Charter Chatter
A weekly newsletter written to parents of the TLC
Jan. 25, 2019 Vol 22
| Virginia Stewart |
Each year, the state produces a report on the accomplishments of each school. It is called the California Dashboard. The dashboard reports on progress in Math and Language Arts, chronic absences, suspensions, and other local indicators.
The copy on this page is the dashboard for Primary Charter. The colors are indicators of success. The best is blue (it looks like a full gas tank) of course red is the worst! (an empty gas tank!). The color is figured by looking at the score for the current year and checking to see if the score went up or down or stayed the same from the year before. (Status and change). The two scores together give the school their new color.
When looking at Primary we know that we are doing very well in Math, and need to improve in Language arts. We can see that we have some students who are chronically absent. The state marks a student as chronically absent if they are not here for 10% of the school year. That means any student absent more than 20 days in a full year are absent more than the state expects. We are proud of our suspension rate, we have turned to a restorative justice system that punishes less and builds more responsibility for the student. It is working well for us. We hope to continue to build the accountability for students more each year.
If you would like to see more detail for the dashboard, go to https://www.caschooldashboard.org/ and type in Primary Charter. There are several, so be sure you use the drop down menu and find the one in Tracy.
Next week, we will give you an analysis of Discovery’s dashboard.
Enrollment
February is the time to apply for all incoming Transitional Kindergartners (TK) and Kindergartners for the 2019-2020 school year. All TK students must have a birthday between September 2, 2014 and December 2, 2014 to apply and all Kindergartners that apply must be 5 before September 2, 2019. All applications must be turned in from February 1 thru February 28, 2019 to be included in the lottery. Current students’ siblings must also apply.
Next Holidays
Mon., Feb. 18, 2019 is a school holiday.
Lunch Menu – Week Jan 28 – Feb. 1
Mon. –Pizza
Tues- Chicken Quesadilla
Wed- Beef Lasagna
Thurs – Sloppy Joes
Fri – Hot Dogs
MHS Sports
A big thank you to the baseball and softball coaches, parents, and student athletes that came out last Saturday for the field cleanup day. Both programs worked well together as a team to get the fields ready for game day! Falcon Pride!
TK
This week in TK, we celebrated our 100th Day of School! We completed several exciting class projects. We painted 100 gumballs in a gumball machine, revealed the contents of our Mystery Bags, enjoyed a 100-themed snack, and played Would You Rather? using scenarios that involved the number 100. Would you rather have 100 cats or 100 dogs as pets? Would you rather swim with 100 dolphins or 100 whales?
We also competed in two 100-themed competitions: we tried to build the most sturdy towers using 100 blocks, and wrote as many words as we possibly could in 100 seconds!
PCS
Kindergarten
This week we celebrated National School Choice Week. Thank you to all of our parents for choosing our school. We will continue to work hard every day to ensure that we are providing the best possible education experience to your children.
We had a short and fun week with an assembly on Wednesday! Students learned all about recycling and keeping our planet clean.
Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching, valentine cards are already out in stores! Students can bring in 66 valentine cards with the “to” section left blank. A small treat can be included with the valentine card. We will send a more detailed note home about Valentine’s Day expectations soon.
Phase One
This was a short, yet exciting, week for Phase One. The students were able to attend an assembly about recycling and taking care of our planet! They joined in for some fun singing and dancing. Ask your student what their favorite part was! They are all EcoHeros and can learn more about saving our planet at mreco.org.
The students learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and why he was such an important and influential leader. The students also continued their procedural writings in Writer’s Workshop and will continue this for one more week.
In Science, the students were introduced to the properties and phases of matter. They were able to complete fun experiments to help better understand the different phases.
We hope you have a relaxing weekend and we will see you Monday!
Phase Two
This week our Phase 2 students continued our unit on climate and hazardous weather. We also enjoyed a school-wide assembly, sponsored by the City of Tracy. We learned about the importance of making small changes to save our earth. If every PCS student picked up just one extra piece of garbage every day, that would be 2,000 pieces! Eco Hero Lexi also discussed the impact of plastics that are not recycled and end up in our oceans, hurting our sea creature friends. Please remind your child to make small changes and we can all make a difference!
DCS
5th/6th
This week, DCS is celebrating National School Choice Week- “Every child deserves an effective, challenging, as well as motivating education. Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders!” We know that you have many options out there to choose from and we want to thank you for choosing TLC as the school you entrust with your children.
A Glance Inside 5/6 Classrooms
Social Studies with Mr. Ruiz
Students started reading about the different Native American tribes in the Great Plains and Southeast regions. In the Great Plains, they learned about the Pawnee and why it was necessary for them to be living near rivers. Students also learned about the Seminole and their nomadic lifestyles. On Thursday, they participated in a review game to help prepare them for Friday’s quiz. Be on the lookout for an upcoming social studies project! Students will be asked to create their own dream catchers and will present them in their classrooms.
5/6 PE
Students are Enjoying “Week 1” of their “First Rotation” of the playing different types of “Fitness Activities” in PE for this Unit: Coach Williams’ Class is doing “Drum Fit,” Coach P.’s Class “Fitness” and Coach Easterday’s Class is doing “Ramp Shot!” Students are being taught that there are “All Types” of “Fun things” that are considered “Fitness,” Not just “Lifting Weights and Running on the Treadmill!” It is our goal here at DCS to teach our PE Students that “Fitness doesn’t have to be considered a chore” but should be fun, beneficial and scaleable to ones needs!!!!
Also, as a quick 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!!! 🙂
Your Dedicated DCS Falcon PE Staff
Ms. Rodieck’s Language Arts and Humanities
Last week we continued reading our book Freedom Riders, doing diagramming and learning comma rules.
Last week in Humanities, we wrote about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s quote on perseverance, listened to and annotated his I Have a Dream Speech looking for examples of figurative language, and listed to an NPR show about people that were there during the March. Some students are researching more about MLK Jr. Life for writing assignments. It has been so easy to incorporate this great man’s life into Humanities this week.
Honors students are reading and learning about blogging with The Giver. Other classes have also been assigned an independent reading book.
Scholastic and Honors also have weekly homework that is based on NoRedInk.com and ReadTheory.org. Varsity is doing their weekly computer based assignments in class Friday afternoon.
Math with Mrs. Zuniga:
All classes are beginning daily warm-ups, questions are taken from homework, tests, and quizzes. This will be spiral review to keep students on top of previous concepts.
Varsity: Students are finishing up fractions with a fraction recipe project. They are catering for an event and will provide the theme as well as the food to serve the correct number of people. Friday they finished up fractions with a test and this week will began decimals.
Scholastic: Our class has been working on percent applications of discount and tax. Wednesday will begin mark-up and students love the relation to money and the real world. Parents allow students to shop with you and solve the amount of tax for your purchases or ask your students to find the best deals using their knowledge of discounts. Next week, they learned about interest relating to loans and savings.
Honors: Our class is ended Unit 4 last week with a unit test on Friday. This week brought about Unit 5 of Expressions and Equations. Your children will begin to create expressions or equations from verbal expressions, building on their math vocabulary.
LA with Ms. Christensen in D2
We have been working on an adverbs flipbook learning about the 4 different types of adverbs and how they are used in a sentence. In Humanities, they have been learning about different music that was played in the 1960’s. They are able to listen to music clips and movie clips with famous background music while taking notes. We worked on critical thinking skills by using SCAMPER to reinvent a product. They will be using this process in future projects. The students also worked very hard to create a bulletin board representing the 1960’s for our classroom. I am impressed by how much thought they put into their project and the work it took to bring it all together.
7th/8th
-The Crab Feed will take place on February 2, 2019. Tickets are $50 per person! There will be lots of food, fun, and dancing!
-Science Olympiad and Academic Pentathlon practices are taking place in Ms. Dominguez room. Please email her at gdominguez@tracylc.net for additional information.
-Community Service Hours (at least 20) are due at the end of February. Be sure that your student is getting in those hours!
Language Arts:
Cerezo:
Classes this week spent much of the four day week reviewing. This week was a time dedicated to ensuring that we are retaining all of the information and knowledge from Week 1 to now. We practiced vocabulary from all weeks and reviewed Humanities.
All classes are also working on their second trimester SWO project. A research essay about a selected 60’s topic. Please be sure that they are working on this at home and that they are completing all of the requisite work by the preset deadlines. We will work on this in class, but they will also need to work on this at home.
The Honors class took their PSAT test on Wednesday 1/23. While students were both nervous and excited, I am certain that they have done well. Congrats Honors class for tackling this feat!
Ernst:
I hope everyone enjoyed their three day weekend. We have another holiday coming up on Monday, February 18th for President’s Day.
Trimester 2 is going by quickly. The last day for Trimester 2 is March 8, 2019. All 7/8th grade students have received and are working on their SWO research project. This is a large paper, written in APA format; students do have some time to work on it at school; however, time will be needed at home on this paper as well.
Please make sure to check your student’s agenda for important due dates and for possible finals and projects coming up as we near the end of Trimester 2.
MHS
8th Annual TLC’s Got Talent Show – February 20, 2019 – Tickets on sale now!
Tickets to the TLC’s Got Talent Show are now on sale, please see the following link to purchase tickets: https://atthegrand.org/events/tlcs-got-talent-8th-annual/
Decision Medicine
Join Decision Medicine this summer and explore the exciting world of medicine. Our program is designed to introduce you to a possible career path that you may have thought was unavailable to you. Applicants must be 16 years old by the start of the program (July 15, 2019). Apply online February 1, 2019 – March 1, 2019. www.decisionmedicine.com
COSMOS Summer Program – Applications Due February 1, 2019
COSMOS is an intensive four-week summer residential program for students who have demonstrated an aptitude for academic and professional careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. Talented and motivated students completing grades 8-12 have the opportunity to be mentored by renowned faculty, researchers and scientists in state-of-the-art facilities, while exploring advanced STEM topics far beyond the courses usually offered in California high schools. Through challenging curricula that are both hands-on and lab intensive, COSMOS fosters its students’ interests, skills, and awareness of educational and career options in STEM fields.
REQUIREMENTS: Students apply to one of the four University of California’s COSMOS campuses — UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC San Diego and UC Santa Cruz. While each campus employs the best practices in STEM education, the curriculum of each program builds on the unique teaching and research expertise of its faculty and host campus. Each campus can only accommodate about 160-200 participants, so selection is competitive. A typical COSMOS student has a GPA of 3.5 or above. Students must have achieved academic excellence. In making admission decisions, we consider the following factors:
Grades, especially in math and science course
Math/science teacher recommendation
Response to one personal essay question
Visit https://cosmos-ucop.ucdavis.edu/app/main/ for more information.
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