TLC Charter Chatter
A weekly newsletter for parents and students of TLC
Virginia Stewart
Aug. 9, 2019
Happy School Year. We are so pleased to have all of our students joining us for the 2019-20 school year. New beginnings are always exciting. We appreciate the donations you have made to classrooms. The teachers are always pleased to receive wipes, tissues and such supplies.
But most of all, we appreciate your support and cooperation with such important things as:
Procedures for car line
Avoiding sending fast food, soda, or candy with lunches
Being certain your student is on time
Avoiding unnecessary absences
Checking your student’s grades
Emailing teachers if you have questions
When we work together everything goes well.
If you are considering helping us, consider a donation to help support our schools so that we can continue to purchase more technology, playground equipment, or other big items. This year, we purchased a tractor lawn mower so we could take care of our own landscape needs rather than a contract service. We operate our schools on a very tight budget but we want the best for our students, so any additional funds are always and greatly appreciated.
Important Reminders
- Follow the rules for our two drop off and pick up car lines
- Primary’s dismissal begins at 3:20, If your 3rd or 4th grade student is a walker, please have a designated meeting/waiting spot.
- Discovery is dismissed at 4:00
- Millennium is dismissed at 4:00
- Do not park or even stay in your car in front of someone’s driveway. We have very nice neighbors unless you block their driveway.
- If your student is a Discovery “walker” please have your meeting point away from our school on another block to avoid all of the current traffic congestion. Please do not park and wait on Beverly or Mae.
- If you have a PCS and or Discovery student and a Millennium student, use the high school pick up line.
We truly appreciate your cooperation and support of our program. We realize we are a big school, with lots of traffic in a quiet neighborhood. Your cooperation allows us to have peace among ourselves and with our neighbors. We have already had several complaints of unsafe driving and drop offs and very rude behavior between our own parents towards each other.
Bottom line, STUDENT SAFETY IS OUR UTMOST CONCERN!
Lunch Menu for this week…. YUM!
Lunch Menu – Week Aug. 12 – 16
Mon. – Pizza
Tues – Chicken Corn Dog
Wed – Chicken Taquitos
Thurs – Cheese Ravioli
Fri –Beef Hot Dog
Debts
Student in PCS or DCS who have more than negative $20 in their lunch account will be given cheese/crackers and water for lunch. Please pay these negative accounts immediately so your student will be served the posted lunch menu.
Lunch Drop Offs
Please remember to communicate to your child if you are planning on dropping off his/her lunches, we need to keep classroom calls and disruptions to a minimum. Please label anything dropped off in the office.
Personal Days for Next School Year 2019/2020
VERY IMPORTANT CHANGE for our upcoming 2019/2020 school year Beginning August 5, 2019, we are reducing personal/family days for students from 10 days down to 7 days. Allowing 7 days is still much higher than what the district schools allow and we feel 7 days is more beneficial for the school and for each students’ education.
NOW HIRING: Athletic Coaches
Interested in taking on the rewards and challenges of coaching a high school athletic team? Millennium Athletics is currently creating a coaching pool for all sports and levels, as the life of a coach is ever changing. If you’re interested in becoming a part of our TEAM for any sport, apply here: https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1143376
Upcoming Picture Days
MHS – Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2019. Flyers going home Aug. 9, 2019
PreK, PCS and DCS – Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2019. Flyers coming home week before.
Facilities
Welcome back to a new school year! While the summer break was being enjoyed by the students, my crew was busy at the site!
This was the first break that we had the whole site after the completion of the construction. This way a challenge to accomplish everything that needed to be done in a short time. All furniture had to be moved from each area, then the floor needed to be stripped and scrubbed of its old wax. Many layers of new wax applied. There are over 65,000 sq feet of tile in all of the building at the school!!
Discovery lunch tables were pressure washed and repainted.
All of the outside of the buildings and walkways were pressure washed and windows cleaned.
I would like to thank you for having family attending the Tracy Learning Center! We hope to have a great new school year and if you have any concerns please don’t hesitate to ask!
Tracy Learning Center Preschool
Now enrolling new students ages 2-4!
See our pricing below
This week in preschool we have been very busy learning all about our new classrooms, meeting new friends, and HAVING A LOT OF FUN! We had a blast reading NO! David by David Shannon and we had many discussions about the mistakes David made and how to fix them.
We would like to thank our preschool parents for successfully assigning their new PIN numbers and using them successfully!
TK
We had an incredible start to the school year together in TK!
We began our week by learning TK routines and procedures. We rehearsed such skills as: lining up, behavior at Unity, how to use silent signals, and how to wait patiently for our turn to talk.
We also participated in fun activities, like: creating a Chester Raccoon mask, a name flower pot, and a feeling craft. Be sure to check out our awesome artwork in our green folders this weekend!
We are off to a great start, and we can’t wait for more fun next week!
Initial Phase
WOW! It has been an amazing first week of school! The teachers are SO lucky to have such a wonderful class! We are very impressed with how well everyone has adjusted. Students are already mastering our classroom routines, procedures, and rules. Teachers can already tell that this is going to be a great year! We have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know each student this week and are looking forward to our second week together. Don’t forget to follow our instagram account to see what we are up to throughout the day!
On Monday, we will start selling raffle tickets for our upcoming PCS/DCS cruise fundraiser!
Phase One:
The students in Phase One had a great first week! We did a lot of fun activities to get to know our classmates and teachers. We also started assessing our students to place them into our LA and Math groups. We will continue to give more in depth assessments next week to better place our students. Our first graders are loving that they get to use the monkey bars now!
Every Friday you will receive your child’s green folder and they are due every Monday. Please make sure you are checking green folders Red folders will be sent home starting August 19th. Homework will also begin that week.
Phase Two:
Our 3rd and 4th grade students had a great first week! We did lots of exciting activities to get to know our classmates and took assessments to place students into their LA and math groups. We are impressed with how seriously our students took their learning this week and they’re eager to start learning even more! We also welcomed our new art and music teachers this week. We know Mr. Martin and Mrs. Harvey will love working with our PCS students.
Next week, phase 2 students will receive homework on Monday. Please work with your child throughout the week to practice spelling words and complete all assigned homework. Homework is due on Fridays.
Please remember to always check the green folder for important papers! Phase 2 students will soon be using agendas for parent communication so look for those to come home soon.
Discovery Middle School 5-6
Upcoming ⅚ Dates:
August 14th: (Date was changed!!!) Back-to-School Night, 5-6:15, starting in the Gym
September 3rd: Picture Day
October 8th: Picture Day Retakes
A Note from Mrs. Prescott:
I want to welcome all of our students and families to Discovery Charter School for the 2019/2020 school year. I think we’re all off to an amazing start! The teachers were all prepared and excited to meet their new students on Monday. The students came in with a mixture of excitement and nervousness but made it through the week with plenty of learning, smiles, and new friendships being made. We ended the week with our first rally hosted by Ms. Zaca and her leadership students. It was TONS of fun watching their teachers and nest leaders compete in a relay of hopscotch, football throw, cupcake eating, and flipping the cup. Now we’re ready to really kick off the new year and see just how far our DCS Falcons will soar with their learning!
Please contact me, Mrs. Prescott (kprescott@tracylc.net), if you ever have any questions. I’m always here to help!
Ms. Polo’s Spanish class:
This week and next week in Spanish class we will be going over rules, regulations, giving out school supplies and beginning with Spanish name and translations as well as accent marks and spelling. We will also go over the 4 questions that have to be asked in Spanish
Ex: Can I go to the bathroom?
We will also begin an alphabet review and reading letters A & B
Ms. Polo for both 5/6 and 7/8
Mrs. Zuniga/Mrs. Bengson’s Math:
All classes are underway with our new math curriculum lessons. I do want students to be successful and one way to help with that at home parents, is work with your students on their math facts. This will be very beneficial to them all year long and for their future math courses.
Varsity: The students have begun learning place values of numbers. They have begun to read numbers to the millions along with writing numbers in word form to the millions. Our focus has been on spelling and correct form, so please help your students at home with reading large numbers. We will begin to look at place versus value for the next lesson.
Scholastic: Students are learning place value of whole and decimal numbers. We will begin to work on expanded form after finishing writing numbers in word form.
Honors: The students are excited and moving through our first lesson on integers and absolute value with operations. Our next lesson is fractions, so parents please review with your students about fractions at home.
Thank you,
Mrs. Zuniga
Ms. Rodieck’s LA
It has been a great first week of school and I have enjoyed getting to know my new students and reconnecting with students from last year. Thank you for sending pictures of students with their pets. Friday, we got to see each others pets – oohing and aahing over them.
Next week we will begin reading our first novel Love That Dog and will get into our curriculum. Scholastic and Honors will start having their weekly vocabulary and spelling words along with a book club book they need to be reading at home.
I look forward to seeing you at Back-to-School night next week.
Social Studies with Mr. Bird
This week in social studies, students are getting to know their classmates and teachers to help create a positive classroom environment. All social studies students are working in groups to create a poster that shows our classroom expectations. Below are pictures of students working on these posters and presenting them to the class (the group shown came up with a skit to show the class examples of our class expectation – very creative!). The social studies syllabus is due by Monday, August 12. Next week we will begin learning about geography and developing map skills.
PE with Coaches Penerine, Williams, and Levand:
Welcome Back!!!! 🙂 With the new school year underway, students and staff are excited about the “The New Locker Room Expectations/Procedures” that are being implemented this week (by Coach Penirian, Coach Williams and Coach Levand) as 5th/6th & 7th/8th students will be “Dressing Out” in PE clothes for the first time in 2 years, since “The Remodel” of TLC! All students must have the following in PE Class: PE Clothes, a lock, Deodorant/Baby Wipes and Athletic Shoes. More information about all of this can all be found in the PE Student Syllabus/Packet that was sent home this past Monday. 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!
Discovery Middle School 7-8
Upcoming Dates:
- Picture Day is Sept. 3rd
- Back to School Night is August 14th beginning at 6:30pm (meet in the gym)
- DCS Cruise Fundraiser will begin August 12 and continue until August 23rd.
Language Arts with Mrs. Cerezo
Welcome back students! This week we have hit the ground running with content and curriculum! Already we have begun reading our first novel, Fever 1793.
This years’ Academic Pentathlon theme is Health and Wellness. The first novel that we are reading for this year is the Pentathlon-selected novel. It is an interesting tale of Yellow Fever and its spread throughout Philadelphia.
Each class has also received a writing assignment for the week. All classes are working on just the introduction paragraph. We are hoping that because we are starting simpler this year that students will have more time to dedicate to honing their writing skills.
This assignment is due Monday August 12th.
Language Arts with Ms. Greene:
It has been a great start to the school year! In Honors, we have started our writing journey. Students have been assigned to write an introduction paragraph that focuses on their school year last year; what was their greatest success, what makes a great learner and why is it important for students to learn all subjects. In addition to writing, we have begun to read Fever 1793. Students have started to analyze the plot, beginning with the exposition of the story.
Similarly, Varsity and Scholastic have begun Fever 1793 and are making connections with the character relationships and are learning how to define works that are unknown through context clues.
The student’s first essay (which is just the introduction paragraph) is due on August 12th. Each student will be having a one on one conference with me on how they can revise their introductions.
Reminder: there will be a vocab quiz and test on Friday August 9th.
Social Studies with Ms. Zaca:
Welcome back and hopefully, everyone had a wonderful summer!
After spending all of Monday going over rules and expectations, students officially started their social studies curriculum on Tuesday. All classes, Varsity, Scholastic, and Honors, went around the classroom learning about the ten oldest civilizations: Incan, Mayan, Aztec, Indus Valley, Chinese, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greek, Persian, and Roman. Students were placed into three large groups and went around the room looking for their three or four assigned civilizations. After their ten-minute timer went off, students went back to their original groups and shared with their group members the information they had collected. Students became mini-teachers as they taught their group members the necessary information about their assigned civilizations.
Scholastic and Honor’s students need to make sure to sign up for Google Classroom. They have an assignment due Monday (Hippocratic Medicine PowerPoint Notes) before they are to come to class.
Technology with Ms. Ferguson:
This week in Technology is an exciting week! The students spent their first few days working on an “All About Me” cellphone project (picture below) and are finishing their week by getting assigned to and logged in to their Chromebooks for the first time.
Next week the students are being introduced to their first unit, Digital Citizenship, and Cyberbullying. Next Friday, August 16th the students will take their first vocabulary quiz on Unit 1.
Math with Mrs. Rapp:
Welcome back! Exciting news to start the year in D6, Ms.Dominguez is officially married and is now Mrs. Rapp. My new email is drapp@tracylc.net. This year in my math classes it has been a smooth and exciting start. Varsity is off to a wonderful beginning with Unit 1 ‘s topic of Whole Numbers and Decimals. This unit will help set a good foundation for what is to come in this year in Math 78. Scholastic is in the Algebra 1 curriculum, which matches the high school Algebra course. This group has been awesome with showing what they know. Last, but certainly not least there is Honors Geometry, also matching the high school curriculum. This group is superb with the amount of geometry knowledge that many of them already have from last year in 6th or 7th grade. I am excited to see what they can do throughout the year and continue to challenge them.
Spanish with Mrs. Polo
This week and next week in Spanish class we will be going over rules, regulations, giving out school supplies and beginning with Spanish name and translations as well as accent marks and spelling. We will also go over the 4 questions that have to be asked in Spanish
Ex: Can I go to the bathroom?
We will also begin an alphabet review and reading letters A & B
Art with Ms. Losen
Students decorated their personal sketchbooks began their daily practice of visual journal entries and discussed in depth what art is to them. In every class, students collaborated on posters that represented their interpretations of art and voted on one poster per class to hang in the hallway.
Science with Ms. Dominguez
This week in 7/8 Science, we jumped right into our first unit on Matter. We started with a word search competition. Each class brainstormed all the vocabulary they could recall that was related to the topic of matter. Once we had a list of 15-20 words, students were challenged to find as many of the words as they could on a provided word search. It was very exciting to see each of the students get into the competitive aspect of the assignment, and give their full participation in the word search.
We will continue with our unit on Matter for the rest of the week to prepare for this year’s Academic Pentathlon topic of Health and Wellness, and more specifically the science of Cancer.
Physical Education:
Welcome Back!!!! 🙂 With the new school year underway, students and staff are excited about the “The New Locker Room Expectations/Procedures” that are being implemented this week (by Coach Penirian, Coach Williams and Coach Levand) as 5th/6th & 7th/8th students will be “Dressing Out” in PE clothes for the first time in 2 years, since “The Remodel” of TLC! All students must have the following in PE Class: PE Clothes, a lock, Deodorant/Baby Wipes, and Athletic Shoes. More information about all of this can all be found in the PE Student Syllabus/Packet that was sent home this past Monday. 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!
Millennium High School
WELCOME BACK, FALCONS!
Wednesday, August 14th is MHS Picture Day.
- Flyers for ordering pictures will go home Friday, August 9th from first period teachers.
- Any MHS students who do not have a first period class need to get their flyers from the front office.
- Students who do not have a first period class should go to the gym between 8 – 11am to have their pictures taken.
- All other students will stay in their first period class until an overhead announcement has been made saying all pictures are done.
- Seniors do need to have a picture taken, but for their ID purposes only; their senior portrait will be used in the yearbook.
Mrs. U
Math is off to a great start in all of my classes! Pre-Algebra started at integers. Integers are brand new to some and a nice refresher for others. Algebra 1B started right at the second half of Algebra 1 in Unit 6. They are learning about monomials and operations on them. They got to have a friendly competition while practicing this past Wednesday. They were very engaged and I heard many comments about how class flew by and they were learning! In Algebra 2, we are reviewing some Algebra 1 material that is very crucial to the course. The students are exercising their brains while trying to get back into the Algebra mindset! Next week, we jump right in! The students seem eager to learn and ready to take on the year.
Mr. Creasman
Math is fun and so is the first week of school! This is my first official year teaching at MHS and my classes are going great so far. The culture and atmosphere of this school is a thrill to be a part of. Students in my Pre-Calculus, Algebra 1A, and Pre-Algebra classes all received a lesson and homework assignment on the first day of school. One unique addition to the daily routine in Mr. Creasman’s class is called the “Pre-Test.” This is something that has got all my students very excited so far! Every day we start off first with a warm up, some homework questions from last nights assignment, then three minutes for the Pre-Test. On your marks, get set, go! The students are allowed 3 minutes to work on one of the hardest problems that I picked out of their upcoming homework assignment. The first person, (if there is one), to get the problem right gets +20 nest points and a free perfect score on their homework! The idea is, if you can complete the hardest problem on the next day’s homework assignment in less than three minutes, (that I haven’t even taught yet), than you deserve to get out of the homework! Students are not allowed to win two days in a row. We’ll see how this “Pre-Test” develops going down the semester, but so far it’s been great!
Mr. Kay
The first week of school is in the books and the first of the Davis Tests have been completed! Algebra 1 started at with organizing the set of real numbers into subsets. Mathematical Properties are up next! Finance Math’s is first unit is about the skills, knowledge, and experience valued by employers. Once we finish up the unit, we will move on to jobs/careers and the various ways people earn their money.
Mr. Shelton
One week of school down and it is safe to say that we are making math fun again! Algebra 2 is getting warmed back up and reviewing their Algebra 1 concepts. It’s important for their success that they are up to speed going into Algebra 2. And it is safe to say that most of them are where they should be. They’re putting in a lot of effort to do well and it is great to see! Algebra 1 jumped right into instruction. They learned their sets of numbers as well as their properties. Your students are doing a great job of participating and being active listeners in class! It is great to see, and even more fun to teach. Last but not least Pre-Algebra is off to a great start as well. It is nice to see everyone participating and taking an interest in what we are learning. This first unit contains the building blocks for not only this class but all of the math classes they will take throughout high school! Overall I have had a week of great participation, and excited learners. If this keeps up the whole year I can tell it’s going to be a very fun year.
Mr. Vaughn
Hello to all parents! We’ve gotten to an excellent start in our first week of school! We’ve jumped into an introduction to the real number system and a review of key Algebra concepts in our Algebra 1A and 1B classes, and we’re going to kick it into high gear in the coming weeks. It is truly amazing to see the effort and hard work my students have put in during the first week, and I’m honored and very pleased to have the opportunity to teach them for an entire year! All of my Geometry classes have hit the ground running and we’ve moved quickly from the basics of planes and line segments into some applications of those ideas to calculate distances. We’ve also begun discussing some of the logical thought processes behind proofs, which is important to do from the beginning because of confidence issues that students sometimes face with proofs in particular. I am definitely looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish this year!
Mr. Tariku
Great first week of school! I am teaching Precalculus and Geometry this year. We are doing Rule of Four in Precalculus. It helps students with representing their work in a variety of ways and helps them with connections across concepts and topics. In Geometry, we are working on fundamental skills and looking forward to logic and proof. Homework 1 and 2 are in the books for both classes and we have our 1st assessments on monday.
Mrs. Griffin
This week was a very good week! I think that we set a pretty impressive tone for both our staff and our students. In Calculus class, we did a lot of review of previously learned material and both classes realized and appreciated the review time that we spent going over those concepts. When we are done reviewing we will start working with limits! My computer science class starts the year with keyboarding lessons and learning how to type properly so that when they start programming, they can be more efficient when writing lines of code in Java Script and Python. My Algebra 1 class has the privilege of having both myself and Mrs. Stewart teaching them! This class will be awesome with their math skills by the end of the semester. We are off to a great start!
Back to School Night is Thursday, August 15th
5PM – 7:30 PM
Parents are invited to come and meet our staff and learn about our excellent Falcon programs
- Join us in the gym at 5:00 PM for a brief orientation from Mr. Saldate.
- Take a tour and meet our department teachers in 20 minute sessions.
- See our beautifully remodeled campus and find out about the opportunities and programs available to your student.
- Don’t miss this opportunity to learn firsthand about what your students are doing in and out of class!
We look forward to seeing you there.
Next Friday is our Welcome Back/Fall Sports Kick-off Week!
Next week is a spirit week, culminating in our Fall Sports Rally, which will be Friday at 10 AM, directly after second period. Students will earn nest points and show their school spirit by dressing in the themes of the days:
- Monday is Jersey Day,
- Tuesday is Trend Day,
- Wednesday is Sunglasses/Dress Up for Picture Day,
- Thursday is Nest Color Day, and
- Friday is Black and Gold Day for our Rally.
We look forward to seeing our Falcons show their spirit and start our year out right!
Counseling Office
It’s been a great first week of school. For many of our Freshmen, last Thursday was really their first day of high school at Falcon Flight School. We had the largest turnout of students attending!
Delta College classes for Fall semester will be starting soon! All students who were approved for College Early Start for Fall should have registered during the month of July. Classes begin the week of August 26th. If your student needs help with their Delta College schedule, please have them speak with Mr. Gomar in the counseling office.
Senior Class of 2020 – Welcome to the final year of high school! An information packet will be mailed at the end of the month to all parents/guardians of 12th grade students regarding important dates, deadlines, activities, college information. We encourage all parents to add themselves to the MHS Class of 2020 remind app using code: ad2378 – this will solely be the remind for the MHS Counseling Office.
Athletics
Football, Cross Country and Girls Volleyball are well underway as teams begin to finalize their rosters! Stay tuned for weekly game updates. In the meantime, Millennium Volleyball at Texas Roadhouse on Monday and Tuesday to help the girls raise money for warm-up shirts!
