Charter Chatter
A weekly newsletter written to parents of the TLC
Oct.26, 2018 Vol 12
| Virginia Stewart |
The hardest teachers to find are Math Teachers followed by Science Teachers. Many people who specialize and are good in math and science prefer to work in the industry rather than teach. Many who are good in math also have a difficult time explaining math to students who are not as good at it.
That being said, the requirements for teaching math are steep. There are three levels of tests and other requirements for a math credential. In 7/8 middle school and beyond, teachers must hold a credential in math to teach it. Finding the right teachers for the age group with the correct credential is a challenge.
If we are not able to find a qualified teacher, we need to hire substitutes who are only permitted to teach for thirty days. This means that some classes in the state (not just here) have a different teacher every thirty days all year long. This is so difficult for the substitutes and the students.
Mrs. King has been the teacher for our vacancy in 7/8 but her time is coming to an end. She is retired and does not want to teach five days a week. Last week, we hired Mr. Singh to take Mrs. King’s place. I offered him a thirty-day trial. He has his credential and has successfully taught math in India. He has never taught in the United States. I offered him this the job through Thanksgiving break to see how he did and to see how the students accept him. (I have to say that sometimes our students give new teachers a difficult time. Mrs. King has noted that she is surprised at the amount of off task talking the students have done this year.) Mrs. King has agreed to come two days a week to help with math planning and to support Mr. Singh in the classroom. He wants to be successful. I am hoping that his first job in America will be a successful one.
Important Info
Next School Holiday is Veteran’s Day, Monday, Nov. 12, 2018
Thanksgiving Week Holidays… Monday – Friday, Nov. 19 – 23
More Driving Complaints….
Please read this email, very important that people drive safe for the welfare of our wonderful students.
Can you please send a memo out to parents asking them not to speed around school grounds? Twice this week I witnessed a black pickup truck speeding away after drop off. Today they were going so fast that they couldn’t stop in time to allow an unaccompanied child to cross. I know mornings can get hectic and some parents are rushing off to work but there is no excuse for the lack of civility and courtesy given to pedestrians, especially children on their way to school. It is a real safety concern and I’d feel horrible if a child was hit by a speeding motorist and I didn’t speak up.
We have also received complaints about parents parking partially on the sidewalks during DCS’ carline crowding the side walk for those walking. Please do not park on any part of the sidewalks. It was also reported this driver was driving unsafe and almost hit a student walking on the sidewalk.
Parents Club Update
Next PEP Mtg Dec. 19, 2018 at 6:30pm in P2
Lunch Menu – Week Oct. 30 – Nov. 2
Mon. – Pizza
Tues. – Turkey or Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
Wed- No Meat Spaghetti
Thurs – Cheese or Chili Nachos
Fri – Beef or Vegi Burger
TK
This week in TK, we celebrated Red Ribbon Week by decorating a mini-book related to health, safety, and great choices. We also earned a red bracelet to remind us to be kind, respectful, and to always try our best! Plus, we participated in a Halloween-themed sink or float activity, by making predictions about which tasty Halloween treats would sink and which would float in a tub full of water. It has been an exciting week in TK!
PCS
PCS Halloween Parade / Performance – Wed. October, 31, 2018
(Parents can watch parade in back of PCS/DCS 2 story building and signs will be posted where best to stand)
8:30 – 9 Grade Kinder (P2)
9 – 9:30 Grades 1-2 (P3, P4, P5)
9:45 – 10:15 Grades 3-4 (P6, P7, P8)
Initial Phase
PCS families are invited to our annual Halloween costume parade and performance. The parade will begin at 8:30. Students will march around the main building. Please spread out around the building so that there is plenty of room for everyone to see and for the kids to walk. The kids will put on a special performance that they have been working hard at learning in PE. After this we will head inside so that the next group of kids can do their parade. Students will participate in other fun Halloween activities throughout the day. You can help your student get ready for their Halloween dance by going go to YouTube and search “Krumpin Pumpkins” by Christopher Zondaflex Tyler. Students should come to school wearing their costumes WITH REGULAR CLOTHES UNDERNEATH.
Phase One
Today the students all received a special treat for reaching AND passing our Read-a-Thon goal. The school has raised over $15,000! GREAT JOB PCS! If your child raised money and still has “Rat Bucks” they must spend it by Monday. The school will be mailed all prizes and they will be distributed and sent home as soon as possible.
Next Wednesday is Halloween. Students may come to school dressed in a school appropriate costume (no weapons, masks, nothing excessively scary). They must also wear closed toed shoes. Please make sure your child either wears their costumes over their regular clothes or brings their clothes to change into. Our parade and performance will be begin at 9:00. Please check your child’s Green folder today for a flyer with more information regarding Halloween.
Phase Two
Happy Red Ribbon Week! Our Primary classes created “kindness” bulletin boards in our hallway. Our Red Ribbon Week theme is “Respect. Be Kind. Do you Best.” We also have kindness wall in our hallway where we are recognizing acts of kindness from both students and teachers! We also enjoyed a school wide donut party on Friday morning at Unity since we far surpassed our Read-a-Thon goal. We raised almost $16,000! This money goes to fund our technology, classroom resources, and our PE/elective programs. Thank you to everyone who donated and supported our fundraiser! We truly have the greatest families here at PCS.
PCS PE
Primary students have been hard at work all week learning and practicing their dance for their Halloween performances following their parade next week.
To help them be even more confident and prepared, they can find the song on YouTube and practice at home! Here is the link for the song they will be performing to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBQ1al6C3LE. The title is “Krumpin Pumpkins” by Christopher Zondaflex Tyler.
Come out to TLC and support your student Halloween morning! Kinders will start parading at 8:30 with a performance to follow, 1st and 2nd graders will parade at 9:00, and 3rd and 4th graders will parade at 9:45.
DCS
5th/6th
Discovery 5/6
DCS Survival Tip:
We will be hosting our student led parent-teacher conferences are the week of November 13th– 16th. Parents who attend their child’s conference will be meeting with homeroom teachers and will receive Trimester 1 report cards and an overall update on progress.
In Discovery, we invite our students to attend their conferences and all students will share their reflections on how Trimester 1 went and will also share their goals that they have created for themselves for Trimester 2.
Science Camp Reminders:
Students coming to school will arrive at normal time between 7:30-7:50 AM. Teachers will be in DCS lunch area checking students in:
–ALL medication will be checked in and marked off based on the submitted medical forms- DO NOT pack medication in luggage.
-Upon drop off, your child will be given specific luggage tags that our school is to use, to ensure all pieces get to the correct location
-Please do not pack snacks or candy with your child- we do not want animals friends in the cabins
–Monday Lunch– Students will need to pack a disposable sack lunch for Monday, October 29th. We make a bathroom and stretch pit stop on our way up to camp and eat lunch.
-Ms. T will call Ms. Kay when we depart on Friday, November 2nd. Ms. Sabedra will also be utilizing her Remind app to let parents know our ETA.
-When we arrive to campus on Friday afternoon, parents need to check out students and luggage with teachers.
*If you would like to write letters or cards to your child, please drop sealed envelopes (clearly labeled with your child’s first and last name) to the office with Ms. Kay or you can slip them to Ms. T on the morning of departure. I will hand the out during our stay at camp.
Want to see how camp is going? Ms. T will post pictures (when she can find reception) to her website:
https://dcsmathwithmst.weebly.com/science-camp
Stay Camp Update:
If your child is not attending Jones Gulch, they will be attending DCS Stay Camp. Teachers who are staying have planned awesome events for the kids and lots of hands on activities! There is also an optional sleep-over on campus Thursday night to Friday morning.
Reminder: There is no school on Friday, November 2nd for 5/6 students- please make advanced arrangements.
Questions? Please contact Ms. Rodieck (lrodieck@tracylc.net) or Coach P (mpenirian@tracylc.net)
A Glance into Classrooms:
Physical Education
DCS PE is wrapping up it’s First Trimester Units in Lacrosse, “Rookie Rugby” and Soccer! Also, the DCS PE Department has a new long term Sub – Mr./Coach Mark Ruiz. Coach Ruiz is filling in for Coach Easterday for the next six weeks, as he is out on Paternity leave to help out his wife with their brand new Baby Boy…Congratulations, Coach Easterday!! 🙂 Coach Ruiz has been coaching/teaching for 7 years and is excited about this opportunity!!! We in the DCS PE Department are fortunate to have him to help with a smooth transition into the second trimester!
Math with Mrs. Zuniga
Varsity:
We are still working through creating equivalent fractions to add fractions with unlike denominators. Students have been given resources to use at home as well as notes in their notebooks of different ways to set up and solve these problems. We will continue adding fractions for the rest of the week and continue after science/stay camp week.
Scholastic: Our class has now begun decimals and many students are relieved to be out of fractions. Decimals are less complicated for many students and they are beginning to shine in class. Our class will continue multiplying decimals when the students return from science/stay camp.
Honors: Our class has ended Units 1 and 2, we are now into Unit 3. Students are excited to be learning about both positive and negative integers. We have had discussions about when and where we would see both types of integers in the real world. Students worked on balancing a checkbook from deposits and purchases on Tuesday and loved that they have much more understanding about the concept of money and a bank account. Our discussions even went in depth about how credit cards are not actually our own money or free money, but similar to loans and must be paid back. Students have begun operations of integers, but are still excited to take a break with science/stay camp.
Social Studies with Ms. Sabedra
This week students are putting the finishing touches on their autobiographies. Many students have already turned their books in early to get the extra credit points, which is great! Once we’ve completed the autobiographies, our focus will shift onto the scrapbook. Look out for a rubric/example scrapbook page that will go home with students on Wednesday (10/24).
Besides working on our autobiographies, we started today with a super fun vocab review game. This game is called ‘Silent Ball’ and was borrowed from our amazing P.E. team and adapted for social studies. Students had a great time playing and impressed me with how well they continue to do with our 1960’s material.
LA/Humanities with Ms. Christensen
This week we worked on a non-fiction book about the Freedom Riders and created a summary of the book as we read it. We also focused on diagramming this week. Scholastic and Honors are working on interjections, vocatives, and imperatives. Varsity worked on subject and predicate in their diagramming. Scholastic and Honors did more work on persuasive writing techniques and created an ad they presented to the class. The group voted as most persuasive in their advertisement received a reward.
We took the week off from Humanities to focus in on our diagramming.
LA/Humanities with Ms. Rodieck
All three classes started their Freedom Riders Unit.
This a picture of the two books we will be reading.
This week we talked about the difference between Primary Sources and Secondary Sources. We will continue to learn about Civil Rights through Primary Sources.
In Ms. Rodieck’s Humanities, we were doing our Elements of Art Stations.
The resources used are available on-line at https://rodieckla.weebly.com/ at the bottom of the Humanities Page. Check out the videos, activities, and quizlets they were doing.
7th/8th
Upcoming Events:
-Parent Teacher Conferences November 13-15th in the DCS hallway, students should be bringing home a conference slip with your appointment time
-DCS Fall themed Dance will take place November 1, 2018 at 4pm-5pm
-Community Service is due November 1, 2018
-First Trimester SWO (Scrapbook) is due November 5, 2018 (late submissions will not be accepted)
-The first Trimester ends November 9, 2018
-7th/8th Sabotage Coin Drive to benefit Serenity House begins next week! Please bring in your pennies for your nest
Enrichment:
Technology:
7/8 Honors: This week the honors class is working on coding a moving and animated Google logo using the website Scratch. These logos will then be submitted to Google for a chance to win a $100 gift card for the class!
7/8 Scholastic: This week the scholastic group is working on the second half of a partner project where they came up with an invention, researched if there were already patents that exist for it, and then switched inventions with a different group and came up with three innovations to add on to the invention.
Choir:
The trimester choir concert is Wednesday November 7, 2018. Concert starts at 6:30. pm. Call time for students in the concert is 6pm. This year the concert will be taking place at the Beverly campus on the PCS playground. Be sure to bring a jacket or a sweater since this is an outdoor event. Admission is free, so come out and support the DCS trimester 1 choir and the MHS choir.
Language Arts:
Ernst:
This week in Mrs. Ernst’s class we are reading Act I of Hamlet. Please make sure students are studying what we have read in class at home. There are sites such as No Fear Shakespeare which will help students with comprehension.
Reminder- SWOs are due November 5th.
On 10/22, conference slips were sent home. Please look out for those in your student’s backpack, sign them and return to school as soon as possible.
Cerezo:
All classes are reading the first Act of Hamlet this week! The students are incredibly intrigued with this Shakespearean play and are enjoying getting to act out the various roles.
Also, each class spent some time working on their SWO projects. Pictured below are some students from the Varsity class collaborating on their projects.
Don’t forget to ask sign and send back your parent teacher conference slips (due Friday 10/26)!
Math:
King:
Welcome Mr. Singh. He will take over full time on Monday, October 29th. Mrs. King will be in two days a week to keep curriculum and norms moving in the right direction.
Geometry will have their Unit Test on Wednesday…TRICK OR TREAT!
Algebra 1A took their Unit test this week and is starting a unit on Decimals in Equations
Algebra 1P continues their unit on Solving Equations.
As always, Kleenex, band aides and hand sanitizer are needed.
Mr. Liew
– Varsity: Rounding of decimals and numbers. Calculate the Mean of a number set.
– Honors: Revision on solving Linear System with 3 Variables and its applications.
– Scholastics: Solving equations with proportions. Single step and multi step solutions.
Science:
Ms.Dominguez
This week we are kicking off our last unit of academic pentathlon focusing on Lasers. To introduce the concept of lasers, we are watching Star Wars Episode 4, to show just how far the innovations of the 60’s impacted American Culture – even motion pictures were forever changed by the laser. Just as a heads up, students will be reviewing some basic atomic structure as we dive into the basic principles of lasers, so if content for this first section looks repetitive, it’s just a quick review.
Science Olympiad: applications will be going home with students on Friday, October 26. There are 30 spots available this year. Applications will be considered on a first come first serve basis (those received on the deadline will have priority)
Physical Education:
DCS PE is wrapping up it’s First Trimester Units in Lacrosse, “Rookie Rugby” and Soccer! Also, the DCS PE Department has a new long term Sub – Mr./Coach Mark Ruiz. Coach Ruiz is filling in for Coach Easterday for the next six weeks, as he is out on Paternity leave to help out his wife with their brand new Baby Boy…Congratulations Coach Easterday!!!! 🙂 Coach Ruiz has been coaching/teaching for 7 years and is excited about this opportunity!!! We in the DCS PE Department are fortunate to have him to help with a smooth transition into the second trimester!
Also, as a friendly reminder, please remind students that they should be applying
“Deodorants/Antiperspirants/Baby Powder or Sanitary Wipes” in the morning before they are coming to school and showering daily; as their bodies have already begun puberty even though there may be no signs of it showing physically!
Thank You!!!! 🙂
MHS
Millennium High School 11th Annual Community Service Fair
Millennium High School hosted its 11th annual community service fair. Students had an opportunity to network with non-profit organizations in order to establish community service opportunities. For the community service program and list of attendees and approved non-profit organizations, please see the following link: http://www.tracylearningcenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2018-Community-Service-Fair-Program-3.pdf
7th & 8th Grade High School Presentations
Millennium High School Students grades 9th – 12th visited 7th and 8th grade students to explain the inner workings of being a Future Falcon. Our presenters discussed how high school is different than middle school, graduation requirements, and how Millennium High School is different than other schools.
Did you miss this morning’s announcements?
If your student missed the morning announcements at Unity, please check the Millennium High School homepage located on our Tracy Learning Center Website at http://www.tracylearningcenter.com/school/millennium/ go to Quick Links and click on Unity Announcements, please see example below.
Delta College Early Start Program – Spring Semester 2019
The process has begun for students interested in taking a class at Delta College this spring, and there are many steps to complete in the next week! Step One is to apply online at www.deltacollege.edu. Several days after applying, students must log in to retrieve their Delta ID #. Once they have their Delta ID #, they may sign up in the Counseling Office to take the Assessment – it will be Saturday, October 20th at 9:00am at the Delta Mountain House campus. After taking the Assessment, students should bring their scores to the MHS Counseling Office and we will assist students in selecting which class to take. College Early Start forms are due to the MHS Counseling Office for approval on November 5th. For further details, please see the following College Early Start Webpage link: http://www.tracylearningcenter.com/counseling/college-and-carrer-planning/ . Please contact the Counseling Office at (209)627-8299 or MHSCounseling@tracylc.net with questions!
Arbor Day & Tracy United To Make A Difference Day – October 27, 2018– Volunteers Needed
Volunteers are needed to plant 150 trees within the Tracy Community, this is a great opportunity to help beautify the community and gain community service hours, if interested please contact the MHS Counseling Office at (209) 627-8299 or email: mhscounseling@tracylc.net. You may also contact the Tracy Parks and Recreation Department directly (contact information below).
