best.
A detailed description of our curriculum follows.
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In alignment with Cascade Canyon's multi-age classroom structure, the science curriculum at Cascade Canyon is based on a two-year alternating curriculum, with year one focusing mainly on earth and physical science and year two focusing mainly on life sciences. In this way, students have the benefit of going deep into focused units of study and of moving through a logically-scaffolded, thematic curriculum. Our science program includes standards-based curriculum as well as an emerging eco-literacy and gardening curriculum. The backbone of our science curriculum is hands-on inquiry and investigation through experimentation.
A detailed description of our science curriculum follows.
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1st/2nd and 3rd/4th Grade Science |
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5th and 6th Grade Science |
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7th and 8th Grade Science |
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Our Program 
