Welcome to the Hill & Brown
Classrooms
My name is Josh Hill and I am teaming
with Nathan Brown and we are super excited to be your Cascadia 5th
grade teacher team. I teach Math and Science and Nathan teaches
English/Language Arts and Social Studies. Additionally, we both teach Ruler, a
social emotional curriculum. Our fantastic specialists will be teaching art,
music, P.E., and library with your students as well!
It
is truly a different time for learning and teaching (and life!). We’ll be
starting the year and teaching remotely indefinitely, but our goals for your
students remain mostly the same. We hope to support your students’ social and
emotional health during this trying time, encourage them towards being
independent learners, and to adequately prepare them for middle-school. We
expect a lot of hiccups along the way—but we’ll do our best to communicate and
to keep class organized and straight forward.
First Day/Week
We
are in the process of designing the structure of our daily and weekly classes,
but here is the plan for the first 5 days of school, September 4th-11th.
Your student will have class for 2 hours each morning from 8:30-10:30am. We
will also assign assignments that can be completed independently. Some of that
time will be spent with their homeroom teacher moving towards 50% time with
each teacher as we move along. Below is a Team's link to Mr. Hill’s homeroom
meeting starting at 8:30am, Friday, September 4th. We will only meet
with our homeroom this Friday, but you can look forward to spending a lot of
time with both Mr. Brown and Mr. Hill!
You can open
this link in the Teams app or just follow the link in the browser. Details
about the app below. The sooner students learn to login with their student
login, the better and I will be available to monitor the chat in this Teams
meeting to answer questions throughout the school day (until 3:30).
School
Supplies:
We are asking that students set up their Learning Space
with the supplies that they will need this year. We hope that this area is one
in which your student will be able to be comfortable learning during the school
day.
Student needs to have
·
Binder/Organizer with organizational
system (divider or folders)
·
Pencil pouch
·
Rulers
·
Pencils/pens
·
2 Composition books
·
Highlighters
·
General art supplies; colored
pens/pencils, crayons, paints
If
you need any of these please feel free to contact us. We do have extra supplies
at school. The school is also working on a system for students to receive
additional supplies such as math books and other consumables that are to be
supplied by the district.
Technology:
We suggest that you go to https://www.seattleschools.org/ and explore under Students at the top
all the resources your student may need this year. It includes links to Office
365 where students can create and save work using programs such as Word,
PowerPoint, Excell, OneDrive and other powerful Microsoft tools. It also has
links to Schoology which is the primary point for students to keep track and
turn in assignments. Additionally, there are many other district resources that
we will be using this year. If you are not familiar with these resources, we
will be taking a great amount of time to teach students how to use all the
resources they will need this year.
Teams
Help:
·
Download Microsoft Teams
·
You may need to have your student
login using their SPS username and password
·
Hold “ctrl” when clicking the “Join
Microsoft Teams Meeting” hyperlink
·
Follow the link below for more tech
help: make sure to scroll down and look through the FAQ.
· https://www.seattleschools.org/student_portal/technology_supports_for_families
Room
Parents:
Room Parents are vital to helping us
coordinate volunteer needs for the classroom and with planning and support of
parties and other classroom events. If this is something you're interested in,
please go to the Cascadia
PTA website and sign up.
About
us:
Josh’s background is in business and
design and he hopes to bring real world situations to every class period. He
feels this helps students to make connections to their future. He has a
master’s in teaching from Willamette University in Oregon and is licensed to
teach elementary education, as well as math and science at the middle school
level. He spends much of his off time with his family but does enjoy traveling
and seeing the world.
Nathan's background is in
Interdisciplinary Learning and Spanish Language and Culture. He completed his
master’s in teaching at Seattle University, and worked in Highline School
District before starting at Cascadia. Outside of school, Nathan loves reading,
creating collaborative art projects, playing Ultimate Frisbee, and spending as
much time as possible with friends and family.
Our goal is to create an open
conversation about your student’s education, so please feel free to contact us
with any questions related to school. Our contact information is listed below;
we prefer email, and we will try to get back to you as soon as possible.
Joshua Hill
jdhill@seattleschools.org
Nathan Brown
ntbrown@seattleschools.org
Below is a link to
the state websites that shows Washington State Standards. It has a lot of
information and is searchable. Math at Cascadia is two years ahead with
students learning the 7th grade Common Core Standards. The
curriculum for math is the Envision 2.0, Course 2. Students will have their own
login for the many digital resources. For ELA, Seattle has adopted a new
curriculum called Center for the Collaborative Classroom (CCC), which Mr. Brown
enriches with additional, project-based social studies curriculum. Social Studies and Science are on grade level.
State Standards: https://www.k12.wa.us/student-success/resources-subject-area
