TLC Charter Chatter

 

A Message from Virginia

Wishing all of our TLC staff, students and families a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving break.  Enjoy a restful week off, you deserve it!

Next School Holiday

Nov. 25 – Nov. 29 Holiday Week – Thanksgiving

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.

Lunch Menu Week of Dec. 2, 2019 – Dec. 6, 2019

Mon – Pizza

Tues – Chicken Taquitos

Wed – Teriyaki Meatballs

Thurs – Cheese Raviolis

Fri – Beef or Veggie Burger

Sick Students

Just a reminder: Please keep your child home if he or she is sick or has a fever. We had many sick children last week and several were given tylenol prior to coming to school in the morning. These illnesses/viruses are very contagious and we are trying to stop them from spreading. Children must be 24 hours free of symptoms and fevers before returning to school.

Good news! There is now a “Give Credit” function within the app. If you are not seeing this function, make sure you have the most updated version of the app installed.

The “credit” button (star icon) shows after you take first image. A blank field appears that allows up to 50 characters to be typed. Type in your student’s classroom number to give credit.  This field may auto-fill after the first entry; make sure to update it if necessary (such as if someone is supporting more than 1 child at same school, etc.).

NOW HIRING:  Spring 2020 Head Athletic Coaches-

Boys Volleyball:  https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1228598

Softball:  https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1228598

 

9th Annual TLC’s Got Talent Show – Video auditions are now open!

Video Auditions for the 9th Annual TLC’s Got Talent Show are now open, deadline for submission is December 10, 2019. Please submit all video auditions to mhscounseling@tracylc.net  and return the participation form to the MHS Counseling Office.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TLC Preschool: P.E. in preschool?

Physical activity is critical for development both emotionally and physically. Our preschool students are so lucky to have PE class as part of their educational experience!  Coach E works hard to create fun PE classes that help our students develop their fine and gross motor skills.  We believe you would be hard-pressed to find another preschool that provides PE to all!

 

 

 Initial Phase

• Teachers had such a wonderful time meeting with all of our awesome P2 parents at conferences this week! We always love getting the opportunity to tell you how great your kids are! We are so thankful to have such kind and supportive families in our class this year! We hope that everyone enjoys their Thanksgiving break and is able to take the time to relax, recharge, and spend time with family and friends. We will see you back at school in one week on Monday, December 2nd.
• We LOVED all of the disguised turkeys! Everyone did a FANTASTIC job!
• WINTER CONCERT: Monday, November 2nd at 1:00. Students should dress in their holiday best. Small headwear is allowed; but nothing that will block the view of the students behind them.  

 Phase One:

The Phase One teachers would like to thank all the parents that met with us for conferences this week. It is always nice to meet with you in person and discuss your child’s growth. We would also like to thank all the families that brought in food for our classroom Thanksgiving feasts! The students loved it!

Remember that the Winter Music Concert is on Monday, December 2nd!! The concert starts at 6:30. Phase 1 students should be dropped off in classrooms by 6:10.

Phase Two:                           

Thank you to all the parents who met with us for conferences.  We enjoy talking to you about your child’s progress and goals.  If you ever have questions, we are always just an email away!

On Friday our classes enjoyed a PIE PARTY!  We appreciate everyone who donated pie, whipped cream, plates, forks and napkins.  What a great way to end trimester 1!  

DON’T FORGET!!! The Winter Music Concert is on Monday, December 2nd!  The concert will start at 6:30.  Phase 2 students should be in classrooms by 6:25 please!

Primary See’s Candy orders are due on Monday, December 2nd.  

 

 

 

 

Discovery Middle School 5-6

Upcoming ⅚ Dates:

November 23 – December 1: NO SCHOOL = Thanksgiving Break 

Honor Roll:

This year we are celebrating students whom have achieved academic excellence by awarding Honor Roll. We are awarding Honor Roll students in three categories: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Below are those students whom have achieved this high honor for their GPA for Trimester 1:

Gold Honor Roll:

Silver Honor Roll:

Bronze Honor Roll:

⅚ Discovery Top 5 Nest Point Earners:

Falcon Pride!!!

Peregrine:

Saker:

Kestrel:

Amur:

Mrs. Zuniga/Mrs. Bengson’s Math:

Varsity: Students worked on word problems all week long and how to break them down. They have also taken their interim state test which helps us figure out what we need to prepare for before the state test in May.

Scholastic: Students just finished the last lesson in Unit 3 and began reviewing on Tuesday. They have also taken their interim state test which helps us figure out what we need to prepare for before the state test in May.

Honors: Students have been reviewing Unit 2 for their test this week. They have also taken their interim state test which helps us figure out what we need to prepare for before the state test in May.

Mrs. Nijjar’s Math:

Varsity: We spent this week learning about the patterns, rules that define each pattern, and later, completed the In-and-Out tables based on patterns and rules. This week included lot of testing – Interim testing, multiplication-division word problems quiz, and fractions pre-assessment. That said, the students are all set for a well-deserved Thanksgiving break!

Scholastic: Students got introduced to the basics of algebra and learned about exponents, PEMDAS, and algebraic expressions. Students put their best efforts to take the Interim test for two days in a row.

Honors: Students learned to interpret domain and range of various graphs by using different strategies – paper foldable, colored pencils, rulers, and by swiping pencils on a graph. In addition, students took the Interim test for two days and completed the week by reviewing the coordinate plane vocabulary and terms.

Ms. Rodieck’s Language Arts and Humanities

We are continuing to read Fever 1793 and when we come back from Thanksgiving Break, we will be writing a Personal Awareness Essay comparing ourselves to Matilda.  Speaking of writing, rough drafts will now be a part of homework.  We will start the essay in class, but it will need to be completed at home.  Then we will be able to spend class time working on revising and editing our essays to improve our writing.  Final drafts of essays will need to be typed and printed to be handed in.  If computers are not available, I am here until 5 pm for Study Club and students can use computers then.  

Have a thankful Thanksgiving and we will be back to work in December – only one month left this year!!

Language Arts with Mr. Harding

Social Studies with Mr. Bird and Mr. McCarthy

This week in social studies, our scholars finished their unit on Ancient Egypt! We started the week off by playing a fun review “basketball” game where we asked students questions and groups had to write down their answers on a whiteboard. If correct, the groups chose a person to come to the front of the class to throw a small ball into our class hoop for nest points. The students had a blast with this game and were able to review for the unit test they took on Tuesday.

To end Ancient Egypt and introduce our next unit on Ancient Hebrews, the students watched The Prince of Egypt for the remainder of the week. While watching the movie, students were required to complete a “See-Think-Wonder” handout. Students had to write down a number of things they saw related to what they’ve learned, things they are thinking about the topic, and things they wonder about the movie or upcoming unit. It was a perfect transition between the units before the Thanksgiving break.

There is no homework during the Thanksgiving break for social studies. Please enjoy the time with your family.

When we return from break, students will begin a lesson on the origins of Judaism focusing on the essential question: How did Judaism originate and develop? Students will be learning about key figures in the development of Judaism and create scrolls about them.

Science with Ms. Diaz:

Greetings scientists! This week, students made flashcards to start learning about the planets in our solar system, and no, we didn’t leave out poor Pluto because we also went over dwarf planets. So Pluto still got its due recognition! See the students busy at work below. The Mixtures & Solutions quizzes were graded and passed back. Students also submitted their Personal Awareness SWOs on Monday. There were some truly lovely scrapbook pages and trifolds, complete with a family tree, timeline and acrostic poem, to behold. We ended the week on a festive note by having a Friendsgiving party, partaking in savories, sweets and merriment. Happy Vacation to all!

Next week we will have a scavenger hunt to see how much we were able to learn and store our solar system facts.

Last but not least, come one and come all to check out the DCS science blog site at: www.tlcdiscoverychannel.weebly.com. Read all about the Top 5 Most Haunted Places in the World (Kaitlyn Kwong) and Palmato Geckos (Sofia Richardson). Prepare to be SCIENCED!

Awesomely interesting announcements:

• Please don’t forget to check Google classroom and/or the science class website regularly with your student
  Google Classroom Hon/Scholastic code→ jp9wlua
  Google Classroom Varsity code→ 8d4s9b
  Science class website: https://diazdoesscience.weebly.com 

Mission to Mars:

• An email regarding rooming preferences has been sent out to all registered parent emails. If you haven’t received one, please contact me at cdiaz@tracylc.net. Preferences need to be turned in by Dec. 6th, otherwise we will room allocate remaining students.
• Next payment is due Dec. 4th. Your balance needs to be $600 or less to stay on time with the payment schedule.

Rube Goldberg:

• Practice/Workshops are Mondays/Tuesdays/Thursdays (4-5pm, picked up by 5:15)
• Competition Friday, Dec. 13th—> schedule has been handed out so please coordinate with your fellow inventor, as we would love to have parents watch
• Group requirements and deadlines have also been set, so please review with your inventor what needs to be done and when

Stay curious & keep exploring!!!

 

 

 

Discovery Middle School 7-8

• MHS Applications are due November 22nd!
• Thanksgiving Breaks begins Nov. 25th and students return to school Dec. 2nd

Honor Roll:

This year we are celebrating students whom have achieved academic excellence by awarding Honor Roll. We are awarding Honor Roll students in three categories: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Below are those students whom have achieved this high honor for their GPA for Trimester 1:

Bronze Honor Roll:

Silver Honor Roll:

Gold Honor Roll:

Week 15 Top 5 Nest Earners!

DISCOVERY ATHLETICS

The 6th Grade Girls basketball team defeated Art Freiler with the score 32-6. The girls improve to 6-0 on the season. They will play in the first round of the playoffs when we return from break.

 

The 7th/8th Grade Girls basketball team defeated North with the score 28-20. The girls improve to 3-3 on the season. They will play Monte Vista @ Boys and Girls Club gym on Thursday, December 5th at 5pm.  

     

 Math with Mr. Dhillon:

Varsity :- currently doing unit 4 ( Integers , graphing and function.)  

                completed till lesson 3 coordinate plane and will be doing lesson 4 Functions ns Graph , lesson 5 Adding Integers, lesson 6 subtracting Integers and lesson 7 Multiplying Integers and lesson 8 Dividing Integers

Scholastic :- Currently doing unit 4 linear Equation . doing 4.2 slope intercept form and standard form ,will do 4.3 x and y intercept  and 4.4 horizontal and vertical lines , 4.5 the point slope form , 4.6 parallel and perpendicular lines , linear equation word problems , 4.8 scatter plot , line of best fit and linear regression

Honors :-  done with unit 5 Relationship in Triangles and will do data analysis ( measures of central tendency and   and start with unit 6 similar triangles

Math with Mrs. Rapp:

In all classes we spent two days this last week doing Math Interim testing to practice for the state test. This is to better prepare our students for the state test by allowing them to get comfortable with the computers and format of the test. They will have those results when we return from Thanksgiving break.  

In Varsity we just wrapped up Unit 3 on an Introduction to Algebra. This unit was challenging, but overall a great start to what will come in math for these students. This class has not been introduced to a variety of properties they will continue to use, order of operations, and solving one step equations mentally.

In Scholastic we finished Unit 3 on Parent Functions and Transformations, which was a shorter unit compared to Unit 3. This unit was fun as we got to learn how to use graphing calculators for the first time. Which helped us master how to find the domain and range of functions.  The average for this test was a 75%, so there is still room for improvement. Unit 4 is on Linear Equations and this will be one of the last units we complete before their final in December.

In Honors we finished Unit 4 on Congruent Triangles and as a class we set a goal of a 90% average and got a 91% average on the test. So Good! They worked hard this unit to master two column proofs and I am pleased with their test scores.  Unit 5 is on Relationships in Triangles and this will be one of the last units we complete before their final in December.

After break, all classes will be completing a mini unit on the following topics:

Box-and-Whisker Plot

Measures of Central Tendency

Mean Absolute Deviation

This is to better help students understand how to take data and analyze it. We will be using all of this to look at our test scores each unit and see how we did overall as a class.

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Millennium High School

Congratulations to our top nest point earners this week!

We celebrated these students Friday morning at Unity.  Their reward was free MHS beanies, perfect for our Winter Spirit week on return to school!

Kestrel – Pallavi Prasad, 275 (above, center)

Peregrine – Justine Jade Armat, 295 (not pictured)

Amur – Aidan Ray, 315 (above, left)

Saker – Mariah Minten, 465 (above, right)

ACTIVITIES

WINTER SPIRIT WEEK is the WEEK WE RETURN FROM BREAK, 12/2-12/6

Monday, Dec. 2 – Comfy Cozy Day (PJs)

Tuesday, Dec. 3 – Ghost of Christmas Past Day (Decades Day)

Wednesday, Dec. 4 – Extreme Holi-Day (Red/Green/Winter/Ugly Sweater)

Thursday, Dec. 5 – Falcons Fly Day (Black and Gold, show your pride!)

Friday, Dec. 6 – Extreme Nest Color Day (Rally Day)

Our Winter Sports Rally will be Friday, December 6th, at 10AM. Let’s kick off our winter athletics season and show our Falcon pride!

WINTER FORMAL

The Winter Ball, our annual Winter formal dance, will be Friday, December 13th, from 7-10 PM in the MHS Gym. Tickets are $15 each, or $25 for couples. Friendship couples encouraged! 9th through 12th grade welcome!

FALCON CULTURE PROJECT

Emma Ramirez

Meet Emma, a 2nd generation, Mexican American student at Millennium. Her family immigrated from Mexico in the 60’s, creating a big family in California. Some of her favorite traditional meals are enchiladas, fideo, caldo de res, and menudo. In 2017, she had a quinceañera but decided to have it in Mexico to have a more cultural experience and understanding of her heritage. One of her biggest values is family and always makes family functions a priority. Her biggest role model is her mother because of the many accomplishments she achieved with the obstacles that stood in her way. She admires how her mother had to mature at such a young age, translating documents and paperwork for her spanish speaking parents. This is one of Emma’s inspirations to choose a youth oriented career. She wants to create a strong mold for children and motivate them to achieve anything, regardless of race or background. Emma does not know for sure what job she will pursue, but she knows her purpose is to help and inspire children and for that I know she will make a great difference in this world.

 

 

YEARBOOK ORDERS and SENIOR DEDICATION AD ORDERS NOW OPEN!

Yearbooks are on sale now! Yearbooks are $75. Now is the perfect time to order a 2019-20 yearbook for your student. We look forward to yearbook delivery day, May 15th. Orders are open through April 11th. Click HERE to go to our convenient online order center! Or you may go to yearbookordercenter.com and enter code 21362. You may also pay by cash, check, or card in the front office or by contacting Miss Lamanna, blamanna@tracylc.net

Senior Dedication ads in the yearbook are available and can include photos alongside a personal message to your son, daughter, or teammate. There are a limited number of pages available, so act quickly. The deadline to place an ad is 3/15/20. Credit cards accepted! If you have any questions, please direct them to blamanna@tracylc.net.

 

 

Athletics

Interested in donating to the Athletics program?  Here are 2 great opportunities!  If you would like to help us purchase the padded flooring for the weight room we hope to have open by winter, you may donate here (We are just about $10,000 shy of FULL completion!!):  https://www.gofundme.com/f/falcons-weight-room

Weekly Schedule (Girls & Boys Soccer, Girls & Boys Basketball): 

Friday & Saturday 11/22-11/23:  Girls Soccer at Stagg Tournament

Monday 11/25:  Girls and Boys Varsity Basketball vs Mountain House (Foundation Game) played at 6 & 8pm at Kimball High in the small gym

Wednesday 11/27:  JV/V Boys Basketball at Ceres High (5pm/7:15pm)

Saturday 11/30:  Carson Edwards competes at the State Meet in Fresno, 11am

 

 

Sports Scores to be continued:

Saturday 11/16:  Falcons Cross Country competed in Sections, of which the boys team finished 5th.  HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Carson Edwards!!  He has qualified for State and will be racing in Fresno on 11/30!

 

 

NOW HIRING:  Spring 2020 Head Athletic Coaches-

Boys Volleyball:  https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1228598

Softball:  https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1228598

 

 

Meet The Coaches!

  Hi, I’m Coach Mike Woods.  I have been coaching at Millennium for about 14 years now. I love coaching here because the school has high academic standards. I have a real passion for the game of basketball and for teaching students how to play the game the right way. My goal as a coach is to increase the student’s knowledge of the game which helps to build their confidence. The more confident they are, the better they can compete.

For donations towards Millennium Athletics in general, you can go here:  https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=JV4bGcCRYeBxsAoeIm9378Hq0cPdQ5v5cVuYxrIDCxod5qM0FM8eQcBKQ-YhqrA_hGj2tG&fromUL=true&country.x=US&locale.x=en_US

Follow Millennium Athletics on Social Media:  

-Instagram- @Millennium_Athletics

-Twitter- @MHS_Falcons

-Facebook- http://www.facebook.com/BalsamoPE

We appreciate your continued support!  FALCON PRIDE!!

Upcoming Fundraisers for Athletics:

-Daddy Daughter Dance: December 14th, 2019

-Mother Son Dance: February 8th, 2020

 

 

 

COUNSELING, COLLEGE, AND COMMUNITY NEWS!!!

This time of the year it is especially important to give our appreciation and gratitude to our community members. Without the support from our business and nonprofit organizations, our students would not have the opportunity to participate in community service, internship, and employment. Thank you for all that you do for our school and students!

Interact Club helped out at the Keller Williams Holiday Boutique week by fundraising for one of our local nonprofits known as the Tracy Senior Association. We sold out of our treats and exceeded our goal of raising $200!

Community Service Opportunity-Salvation Army Kettle Campaign

The Salvation Army is in need of Volunteers for their holiday season Kettle Campaign (donation bell ringing) in Tracy, available dates are listed below. All interested volunteers must sign-up in the MHS counseling office. All locations will operate from 9am-7pm except Raley’s (9am-6pm).

November 29: Walmart & Macy’s

December 2: Safeway

Spring 2020 College Early Start Registration on Wednesday 11/27

Spring 2020 College Early Start forms have been approved and returned to students with instructions on the next step.  Students must log in to their My Delta accounts to register for their classes – this does not happen automatically.  Our Millennium students’ registration date and time is Wednesday, November 27th at 3:45pm.  They must log in at this time or soon after to register for their class(es).  The video at this link will explain step by step how to register for classes:  https://deltacollege.edu/mydelta-portal/manage-classes-mydelta/how-register-mydelta  If students have any problems registering, please have them visit the MHS Counseling Office when we return from Thanksgiving Break.

 

 

9th Annual TLC’s Got Talent Show – Video auditions are now open!

Video Auditions for the 9th Annual TLC’s Got Talent Show are now open, deadline for submission is December 10, 2019. Please submit all video auditions to mhscounseling@tracylc.net  and return the participation form to the MHS Counseling Office.

 

 

 

FREE Boys to Men Conference 12/7/19

This FREE conference will be held on Saturday,  December 7th, 2019 at Kimball High School in Tracy,   from 8:30 am – 2:30 pm( Doors open at 8 am).   This conference is open to boys ages 10 -18.  The Boys-to-Men Conference is an uplifting and positive event using real-life approaches for realistic results. In this conference participants attend professionally delivered workshops,  hear a keynote address,  and ask questions during a panel discussion. A catered lunch is also included. The key focus areas include healthy lifestyles, personal accountability, leadership development and alternatives to deviant behavior. Visit https://www.sowaseedcf.org/ for more information and to register online.

Computer Science

My Computer Science 1 and 2 classes went on their first field trip to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View and we had a great time! The students learned a lot about the history of computers and traveled through time experiencing the evolution of technology.

 

This week in English…….

Mrs. Ernst- English II   Our class is currently working on completing The Kite Runner.  We are also working on diagramming and writing skills.  Students are preparing for finals with a study guide being issued to them on 11/21.

English I- This class is working on completing the novel Orphan Train  prior to finals.  All classes should make that goal. Along with  reading the novel, we are looking at historical landmarks such as Ellis Island and time periods such as The Great Depression.  Diagramming and writing are all important parts of our class, as well as vocabulary.  Students will receive a study guide for semester 1 on 11/21.

Ms. Langston, English 1 and 2: We are currently preparing for our finals coming up after the break. Students received their last week of vocabulary for Semester 1 and should begin studying vocabulary from Week 1 through Week 16 for the final. I recommend that students make a quizlet or use another favorite study tool to help them. After the break, we will be reviewing the major diagramming and grammar concepts we learned this year, and we will review the foundational writing skills they have learned thus far. We will continue to make progress in our class novels this week and the weeks leading up to the final. I recommend that over the break, students read a book or some news articles of choice to keep their reading comprehension skills sharp. I also recommend that they work on their Semester 1 Final Study guide that they will be receiving in my class at the end of the week.

Mrs. Saldate- English Two:  The school year is racing by!  We are still reading The Kite Runner and students are very engaged.  We are enjoying watching the characters develop and predicting what will happen next! We are continuing our lessons on diagramming and writing and can now diagram Interjections and write well developed introductions and Body Paragraphs.

English Three:  We recently started our second book of the year, The Scarlet Letter. The students are still getting to know the characters and analyzing their relationships to one another. We’ve written our first research paper of the year and are getting ready to begin our second.  Our writing ability has really developed and we are beginning to be able to produce collegiate level papers!!

Mr. Reyes- In English Three, students are fully immersed in The Scarlet Letter, a classic novel taught in nearly every high school across the country. Students have completed the Scandal project, created their own “Scarlet Letters” and written an essay that examines the hypocrisy of the Puritans as evidenced in the introductory chapters of the novel. Some students are convinced that they know who Pearl’s father is, and they can’t wait to find out if they are right!

In English Four, students have begun to read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. This novel explores a father and son’s survival in a world where very little hope exists after a post-apocalyptic event. My seniors brought in a picture of the one thing they would miss the most if the world changed like it does in The Road. Family and pets were popular choices, of course, but I was impressed that students made the realization that the mundane, routine elements of everyday life, and the ability to enjoy free time would be lost forever if survival became their primary focus. This book really helps students appreciate the lives that their families provide for them and offers them a chance to gain a new perspective on our world that we take for granted far too often. We are also working on reflective narratives that connect personal experience with that of a character from one of our novels from the past.

Finals are looming – after Thanksgiving break, there is only one week of regular school before finals week!

Mr. Crook’s English Four class is wrapping up the unit on The Things They Carried  and Metaphor. The students are finishing up an essay based on the use of metaphor throughout the novel. In addition, the students are beginning to explore a bleak apocalyptic wasteland in The Road. Throughout the novel we will discuss human nature as we track the journey of a father and son through the waste.

Mr. Crook’s English Two class is continuing to study The Kite Runner. As we draw near to the end of the novel, we explore honor and morality through the lens of a culture much different than our own. In addition, we continue to academic vocabulary and increasingly complex sentence diagrams while studying non-fiction articles on a weekly basis.

Student Feature: Montek Sethi, 10th Grade

Montek accomplished an important milestone in his aviation/soaring hobby. On Saturday November 16th shortly after his 15th birthday, he flew his 1st Solo flight in a glider at Byron Airport. Montek joined Northern California Soaring Association and had been training almost every weekend over the last 10 months. He received dual training with glider instructors of about 40 flights and 15 flight hours during this time, while also volunteering and supporting the club activities. Montek is also a recipient of $2000 scholarship from the association.  Congratulations, Montek!

You are invited to Primary Charter School’s Winter Concert 2019

Monday, 12/2/2019

 

Songs for the Winter Concert are on the Primary Charter School homepage at tracylc.net (link to music: “Winter Concert Music “) and lyric sheets have been sent home. Please help and encourage your student to practice their songs at home so they will be confident for their performance on December 2^nd. (That’s just 2 weeks away!)

Please also plan to attend our musical extravaganza to support your students as they have been working hard to prepare. Performances like this motivate higher achievement in music, promote healthy confidence, and provide our students with a great opportunity to apply the musical skills they are learning.

 

 

Initial Phase will perform at 1:00 P.M. in the Gym, and Phase 1 and Phase 2 will perform at 6:30 P.M. in the Gym. Phase 1 students need to be dropped off at their classroom at 6:10 P.M., and Phase 2 students need to be dropped off at their classroom by 6:25 P.M.

 

 

Students should come dressed in their holiday best. Small headwear is allowed, but nothing that will block the view of students behind them.

Contact Mr. Martin with any questions: amartin@tracylc.net

TLC Charter Chatter

 

A Message from Virginia

With one week to go until our Thanksgiving break, we look towards the next phase of our 2019-20 school year.  Primary and Discovery begin their 2nd Trimester and MHS begins their last push to semester finals.  With many changes in weather, holidays, rain-day lunches and electives our teachers look to helping our students stay on track and continue building on the successes they had in the 1st trimester. It is a wonderful time of year and we all look forward to the holiday concerts and time with families but our staff will continue to work hard at making these next weeks meaningful.  

 

 

Next School Holiday

Nov. 25 – Nov. 29 Holiday Week – Thanksgiving

 

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.

 

 

Lunch Menu Week of Nov. 18, 2019 – Nov. 22, 2019

Mon – Pizza

Tues – Chili or Cheese Nachos

Wed – Pasta Alfredo

Thurs – Chicken

Fri – HotTurkey Sandwich with Mash Potatoes and gravy

 

Sick Students

Just a reminder: Please keep your child home if he or she is sick or has a fever. We had many sick children last week and several were given tylenol prior to coming to school in the morning. These illnesses/viruses are very contagious and we are trying to stop them from spreading. Children must be 24 hours free of symptoms and fevers before returning to school.

 

 

Good news! There is now a “Give Credit” function within the app. If you are not seeing this function, make sure you have the most updated version of the app installed.

The “credit” button (star icon) shows after you take first image. A blank field appears that allows up to 50 characters to be typed. Type in your student’s classroom number to give credit.  This field may auto-fill after the first entry; make sure to update it if necessary (such as if someone is supporting more than 1 child at same school, etc.).

 

 

NOW HIRING:  Spring 2020 Head Athletic Coaches-

Boys Volleyball:  https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1228598

Softball:  https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1228598

 

 

TLC Preschool: P.E. in preschool?

Physical activity is critical for development both emotionally and physically. Our preschool students are so lucky to have PE class as part of their educational experience!  Coach E works hard to create fun PE classes that help our students develop their fine and gross motor skills.  We believe you would be hard pressed to find another preschool that provides PE to all!

 

 

 Initial Phase

• Don’t forget there will not be school this Monday, November 11th for Veterans Day. Enjoy your extra day off!
• REMINDER: We are doing our best to keep everyone healthy but we need your help. If your child is sick please do not send them to school. Students MUST be fever free AND symptom free WITHOUT medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. Please do not send them to school on medication to mask their fever. If we all work together we can help the spreading of germs.
• Parents: please be sure that your student has a clean change of clothes in a ziplock bag in their backpack. Additionally, the office is in need of donations of boys clothes and underwear..
• If you would like to volunteer in the second trimester (after Thanksgiving break) please return the slip with your availability. Applicants who are not already cleared in the office with Mrs. Kay will not be put into the lottery.

 

 Phase One:

Thank you for returning the conference sign-up sheets. We will do our very best to accommodate everyone. You will receive your assigned day/time in Red folders on Tuesday. If for any reason we assign you a time that does not work, please let us know so that we can find another time that does. It is really important that you meet with either your child’s LA or Math teacher as they will have more in depth information about how your student is doing academically.

Congratulations to all the students who met their AR goal! We will have our AR party next week. Our students will also take their Star test next week so we can give them their new reading level and next AR goal.

 

 

Phase Two:

       This week our 3rd and 4th graders completed their group biome projects.  Each group was given a biome to research and created a trifold board to present their findings.  We also went around to each other’s classrooms and saw their projects too.  The teachers are proud of their hard work and our students learned a lot!  Not just about their biome, but how to work together as a group and complete their projects correctly and on time.  

        Now that it is a new trimester, phase 2 students’ homework will be part of their grade.  Homework not turned in will result in a 0, warning,  and loss of Fun Friday time.  Overall, our phase 2 students do a great job completing their homework!  Also, please see the “Pie Party” flier in today’s green folder.                             

 

 

 

 

Discovery Middle School 5-6

Upcoming ⅚ Dates:

November 12th-22nd: DCS Read-A-Thon Science Camp Fundraiser –            (Funds raised go towards lowering the cost of Science Camp)

November 23 – December 1: NO SCHOOL = Thanksgiving Break 

⅚ Discovery Top 5 Nest Point Earners:

Falcon Pride!!!

Peregrine:

Kestrel:

Saker:

Amur:

 

Mrs. Zuniga/Mrs. Bengson’s Math:

*Note for all classes: All classes will be taking their second interim testing next week. This is a practice test for state math testing.

Varsity: Students took their multiplication and division quiz on Thursday. We will focus on word problems for the next week before Thanksgiving break.

Scholastic: Students just finished applying the properties we have learned in the past units. They will be moving into arithmetic sequences.

Honors: Students got their operations of scientific notation quizzes back and finished up the Unit 2 with adding and subtracting polynomials. Their Unit 2 test will be taken next Wednesday.

Mrs. Nijjar’s Math:

Varsity: We started this week by learning about Properties of Multiplication and In-out tables. Later in the week, students took the quiz for long division. Next week, students will review the concepts learned in Unit-2 and will take the Unit-2 test.

Scholastic: This week students took the Unit-2 test. We started with Unit-3 and learned about Exponents and Order of Operations. In the coming weeks, students will be introduced to the concepts of variables and expressions.

Honors: In this week, students started with Unit-3 which is about relations and functions. In the coming weeks, students will be learning more about graphing functions along with interpreting the graphs.

 

 

Ms. Rodieck’s Language Arts and Humanities

Boy, it was a short week – and fast.  We are continuing to read Fever 1793.  This week, we started learning about other epidemics and will be writing about them next week.  

Students also turned in their 2nd book club book reports, so their new book club books were passed out to them.  This report will be due January 6, 2020 (the day we come back from Winter Break).  This time, they will be doing a brochure and the directions will be in Google Classroom – in a few weeks.  

Next week (the week before Thanksgiving Break) there will not be spelling and vocabulary words, so NO Homework!!  We are going to focus on Reading the Novel and Writing about Epidemics.  But, we will also be doing State Interim Testing on Monday and Tuesday.  

Language Arts with Mr. Harding

The second trimester has begun, and we are making a fresh start. We have a fresh new class layout, a fresh seating chart, and fresh lessons. We have switched from gratitude journals to quick writes, and the energy in the classroom is palpable. This teacher has never seen such excitement from, “writing about a time when…”

This trimester, we will write more, and read more. We are reading the same book, Fever, 1793, and we are going to try to finish the novel before winter’s first frost. Ebola essays re-writes have already begun, and the students are getting acquainted with the formal writing style of a critical essay. So far, I have been impressed with the effort of our Discovery learners. The difference between the first round of essays and this round is a reflection of our students’ commitment to improve and strive for greatness.

Social Studies with Mr. Bird and Mr. McCarthy

This week in social studies, our Falcon scholars are wrapping up their lessons on Ancient Egypt. They finished their fantastic dramatizations about daily life in ancient Egypt to act out different social classes of ancient Egypt such as scribes, artisans, and peasants. The dramatizations were interactive as they invited other classmates to the front of the class to be a part of their presentation.

The end of the week, students played review games and created a one-pager study guide to help study for the upcoming unit test. We also collected folders on Friday for the second folder check of trimester 2. We are grading sections 1-6 for completion, the processing assignment (Daily Life in Ancient Egypt), and the Kingdom of Kush questions.

The SWO Personal Awareness project is due on Monday, November 18th. The ancient Egypt unit test is on Tuesday, November 19th.  

Our next unit begins on Wednesday, November 20th. Students will be analyzing the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the Ancient Hebrews!

 

 

 

Science with Ms. Diaz:

Greetings scientists! This week, though short, was still action packed. Your science entrepreneurs worked tirelessly for days putting together their lab’s research report and proposal. On top of having to include the standard sections of a research report, they wrote a proposal of why their lab should be awarded funding and what future research and experiments they plan to do. The icing on the cake is the end of each report which features a short biography for each student. On Wednesday, students were honored with certificates for either having achieved the highest grade for Trimester 1 or being one of the top class citizens. Check out the big smiles below. Thursday were the parent/student/teacher conferences for my homeroom (Honors 2) class. The week ended with a quiz on Mixtures & Solutions.

Next week we foray into studies of the solar system!

Last but not least, come one and come all to check out the DCS science blog site at: www.tlcdiscoverychannel.weebly.com. Read all about Sea Creatures and Pollution (Chelby Johnson), The Ocean (Jessica Jfouf) and How the Flood Infect Their Hosts (Quentin Nuñez). Prepare to be SCIENCED!

Awesomely interesting announcements:

• Personal Awareness SWO due Nov. 18th: Honors/Scholastic/Varsity 1 due to Mr. Bird/Mr. McCarthy—> Honors/Scholastic/Varsity 2 due to Ms. Diaz
• Please don’t forget to check Google classroom and/or the science class website regularly with your student
  Google Classroom Hon/Scholastic code→ jp9wlua
  Google Classroom Varsity code→ 8d4s9b
  Science class website: https://diazdoesscience.weebly.com 

Mission to Mars:

• Next parent meeting is Tuesday, Nov. 19th, 6pm, D9 DCS building
• Next payment is due Dec. 4th. Your balance needs to be $600 or less to stay on time with the payment schedule.

Rube Goldberg:

• Practice/Workshops are Mondays/Tuesdays/Thursdays (4-5pm, picked up by 5:15)
• Competition Friday, Dec. 13th

Stay curious & keep exploring!!!

 

 

 

Discovery Middle School 7-8

• Classes will be taking an Interim CAASPP Practice Test next week (Monday-Thursday)
• MHS Applications are due November 22nd!
• Thanksgiving Breaks begins Nov. 25th and students return to school Dec. 2nd

Week 13 Top 5 Nest Earners!

 

Leadership:

DCS Music with Mr. Dougherty:

The last week of the trimester was an exciting and event filled week for Discovery Music. Mr Dougherty’s classes performed twice on Wednesday. The morning concert was a combination of a short musical written by a 5/6 music class. The musical was about a group of chubby cheetahs. The afternoon performance featured a musical written by a 7/8 class and was about our dear friend Barney and how he went missing. 🙁 Fortunately he made a surprise appearance at the end of the show, which was a big crowd pleaser!

Language Arts with Mrs. Cerezo

November is flying by! The students have been hard at work tying up some of the loose ends from Trimester One and moving on to begin Trimester 2. For this month we will work on our second round of Interim Testing (11/18 and 11/19) and then will read a short story for our Pentathlon curriculum– The Curious Life of Benjamin Button. This story looks at a very unique and strange disease that a boy has and how it changes his life. After reading the story and analyzing its features we will watch the movie and compare the story to the movie. (Permission slips have been sent home and should have been returned– there are some mildly inappropriate scenes that I will skip over).

This month students continued to look at figurative language and even worked on a small project where they were given a particular poet and had to research their work, their life, and their literary influence. Below are some of the finished versions of the projects! They turned out fantastically.

When we come back from Thanksgiving Break students will get right back into the rhythm of our weeks. We will get brand new Vocabulary words, a new Root of the Week (beginning work with Greek and Latin roots), a new writing assignment, and will begin work to begin our first Socratic Seminar.

Please be sure that your students are continuing to study their old vocabulary words as they will need to know them all year long. They should also be continuing to read their Book Club Books as these must be completed by Dec. 3rd.

This week we also had our first Parent Teacher Conferences for the year. These were a huge success! Thank you to the parents who came and were able to meet the teachers and discuss their grades and their successes and challenges for the first trimester, as well as their goals for the upcoming trimester.

Language Arts with Ms. Greene

        After a nice 3 day weekend, we began the week with Conferences with the parents and students of my homeroom. It was great to share the students successes with the parents. This week, in all classes we will be reading Frankenstein, the students are finding it pretty tough to read, but are slowly becoming able to understand the long and wordy writing style that Mary Shelley writes in. Along with Frankenstein we will also be doing a lot of review, which will include: vocabulary, humanities and reading comprehension skills.

        Next week in Language Arts, on 11/18 and 11/19 we will be doing the Interim testing again to measure the growth from the beginning of the year.

        Next week the class will be reading the short story Benjamin Button and hope to watch the movie at the end of the week, I will be sending home permission slips for this since the movie is rated PG 13.

Just 1 more week until Thanksgiving Break!

DISCOVERY ATHLETICS

The 6th Grade Girls basketball team defeated Monte Vista with the score 18-10. The girls improve to 5-0 on the season. They will play Art Freiler @ Boys and Girls Club gym on Wednesday, November 20th at 3:30pm.

 

The 7th/8th Grade Girls basketball team lost to Williams with the score 7-16. The girls fall to 2-3 on the season. They will play North @ North’s gym on Wednesday, November 20th at 5pm.  

 

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Millennium High School

Congratulations to our top nest point earners this week!

We celebrated these students Wednesday morning at Unity.  Their reward was $10 gift cards to Starbucks.

Mireya Martinez, Saker – 640

Vivian Luera, Amur – 605

Jeremy Adams, Peregrine – 450

Natalia Chavez, Kestrel – 360

 

ACTIVITIES

Speech and Debate 

16 members of our Speech and Debate team competed at a league tournament at Buhach Colony. There were 410 entries across 15 schools, and our team performed very highly. In addition to picking up a school sweepstakes award for 3rd in Debate for our prior tourney, our individual students also won awards!

Here are the students who scored in the top 5 in their events:

Anton Souza, 5th, Impromptu

Scott Malsack, 4th, Impromptu

Danica Knowlden, 4th, Dramatic Interpretation

Kyle Fisher, 4th, Original Advocacy

Lilliana Zapien, 3rd, Original Advocacy

Kyle Fisher, 3rd, Congressional Debate

Christian Silva, 3rd, Congressional Debate

Lamanna and Souza, 2nd, Parliamentary Debate

Crysuel Cunanan, 2nd, Original Advocacy

Shika Acolatse, 2nd, Original prose and poetry

Summer Simmons, 1st, Humorous Interpretation

Lucy Lamanna, 1st, Original Advocacy

 

YEARBOOK ORDERS and SENIOR DEDICATION AD ORDERS NOW OPEN!

Yearbooks are on sale now! Yearbooks are $75. Now is the perfect time to order a 2019-20 yearbook for your student. We look forward to yearbook delivery day, May 15th. Orders are open through April 11th. Click HERE to go to our convenient online order center! Or you may go to yearbookordercenter.com and enter code 21362. You may also pay by cash, check, or card in the front office or by contacting Miss Lamanna, blamanna@tracylc.net

Senior Dedication ads in the yearbook are available and can include photos alongside a personal message to your son, daughter, or teammate. There are a limited number of pages available, so act quickly. The deadline to place an ad is 3/15/20. Credit cards accepted! If you have any questions, please direct them to blamanna@tracylc.net.

Mr. Creasman

Pre-algebra and Pre-calculus are going great in Mr. Creasman’s classes. Creative teaching day on Wednesday’s has been fun and interactive. We are finishing up units and getting ready for thanksgiving break and then finals. The holidays and end of the semester are coming in quick! Some fun outdoor trig projects are expected soon for Pre-Calc.

Mr. Kay

In Algebra I, we are completing Unit 3: Relations and Functions. Next week, I plan to kick of the next unit with an escape room activity.  In Finance Math, the students continue to track their income, expenses, and savings in google sheets, so they can review, revise, and set realistic budgets.  In addition, we are all about smart borrowing for the next few weeks.

Mr. Tariku

For the first time, I am teaching the same class all day long and it has its advantages and disadvantages. Half of my classes are in unit 6 while the other 3 classes are in unit 5 so I am not actually giving the same lesson all day long. We did Geometry bingo during creative instructional day and looking forward to the next creative instructional day. I incorporated movement in the classroom when we went outside the other day to review angles formed by parallel lines and a transversal line.

Mr. Shelton

1st period Algebra 2 working on their Turkey Projects

Hey there and happy 15th week of school! Things are going great in Mr. Shelton’s classes and hopefully the kids feel the same. In Algebra 2 we are getting ready to go into Polynomials, a critical part of math that will be a foundation for every math class they take going forward! Algebra 1 is continuing to do amazing in everything they do. Posting almost an A average on their last exam. They are taking another one this week and I expect the same excellent results. Algebra 1B students are becoming masters at factoring, all types of factoring. These are skills that are building a strong foundation for Algebra 2 next year, and they are all doing an exceptional job! Last but not least, Algebra 1A is progressing at a good pace as well. We are still getting to know each other but I think that the students in that class are poised to have a productive year and a successful math career here at Millennium. Happy Early Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas. Shelton out.

Mrs. U

Pre-Calculus:

Our pre-calculus students are wrapping up their unit on logarithms and exponential form. They have solved and graphed exponential equations and getting ready to test! They got to play a board game to help review all ways to solve logarithmic and exponential equations. Students enjoyed playing and was a good review!

Algebra 2:

Algebra 2 just wrapped up their unit on solving quadratics and  dealing with complex numbers. It is the first time in their math career that they have probably used imaginary numbers. They are getting ready to start their next unit which is all about polynomials and their graphs plus more! We will jump into the first part before thanksgiving break. But for today, students get to work on some thanksgiving math activity reviewing everything up until now!

Algebra 1A:

Algebra 1A is unit testing today on equations and inequalities! I am excited to see how they do and start getting ready for their final coming up in December! Students have lots of time to grasp concepts in this class so we have been able to do lots of activities, puzzles and games relating to our content to review and practice. Pictured is one of the activities that we got to do where students solved and inequality, matched it with their graph as well and their solution! Some students also got to do a puzzle that had to do with collecting like terms and simplifyi

Algebra 1B:

Algebra 1B also just finished up a unit on polynomials and factoring polynomials. They tested and got a nice average of 80%. This class also has lots of time for lots of practice. They have gotten to do lots of scavenger hunt type activities, partner activities and puzzles! My personal favorite is their factoring heart!

Mrs. Griffin

Calculus

Both Calculus classes continue to work in Unit 3 with derivatives. So far we have learned to use the product and quotient rules to find derivatives of functions and also how to find the derivatives of trig functions too! Whew! That’s a lot of formulas to learn, but we ease into them and I provide all students with those formulas during assessments. Right now, we are learning about position, velocity, and acceleration of particles and objects. We will be working in stations to solve problems to gain a better understanding of their relationships to each other.

Algebra 1

Our Algebra students just completed Unit 3 and are now underway with Unit 4 which is all about Linear Equations. We began by teaching about slope and how to identify and find the slopes of equations from graphs. The students are getting pretty good at using the slope equation to calculate the slope of a line from 2 points. We look forward to their continued growth!

 

 

 

 

Athletics

Interested in donating to the Athletics program?  Here are 2 great opportunities!  If you would like to help us purchase the padded flooring for the weight room we hope to have open by winter, you may donate here (We are just about $10,000 shy of FULL completion!!):  https://www.gofundme.com/f/falcons-weight-room

Weekly Schedule (Girls & Boys Soccer, Girls & Boys Basketball): 

STAY TUNED for winter sports!  THIS WEEKEND, 11/16, Cross Country Boys AND Girls will head out to Folsom for Sections!!  Let’s go Falcons!!  Be out at Folsom High by 12:45pm to support our runners that afternoon.

 

 

 

Sports Scores to be continued:

Saturday 11/9:  Falcons Cross Country competed in subsections, of which BOTH girls and boys teams qualified for Sections!!  WAY TO GO FALCONS!!

NOW HIRING:  Spring 2020 Head Athletic Coaches-

Boys Volleyball:  https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1228598

Softball:  https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1228598

 

 

 

Meet The Coaches!

  Hi, I’m Coach Zuniga.  I have been coaching basketball for 7 years. The last 4 years at Millennium as an assistant coach for the varsity boys basketball team. I have 30 years of experience of basketball and I enjoy teaching the kids how to play. I enjoy seeing the players grow into men.

For donations towards Millennium Athletics in general, you can go here:  https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=JV4bGcCRYeBxsAoeIm9378Hq0cPdQ5v5cVuYxrIDCxod5qM0FM8eQcBKQ-YhqrA_hGj2tG&fromUL=true&country.x=US&locale.x=en_US

Follow Millennium Athletics on Social Media:  

-Instagram- @Millennium_Athletics

-Twitter- @MHS_Falcons

-Facebook- http://www.facebook.com/BalsamoPE

We appreciate your continued support!  FALCON PRIDE!!

Upcoming Fundraisers for Athletics:

-Daddy Daughter Dance: December 14th, 2019

-Mother Son Dance: February 8th, 2020

Community Service Opportunity-Salvation Army Kettle Campaign

The Salvation Army is in need of Volunteers for their holiday season Kettle Campaign (donation bell ringing) in Tracy, available dates are listed below. All interested volunteers must sign-up in the MHS counseling office. All locations will operate from 9am-7pm except Raley’s (9am-6pm).

November 16: Save Mart & Food Maxx

November 22: Raley’s & JC Penny

November 29: Walmart & Macy’s

December 2: Safeway

College Early Start Forms-Spring 2020

Spring 2020 College Early Start forms are being finalized, and will be returned to students the week of 11/18. For questions, please contact the MHS Counseling Department at mhscounseling@tracylc.net or 209-627-8299.

Career Pathways – Community Service Requirement

Sophomore students in Mr. Hunt’s Career Pathways class attended a meeting today (Friday 11-15-19) during lunch to receive an update on their required 20 hours of community service. Students were given an opportunity to sign-up for current community service events and were given an update on their community service requirement. For all current community service opportunities, please visit the community service page of the Tracy Learning Center website, please see the following link:

http://www.tracylearningcenter.com/counseling/community-service-program/

 

TLC Charter Chatter

 

Nov. 11 2019

I know this is a long article, but I have found that I get great responses from parents when I share these good parenting articles.  I thought this one was worth the read.

Virginia Stewart

 

How to catch a falling son

He’s gifted and once loved learning. Somewhere along the way, my boy slipped through the educational cracks and nearly out of school. Is it too late to save him?

by: Christina Tynan-Wood | November 6, 2017

 Print article

When he was young, my son Cole was an entertaining writer, voracious reader, and so curious he exhausted us with questions. In second grade, he was tested as gifted. Now, at 15, he’s as likely to be the teacher in our relationship as the student. But with rare exception, he gets terrible grades. Over the years, I’ve been told he’s learning challenged and so needs special education and medication. I’ve been to every kind of parent/teacher meeting. I’ve tried every kind of school: Montessori, charter, public, magnet, private, as well as homeschooling. I hoped as he got older, this bright boy would be more willing to speak up and demonstrate that his inattention is not incomprehension.

But three weeks ago, as his sophomore year drew to a close, I got a call from a teacher warning me he was unlikely to pass. I had known he was slipping behind. In fact, I’d removed all the distractions I could from our house — Xbox, cable TV — and even set “distraction controls” on his laptop to keep him from wandering to Facebook when he should be studying. Cole and I talked about homework daily. He assured me he was getting caught up and that his teachers were simply not updating the online grading system. His efforts, he insisted with disarming confidence, would be reflected in his report card. But the teacher informed me she had just updated the system. I sighed and took a look. His grades were so low he would have to work to bring them up to Fs. What did he imagine was going to happen when I got that report card?

We’d been here before, but he always managed to catch up at the last minute. This time was different. I sat him down to explain that these grades were scorching his dreams of studying engineering at a good university. He shrugged and looked hopeless. “What are the chances that I’ll get into college?” he asked.

Not ‘fit’ for college?

What happened? How did that brilliant, curious mind decide it wasn’t a fit for college?

I started troubleshooting. First I called the school guidance counselor to find out what Cole’s options were. Should I let him fail so he could learn from the consequences of his inaction? Was it mathematically possible for him to pass? “It’s possible,” the counselor told me. “But I doubt he can do it. He has dug himself into quite a hole.” These were not easy classes he was failing. No amount of general brilliance would get him through honors chemistry. “But he can retake the classes in the summer. If he does that, these grades won’t affect his GPA — though the incident will appear on his record. But try and get him to fix it. This is too harsh a lesson at his age.” The counselor agreed to talk to him man-to-man to explain the situation and Cole’s options.

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Next, I did what I always do when I feel lost: research. I discovered that what’s happening to my son is epidemic and has been happening for decades. Boys start falling behind girls in kindergarten and keep doing it right through college. The end result? Colleges that are only 40 percent male and an educated workforce that is increasingly female.

5 reasons boys fail

Dr. Leonard Sax puts forth five possible reasons our boys are failing: boys’ dependence on video games, teaching methods that don’t account for how boys learn, an increasing reliance on stimulants like Ritalin that are designed to help young boys focus but — according to his research — sap their motivation and drive when they are older, chemicals in the environment that disrupt hormones, and the devaluation of masculinity in schools that disenfranchise boys.

I inhaled his book Boys Adrift. It made complete sense. I’ve long been a believer in encouraging the “boy” aspect of boys. Despite the not-so-subtle suggestions starting in kindergarten that I put Cole on Ritalin, he and I refused. But the section on video games seemed to hold exactly the answer I was looking for. Cole loves video games – a love bordering on addiction.

According to Sax, the video game addiction is an indicator of the “will to power” personality. This term, coined by Friedrich Nietzsche, describes the desire to control one’s environment. Sax argues that the “will to power” is among the basic, immutable personality traits, trumping other basic impulses like the will to please. In video games, you experience control — often of a vast, complex world that requires lightning-fast reflexes, nuanced decisions, extensive memory, and ruthlessness. In fact, games are one of the few places Cole achieves what brain researchers call “flow” — where your mind is so engaged you lose track of time.

I had long been responding to this aspect of his nature without having a name for it.

In the fourth grade, for example, his language arts teacher warned me he was failing so I called a meeting. She handed me proof: a test where he’d been asked to write a response to a prompt. She had given it an F.

It was good — and not just the grammar and spelling: he could write a lead, build suspense, and tell a joke. “What’s wrong with this?” I asked. “This is good writing — even for an adult.”

She handed me the rubric she had been teaching from. It stated a sentence had to be six words long. “He used a two-word sentence. I am not trying to teach good writing,” she informed me, the irony apparently lost on her. “I have to teach him to write to that rubric so he can pass the EOGs (end-of-grade tests).” I pulled him out of this school shortly after.

At home, Cole looked at the test and shrugged. “I don’t care what she thinks,” he said. “She calls adjectives ‘sparkle words.’”

“It’s not writing,” I agreed. “And she’s not half the writer you are. This is a word game. And these are the rules.” I handed him the rubric. “I thought you were good at word games. She thinks if you can’t play this game you won’t be good at the EOGs either.”

He glanced at the rubric and nodded. I left it at that. And he went back to his computer game. But he got A’s after that — and top marks on the EOGs.

He may not be interested in pleasing teachers, but he’s always up for winning a game.

School is for girls

“What should I do?” I asked Sax.

“There is only one solution,” he told me. “Enroll him in an all-boys school where the teachers know how to handle this personality.” Not only are the schools he endorses same-sex, but the teachers at the boys schools understand that boys respond to competition and sometimes need to lead. They get the concept of will to power and use it as a teaching tool.

Unfortunately, there is no such school where we live and I can’t afford boarding school. I pointed this out.

“You will have to move,” he answered without hesitation. I could hear him typing and looking up the school closest to us, which turned out to be three hours away — and full. I thought he was joking, so I laughed. There was an awkward silence.

“This is your son,” he said. “I moved so my daughter could go to the right school. You have no choice. If I thought there was another way, I would not have founded the National Association for Single Sex Education.”

I have changed Cole’s school a half-dozen times without success. Although the debate on the pros and cons of single-sex education continues, I’m willing to believe Sax might be right about my son. But Cole likes his school – in no small part because there are girls there – and none of us want to move. I made a note of this idea as a possible last resort. But I searched on for a solution that fit our lives.

Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail, saw no easy solution either. “I hate to say this about your son,” he said. “But, at this point, he is not likely to achieve his dream of studying engineering at a good school.”

“I dropped out of high school,” I countered. “But I went on to a good college — after a semester at a community college — and have achieved most of my dreams.” I explained that I went to an experimental high school designed like a college. It lost funding in my junior year and closed but I couldn’t face the prison-like atmosphere of my only other alternative. So I got a GED at 16.

Whitmire listened with interest to my story. But he insisted, “You didn’t want to study engineering. And you didn’t have the experience your son is having. He is learning that he can’t do this. It sounds as if your journey had the opposite effect.”

Whitmire has spent years examining the appalling number of boys who don’t do well in elementary through high school and then go on to do poorly in college, if they go at all. This trend has been going on for decades. At this point, in some colleges, he told me, girls outnumber boys by two to one.

The problem, he says (along with Sax and many others) is that academics have been pushed into children’s lives earlier. Kindergarten is what first grade used to be. Girls are often ready to read at this age. Boys? Not so much. So from his very first school experience, a boy senses school isn’t for him, a feeling that worsens as the years drag on. Schools, which once left girls falling behind in math and science, have been revamped to be more verbal. This has helped girls. But boys aren’t as verbal and tend to tune out when there’s too much talking. Homework is another problem: in general, girls do it, boys don’t.

In fact, it was the failure to turn in homework that accounted, for the most part, for Cole’s current grades.

Don’t push the homework button

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, a clinical psychologist, wrote The Homework Trap because it was the book he wished he’d had when his son was in school.

“Imagine Pavlov’s dog,” Goldberg told me. “Pavlov taught the dog to salivate to a bell by using positive stimulation. And they teach rats to push a button the same way. But you can also teach the rat not to push a button with negative stimulation. That’s what we are doing to these boys (and girls) with homework.”

Some students are fine with homework. But for others this nightly ritual is hell. Maybe they didn’t pay attention in class so they don’t know what the homework is or how to do it. Perhaps they have trouble sitting still again after a long day in school. Some have a low-level learning disability, which leaves them disadvantaged when it comes to processing information that’s spoken out loud. (Boys are much more likely than girls to have one of these.)

Whatever the reason for the student’s difficulty with homework, it’s a big part of school. So concerned parents spend hours on it every night. We lose family time, pleasant after-school activities, and the harmony of family life. It becomes a war between parent and child to get this essential work done.

“People work in containers,” Goldberg says. “We go to school for five hours. We go to work for eight. But a homework-trapped student has to do homework until it is done or everyone is too exhausted to care.”

I thought about all the fights Cole and I have had over the years about homework. It seemed pointless — and cruel.

The solution? “Set a fixed amount of time for homework — ten minutes per class is a good amount,” says Goldberg. When the time is up, he’s done. The idea is that over time you’re changing how your child approaches and feels about homework. Eventually, says Goldberg, Cole will be able to complete all his homework without the usual strife. (Ideally, you work with the teacher to devise a homework solution that works while you’re retraining your child to approach homework differently.)

Would this solution work? And would we get cooperation from the school? We’d have to see.

Let’s make a deal

I would like to give up on this system that’s teaching my son that he can’t succeed and enroll him in a virtual school at K12.com or Connections Academy — or move so he can go to an all-boys school. But Cole wants to stay in this school. So we settled on a plan to get him caught up: if he fails, I get to choose.

I printed out a list of all the missing assignments and tests. He grabbed at it, gratefully. He hadn’t been paying attention and had no idea what was missing.

Then I asked my mother to stop by every afternoon after school. She has never been part of the homework battle, so I thought she might be a more effective person to help him get through it all. She read while Cole plugged away online at the Khan Academy, quickly getting up to speed on chemistry and algebra. In Salman Khan (at the Khan Academy), Cole discovered a math and chemistry teacher he could relate to, as I thought he might.

He also did his best to impress his grandmother with his dutiful attention to work. Though she didn’t do much but sit observing, occasionally she’d gently redirect him back to his studies if he strayed. She stayed for one hour. Once she left, homework time was over. He could do more work if he liked, and sometimes he would. But that was up to him.

One thing was clear: this new method was working. Suddenly, homework wasn’t something Cole put every ounce of his intelligence and effort into avoiding. With a hard stop at the end of an hour — and a lot of work to do — it was easier just to do it.

Cole started turning in piles of homework. He started to look less hopeless. One Sunday when my mother was visiting, he came out of his room, hugged her, and said, “Thanks to you, I got the highest grade in class on my chemistry test yesterday.” His familiar look of failure was starting to wash off. Three weeks later, we got Cole’s report card: Three C’s (math, chemistry, and civics) and a B+ (creative writing, previously his lowest grade.)

He passed. But his GPA will never recover — unless he goes to summer school, retakes those classes, or switches to a virtual school.

We sat down together to look at his bittersweet victory. I made it clear that we were all impressed by what he had accomplished. “Learning honors chemistry in three weeks is no small feat,” I told him. “Not many people could do that. If you had started sooner, you might have made the honor roll.”

He nodded. “I lacked initiative,” he told me. “But I learned my lesson.”

Did he? “He’ll be fine,” Tisha Green Rinker, Connections Academy’s senior manager of school counseling told me. “I’ve seen pregnant kids who dropped out at 15 come to us, get a high school diploma, and go on to college. Cole has something none of those kids — or many of the ‘numbers’ your experts are looking at — have: you. You care. You believe in him. And you are willing to do what it takes to help him figure it out.”

She’s right. When I dropped out of high school, I could easily have become a statistic used to support a theory. Many of the experts I spoke to would probably have predicted an unhappy outcome for me. Still, my mother encouraged me to follow the path that was right for me. Finding my way to college by going outside the box may have been one of the most important lessons I learned as a student.

As the parent of a struggling boy, though, it’s not always easy to feel so sanguine. Faced with so many disheartening statistics about failing boys, no parent can afford to sit back and have faith that their care will be enough to pull the kid through. I still don’t know if Cole will achieve his dreams — or anything at all — but I choose to believe in him. It’s not even really a choice. I refuse, am unable, to see him as one of these dire statistics. Not today. Probably not ever, however things turn out.

I’ve learned a few things in all these years of helping this boy survive school: even when he seems not to be, he is listening. Even when he says he’s got it, he needs help finding a solution he can’t see or a way to reach a goal he’s given up on.

But the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that people who tell me what this boy can’t do are usually wrong.

I’ve been told he can’t take tests. (He aces them.) That he can’t pay attention without medication. (He’s fine. Pick up the pace!) That he will bring down the class EOG average. (He often gets the highest score.) And that he can’t handle the workload. (Honors Chemistry and Honors Algebra 2 in three weeks! You try that.)

So here’s what I say to ‘He won’t achieve his dreams’: how about we wager some money on that?

 

 

 

Next School Holiday

Monday, Nov. 11, 2019

Nov. 25 – Nov. 29 Holiday Week – Thanksgiving

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.

Lunch Menu Week of Nov. 11, 2019 – Nov. 15, 2019

Mon – Holiday

Tues – Pizza (this is a change)

Wed – No Meat Spaghetti

Thurs – Chicken Corn Dog

Fri – Beef or Veggie Burger

Sick Students

Just a reminder: Please keep your child home if he or she is sick or has a fever. We had many sick children last week and several were given tylenol prior to coming to school in the morning. These illnesses/viruses are very contagious and we are trying to stop them from spreading. Children must be 24 hours free of symptoms and fevers before returning to school.

Good news! There is now a “Give Credit” function within the app. If you are not seeing this function, make sure you have the most updated version of the app installed.

The “credit” button (star icon) shows after you take first image. A blank field appears that allows up to 50 characters to be typed. Type in your student’s classroom number to give credit.  This field may auto-fill after the first entry; make sure to update it if necessary (such as if someone is supporting more than 1 child at same school, etc.).

NOW HIRING:  Spring 2020 Head Athletic Coaches-

Boys Volleyball:  https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1228598

Softball:  https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1228598

Preschool: 1st Annual Trunk or Treat

We are so impressed with out TLC families and students!  Our first ever Trunk or Treat surpassed all of our expectations!  Thank you for all of your hard work and CREATIVE decor!  We truly have the best parents!  

Just in time for the holidays!  Be sure to join us on our Facebook page for our online book fair here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2529309570492069/ 

The book fair will be open for 24 hours, so if you cannot be present on Monday night at 8pm you can still view everything the following day and place an order. If you would like to just order directly from the website, you can do so starting today here: https://b8031.myubam.com/1424453 

 Initial Phase

• Don’t forget there will not be school this Monday, November 11th for Veterans Day. Enjoy your extra day off!
• REMINDER: We are doing our best to keep everyone healthy but we need your help. If your child is sick please do not send them to school. Students MUST be fever free AND symptom free WITHOUT medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. Please do not send them to school on medication to mask their fever. If we all work together we can help the spreading of germs.
• Parents: please be sure that your student has a clean change of clothes in a ziplock bag in their backpack. Additionally, the office is in need of donations of boys clothes and underwear..
• If you would like to volunteer in the second trimester (after Thanksgiving break) please return the slip with your availability. Applicants who are not already cleared in the office with Mrs. Kay will not be put into the lottery.

 Phase One:

Thank you for returning the conference sign-up sheets. We will do our very best to accommodate everyone. You will receive your assigned day/time in Red folders on Tuesday. If for any reason we assign you a time that does not work, please let us know so that we can find another time that does. It is really important that you meet with either your child’s LA or Math teacher as they will have more in depth information about how your student is doing academically.

Congratulations to all the students who met their AR goal! We will have our AR party next week. Our students will also take their Star test next week so we can give them their new reading level and next AR goal.

Phase Two:

This week our phase 2 students showed their spirit with our Red Ribbon week dress up days!  We talked about making good choices in life and how to prepare for success.  Thank you to all the parents who came out for the Halloween parade and spooky dance performance!  Aren’t our PE teachers amazing?  They did such a great job of teaching all our students the Thriller dance in PE.

Phase 2 AR goals were due on November 1st and new goals will be assigned next week.  We will also send home parent teacher conference sign up sheets.  Please return these ASAP to ensure you get your preferred time slot.  Thank you!

       

Discovery Middle School 5-6

Upcoming ⅚ Dates:

November 11th: Veteran’s Day – No School!!!

November 12-15th: Teacher/Parent Conferences (you should have already received something from your child’s homeroom teacher with your date and time.)

November 12-22nd: DCS Read-A-Thon Science Camp Fundraiser – Flyers and accounts will be set up on 11/12 (ALL grades will be participating!)

⅚ Discovery Top 5 Nest Point Earners:

Falcon Pride!!!

Peregrine:

Kestrel:

Saker:

Amur:

Mr. Dougherty’s DCS Trimester 1 Music Concert was a HUGE success!!! Congratulations to everyone on a job very well done!

Mrs. Zuniga/Mrs. Bengson’s Math:

*Note for all classes: I will begin to give students the outline of each unit at the beginning of when we begin. I believe it will help students to prepare themselves for what is coming up next.

Varsity: We have moved into our division portion of unit 2. Students are beginning to remember the steps of division and have used manipulatives to gain a conceptual understanding of the concept.

Scholastic: Students are moving into solving equations after finals.

Honors: Students took their final and then ended the week with their quiz on operations of scientific notation.Polynomials are the next concept they will be learning and is very similar to our work with monomials.

Mrs. Nijjar’s Math:

Varsity: We started this week by exploring strategies to divide multi-digit numbers by a two-digit divisor. In addition, students reviewed the concepts learned in this trimester and took the Finals on 11/5.  In the coming weeks, students will be working on Properties of multiplication.

Scholastic: This week students reviewed the concepts learned in Unit-1 and 2and took the finals on 11/5. In the coming weeks, students will be learning about repeating decimals and prepare for the Unit-2 test.

Honors: In this week, students learned to solve Absolute Value inequalities and took the Unit-2 test. In the coming weeks, students will be learning about graphing linear equations and inequalities.

Ms. Rodieck’s Language Arts and Humanities

Trimester 2 has started.  One of the first big assignments is a carry over from Trimester One.  Their second book club book report is due Tuesday 11/12.  Each trimester, students are to read two books independently and do a project on that book.  They will be getting their first Trimester-2 books in a week (in time to read during Thanksgiving Break).  

We are continuing to read, discuss, and write about Fever 1793.  This week we added Direct Objects to our sentence diagrams.  Next will be conjunctions, then imperatives and interrogatives.  Weekly Power Words (Vocabulary) will continue until Winter Break.

During Trimester 2, as we turn to more Editing and Revising, rough drafts will be started in class and finished as homework – this could even include Varsity (if they are not finishing their work in class).  This is so we can spend class time editing and revising not only our own work, but each other’s work.  Cooperative Collaboration is the next SWO and helping each other with our writing is a cooperative collaborative skills.  

Language Arts with Mr. Harding

We have completed Trimester number one! We have refocused for Trimester two, and have not missed a step. Our novel unit is progressing, and we are learning about how people maintain their wellness in adverse environments. We are learning about life in the late 18th century, which means we get to learn new archaic words.

We will be writing more, reading more, and will have more projects to complete this Trimester. I will grade Ebola essays by the end of the weekend so that we can begin revisions. I look forward to seeing a tremendous improvement from the Love That Dog essays.

Social Studies with Mr. Bird and Mr. McCarthy

This week in social studies, our Falcon scholars are continuing to learn about ancient Egypt. They are focusing on the daily life in ancient Egypt and understanding how Egyptian’s social classes affected their daily lives.

On Halloween, we started the day with a fun minute-to-win-it game! Students were randomly selected to come up and select other students to be wrapped up like a mummy using toilet paper. The class voted on the best looking mummy after having one quick minute to finish. Take a look at the pictures below of a few classes having fun with this short activity!

All classes finished preparing for their act-it-out presentations and the Government Officials groups presented first. Below is a picture of the Government Officials group from Honors 1 presenting their banquet to the class and sharing facts about their social class:

After the presentation, students read more about that social class and answered a few questions to check for their understanding. Students will continue to present throughout next week before learning about the kingdom of Kush.

Science with Ms. Diaz:

Greetings scientists! This week the kids went from being science students to science professionals as within groups, they created their own lab/research company and conducted their own, minimally guided investigation. The research topic was to determine which solutes make solutions and which merely remain as mixtures. The group lab report that they will submit will be in the format of a “research” report, including their company name and logo. Reports will be judged Shark Tank style and one group from each class will be “granted funding” to continue their research. Check out the pictures below to see great minds at work! To conclude their Mixtures and Solutions topic, they did a mini-experiment to determine methods in which to separate a sugar solute from a water solvent. Friday was the last day of Trimester 1, so one down and two to go! *High Five!*

Next week we will work on and submit the research reports and will also be starting studies on our solar system.

Last but not least, come one and come all to check out the DCS science blog site at: www.tlcdiscoverychannel.weebly.com. No new articles to show off but there are still many available to be read. Prepare to be SCIENCED!

Awesomely, interesting announcements:

• The next SWO (timeline) is due Nov. 11th
• Please don’t forget to check Google classroom and/or the science class website regularly with your student
  Google Classroom Hon/Scholastic code→ jp9wlua
  Google Classroom Varsity code→ 8d4s9b
  Science class website: https://diazdoesscience.weebly.com 

Mission to Mars:

• Next payment is due Dec. 4th. Your balance needs to be $600 or less to stay on time with the payment schedule.
• Next parent meeting is Tuesday, Nov. 19th, 6pm, D9 DCS building

Rube Goldberg:

• Practice/Workshops are Mondays/Tuesdays/Thursdays (4-5pm, picked up by 5:15)
• Competition Friday, Dec. 13th

Stay curious & keep exploring!!!

Discovery Middle School 7-8

• No School November 11th in Observance of Veterans Day
• Parent Teacher Conferences begin November 12th in the DCS Hallway
• Menu Change- Tuesday Nov.12 will be pizza, not chicken taquitos.
• Thanksgiving Breaks begins Nov. 25th and students return to school Dec. 2nd

Week 13 Top 5 Nest Earners!

 

Leadership:

Congratulations to team TYSL who won our Discovery intramural sports!! They beat out Team Barcelona during penalty kicks after both teams had scored one point each during the game. Their trophy will be placed proudly in our soon-to-come Discovery trophy case upstairs! Congratulations to these boys and all our students that participated! Stay tuned for next month when we begin basketball!!

October/November Wall Decorations:

DISCOVERY ATHLETICS

The 6th Grade Girls basketball team defeated North with the score 29-12. The girls improve to 4-0 on the season. They will play Monte Vista @ The Boys and Girls Club gym on Wednesday, November 13th at 3:30pm.

 

The 7th/8th Grade Girls basketball team lost to Monte Vista’s 8th grade team with the score 30-48. The girls fall to 2-2 on the season. They will play Williams @ Williams on Wednesday, November 13th at 5pm.  

 

Technology with Ms. Ferguson:

Over the last several weeks the Technology 5-8 students have been busy!  

There are two main projects that the students have been working on over the last 3-4 weeks.  The first project is the Create Your Own App project.  For this project, the students were paired up and asked to create an app within Google Slides.  The purpose and topic of this app were of their choosing!

During the course of this project, the students utilized their skills in Google Slides that they have learned throughout their trimester with me this year or in the previous years that they may have had my class! They also learned a new skill inside Google Slides where you can link a website or another slide within the slideshow to a picture so that when they are presenting their projects they can click on a picture to open up a website they would like to display or change to a slide that is not in sequential order.

Check out this picture of one of our 7/8th-grade pairs working on their project and a snapshot of their completed app about how to survive natural disasters!

The second major project that the students have been working on is their final project for this class.  This project is related to the TV show Shark Tank!  The students were to pick from a list of inventions from the TV show or create their own invention and do specific research on this product to create a slideshow.

The 7/8 honors class was also challenged to create a commercial for the product of their choosing and present a pitch to a panel of “Sharks”.

This week is currently the last week of the first trimester, so these classes will be moving on to Art with Ms. Losen and my next group of students will be those that are currently in Choir with Mr. Dougherty. It has been a great first trimester with the kids and I look forward to the new group of students that I will start with on Tuesday, Nov. 12th.

Spanish with Ms. Polo

This month Trimester 2 we will be working on C, Ch, D, E, F, G lectura (readings)

C and Ch start off the trimester with 2 oral quizzes; one on C or Ch and the other on worksheet el alfabeto

There will be one test on 4 worksheets before Thanksgiving break: it will be on el alfabeto, C & Ch, and Un Cuento in Spanglish

Your child should know their Spanish alphabet by now, all 30 of them!

We will be doing classroom objects, dates, months, vocabulary, greetings, and Number 0-31

Art with Ms. Losen:

This week in art students completed and presented a final capstone project of their choice. Some students edited and polished short films, some created intricate acrylic paintings, some explored multi-media, some created hypperrealistic drawings, and still others baked unique food.

Physical Education:

Students are having a Blast “Finishing Up” of their “First Trimester” & The Contiuation of the playing different types of “Lead Up Games & Overall Skills” to Soft Tennis in Coach Williams Class, Speedball in Coach P.’s Class and Olympic Handball in Coach Levand’s Class!  Here are some picture from this week for you Parents/Guardians to Enjoy!!!! 🙂

Also, as a friendly reminder, please remind students that they should be bringing extra socks & warm clothing to PE as the weather is changing & also 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

---

Millennium High School

Congratulations to our top nest point earners this week!

We celebrated these students Wednesday morning at Unity.  Their reward was their choice of t-shirt, bucket hat, water bottle, or fanny pack from the student store!  Two of our lucky winners are pictured below.

Scott Malsack, Saker (9th), 575 points; and Natalia Chavez, Kestrel (12th), 360 points; Not pictured: Vivian Luera, Amur (10th), 445 points; and Xitlali Reynoso, Peregrine (11th), 330 points. Vivi and Xitlali were not in attendance due to taking their PSAT — great hustle, ladies!

ACTIVITIES

Band and Guard

Saturday was an exciting competition day for our marching band.

Overall, the band took an outstanding 1st place for our show!

Colorguard took 2nd place.

Percussion took 2nd place.

Woodwinds took 1st place. (we compete in division 2A but the woodwinds are scoring so much higher than everyone that they are scoring in the 6A division range!)

Brass took 1st place.

Ximena Garcia, our drum major, had an especially great personal night as well. Drum majors are scored across all divisions. Out of ALL the bands that attended (divisions 1A-6A) Ximena was awarded 1st place drum major!

We are so proud of Ximena and all the members of band and guard. Congratulations to Mr. Zepeda and the amazing Falcon marching band and colorguard!

Speech and Debate 

Back row: Christian Silva, A’Ni Clepper, Grace Bhatia, Scott Malsack, Danica Knowlden, Arianna Billings, Lucy Lamanna; Front row: Anton Souza, Anahi Rodriguez, Shika Acolatse, Logan Malsack, Lilliana Zapien

12 members of our Speech and Debate team competed at a prestigious collegiate invitational at University of the Pacific last weekend. There were over 1,000 competitors from three states on the UOP campus, and the tournament was both Saturday and Sunday. Congratulations to the following students on their top 20 placements in their events:

• Arianna Billings, 20th, Novice Oratory
• Lilliana Zapien, 14th, Novice Oratory
• Lucy Lamanna, 13th, Novice Oratory
• Danica Knowlden, 8th, Novice Dramatic Interpretation
• Anton Souza, 13th overall, and 5th in his semi-finals round!, Novice Impromptu

THIS WEEK IN MHS Physical Education…

This week Coach KV’s classes have started our Speedball unit and Coach Easterday’s classes have started Lacrosse. We are learning about the history, developing skills and how to play the game.

YEARBOOK ORDERS and SENIOR DEDICATION AD ORDERS NOW OPEN!

Yearbooks are on sale now! Yearbooks are $75. Now is the perfect time to order a 2019-20 yearbook for your student. We look forward to yearbook delivery day, May 15th. Orders are open through April 11th. Click HERE to go to our convenient online order center! Or you may go to yearbookordercenter.com and enter code 21362. You may also pay by cash, check, or card in the front office or by contacting Miss Lamanna, blamanna@tracylc.net

Senior Dedication ads in the yearbook are available and can include photos alongside a personal message to your son, daughter, or teammate. There are a limited number of pages available, so act quickly. The deadline to place an ad is 3/15/20. Credit cards accepted! If you have any questions, please direct them to blamanna@tracylc.net.

NEW FEATURE: FALCON CULTURE SPOTLIGHT

Left to right: Taylor Gonser, Emma Sales, and Alondra Camarena

Emma

Hi, my name is Emma Sales, and I am a senior here at Millennium. Taylor, Alondra, and I have created this feature for parents and students to be able to meet other students and learn about their culture and history. We will soon be adding a tab on the Falcon website as well. Every 1-2 weeks we will interview a student and share their story in the Charter Chatter and our Twitter Page, @falconculture.

A little about me: I am Filipino American and my family immigrated from the Philippines to California and Hawai’i. I wasn’t always proud of my heritage because I had never seen my culture in movies or media, but I am going into the film industry hoping to change that. One of my favorite things to do is make Lumpia with my family because although it is a lot of work, we have fun bonding over dinner table. I am incredibly grateful for the challenges and sacrifices my family has overcome because I wouldn’t have any of the opportunities I have today without them.

Alondra

Hello! My name is Alondra Camarena and I am a senior at Millennium High School.  I have been a part of Tracy Learning Center since kindergarten and can truly say it is my home away from home.  A little bit about my background, I am a proud Mexican-American womxn; while I was born and raised in the United States, my parents immigrated from Mexico to America to strive for a better life.  I grew up speaking Spanish and eventually learned English by the time kindergarten came around.  Being raised in a Mexican household has taught me valuable life lessons about the importance of family and appreciating what you have.  One of my favorite activities to do with my family is barbequing or “carne asadas” (as we like to call it) and enjoy each others company by sharing stories and having good laughs.  My parents sacrificed so much to make sure I am where I am today, and I will always be thankful for the love they have given me and I hope to share that love throughout our school.

Taylor

Hello, my name is Taylor Gonser and I am also a senior at Millennium! I am mostly European and I have close family that lives in Denmark. Even though it is rare, I love visiting with these family members because I get to learn more about my family history and Danish culture. I also have Mexican family whom I visit quite often. My favorite thing to do with my family is to celebrate the holidays with everyone and make traditional food dishes. In everything I do, I strive to represent my culture well.

Athletics

Interested in donating to the Athletics program?  Here are 2 great opportunities!  If you would like to help us purchase the padded flooring for the weight room we hope to have open by winter, you may donate here (We are just about $10,000 shy of FULL completion!!):  https://www.gofundme.com/f/falcons-weight-room

Weekly Schedule (Girls & Boys Soccer, Girls & Boys Basketball): 

STAY TUNED for winter sports!  THIS WEEKEND, 11/9, Cross Country will head out to Frogtown for Subsections!!  Let’s go Falcons!!

Sports Scores to be continued:

NOW HIRING:  Spring 2020 Head Athletic Coaches-

Boys Volleyball:  https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1228598

Softball:  https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1228598

Meet The Coaches!

  Coach Reyes is entering his 7th season as Head Coach of the Millennium Lady Falcons Varsity Basketball team.  In the previous 6 seasons, under Coach Reyes the Lady Falcons have reached the CIF Playoffs 3 times, each time advancing to the second round, including the first ever CIF playoff win for Millennium High girls’ basketball program.  Coach Reyes has coached high school varsity girls, and junior college basketball for 30+ years.   “Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise” -Michael Jordan

For donations towards Millennium Athletics in general, you can go here:  https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=JV4bGcCRYeBxsAoeIm9378Hq0cPdQ5v5cVuYxrIDCxod5qM0FM8eQcBKQ-YhqrA_hGj2tG&fromUL=true&country.x=US&locale.x=en_US

Follow Millennium Athletics on Social Media:  

-Instagram- @Millennium_Athletics

-Twitter- @MHS_Falcons

-Facebook- http://www.facebook.com/BalsamoPE

We appreciate your continued support!  FALCON PRIDE!!

Upcoming Fundraisers for Athletics:

-Daddy Daughter Dance: December 14th, 2019

-Mother Son Dance: February 8th, 2020

COUNSELING NEWS!

MHS Counselors, Mrs. Schaffran and Ms. Moore had the pleasure of visiting Discovery 7th and 8th grade students this week to discuss high school life, graduation requirements, and the enrollment process for incoming 9th grade students. We brought several of our Falcons with us to conduct an information panel to help answer student questions about being a high school student, specifically at Millennium. Discovery students asked excellent questions and were quite a captive audience!

 

Interact Club celebrated World Interact Week on campus with a birthday party AND a donation drive to help Interfaith Ministries. It’s not too late to send some items with your students to donate. We are collecting reusable grocery bags (plastic, paper, or fabric), New socks of all sizes, and empty egg cartons. Each year, Interfaith reaches out to hundreds of families. Donations are still being accepted through Tues Nov 12th. Send the items with your child and they can drop off in the counseling office.

Our 2nd field trip of the year was great and we couldn’t have asked for better weather in Santa Cruz! The trip to UC Santa Cruz was an informative walking tour of college campus life, academic departments, and student services available. There will be another college field trip scheduled in the Spring (Colleges to be determined) and also an annual College Fair in early May. Tours are highly recommended for any student considering applying to a college campus.

Thank you to all future college early start students who met the deadline this past Monday and submitted their registration forms. After the forms are approved, they will be given back to the student the week of November 18th with instructions on how to proceed. Online registration will take place during the Thanksgiving break, therefore it is important that the students receive step by step instruction on how to complete the registration process.

TLC Charter Chatter

 

Nov. 1, 2019

Virginia Stewart                                            

The day after Halloween reflections

It was so wonderful to see our little ones dancing and showing off their costumes to their parents in our Phase Level Unity shows.

Then at 11:00 our preschool students had the time of their life visiting the TRUNKS of families for their own special trick or treat.  All of the parents in the parking lot displayed creative and musical trunk decorations that made the trick or treating so very special for our babies.

It was also great to see our middle school students being so proud to usher our little ones upstairs to the big kids’ rooms for a special classroom visit for trick or treat.  (It is very special to visit up there!)

Nice to see teachers from each room dressed up in a theme as well.  It was certainly a festive occasion.  Most of all, it was parents celebrating a special day at school with their child.  It is so good to have those kinds of days.

That was also true this week when parents gathered to celebrate the end of a ten-week DARE course with Officer Abs.  Once again, it was parents joining with city officials, teachers, and TLC Board members to help reinforce how important it is not do drugs or alcohol.

When families and schools join together, things are better than ever! Thank you.

 

 

 

Next School Holiday

Monday, Nov. 11, 2019

Nov. 25 – Nov. 29 Holiday Week – Thanksgiving

 

 

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.

 

 

Lunch Menu Week of Nov. 4, 2019 – Nov. 8, 2019

Mon – Pizza

Tues – Mac and Cheese

Wed – Beef Sloppy Joe

Thurs – Chicken Nuggets

Fri – Beef Hot Dog

 

 

Good news! There is now a “Give Credit” function within the app. If you are not seeing this function, make sure you have the most updated version of the app installed.

The “credit” button (star icon) shows after you take the first image. A blank field appears that allows up to 50 characters to be typed. Type in your student’s classroom number to give credit.  This field may auto-fill after the first entry; make sure to update it if necessary (such as if someone is supporting more than 1 child at the same school, etc.).

                 

 

Preschool: 1st Annual Trunk or Treat

We are so impressed with out TLC families and students!  Our first ever Trunk or Treat surpassed all of our expectations!  Thank you for all of your hard work and CREATIVE decor!  We truly have the best parents!  

 

 

Just in time for the holidays!  Be sure to join us on our Facebook page for our online book fair here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2529309570492069/ 

The book fair will be open for 24 hours, so if you cannot be present on Monday night at 8pm you can still view everything the following day and place an order. If you would like to just order directly from the website, you can do so starting today here: https://b8031.myubam.com/1424453 

 

 

 

 Initial Phase

We want to thank all of the P2 families that donated supplies to our class this week! We are so incredibly thankful for your willingness to donate and help enrich our students learning experiences at school. We have lots of fun activities planned!

On Halloween, students can come to school wearing their costumes WITH regular clothes underneath. Parents are welcome for our annual Halloween parade and performance. The parade will begin at 8:30. Students will march around the main building and end at the playground for their performance that they have been working so hard to learn at PE. After this we will be heading inside so that the next grade level can do their parade. Students will participate in other fun Halloween activities throughout the day!

 

 

 

Phase One:

This week was such a fun week! It was Red Ribbon Week and each day was a fun dress-up day and the students had a blast dressing up. The classrooms discussed what good choices they can make to prepare for success. We also had our annual Halloween parade and the students did an amazing job learning their dance and performing it. We are so proud of all the students!

Trimester One is coming to an end very soon. The students will be reviewing concepts that they have learned during the first trimester of school. The teachers will be sending home a signup sheet for parent-teacher conferences in red folders. These will be due NEXT Friday. Time slots are on a first come first serve basis; we will do our very best to accommodate everyone.

Next week is the LAST week to meet AR goals! Make sure your student is reading books and taking quizzes.

 

 

Phase Two:

This week our phase 2 students showed their spirit with our Red Ribbon week dress-up days!  We talked about making good choices in life and how to prepare for success.  Thank you to all the parents who came out for the Halloween parade and spooky dance performance!  Aren’t our PE teachers amazing?  They did such a great job of teaching all our students the Thriller dance in PE.

Phase 2 AR goals were due on November 1st and new goals will be assigned next week.  We will also send home parent-teacher conference sign up sheets.  Please return these ASAP to ensure you get your preferred time slot.  Thank you!

       

 

 

 

 

Discovery Middle School 5-6

Upcoming ⅚ Dates:

November 6th: Music Concert for Mr. Dougherty’s Tri 1 students

November 11th: Veteran’s Day – No School!!!

November 12-15th: Teacher/Parent Conferences (you should have already received something from your child’s homeroom teacher with your date and time.)

⅚ Discovery Top 5 Nest Point Earners:

Falcon Pride!!!

Peregrine:

Kestrel:

Saker:

Amur:

Mrs. Zuniga/Mrs. Bengson’s Math:

Varsity: We have moved into our division portion of unit 2. Students are beginning to remember the steps of division and have used manipulatives to gain a conceptual understanding of the concept.

Scholastic: Our class has finished the first quiz of Unit 3 and will be moving into solving equations next. The students are gaining the knowledge that will prepare them for Pre-Algebra.

Honors: Students finished the operations of scientific notation. It was a great review to check if the students remembered how to put their numbers in scientific notation. Our next concept is polynomials before the end of Unit 2.

Mrs. Nijjar’s Math:

Ms. Rodieck’s Language Arts and Humanities

Monday and Tuesday we reviewed for the final, including playing games.  It gave us an opportunity to learn how to review our notebooks for quizzes and tests.  We had our Language Arts Final on Wednesday. Thursday was the Great Candy Debate.  Students first, took a side and orally shared their reasons.  They then wrote an essay that needed to include facts to support their opinions. Of course we had to do some research by actually eating Skittles and M&M’s.

Language Arts with Mr. Harding

We had an amazing Halloween week! Our essays are in and the final has been graded. We can reflect on how this trimester progressed, and plan for a better second tri. We’re going to continue our novel unit, and begin projects once we’ve officially crossed the trimester threshold. We will reflect and refocus before we move forward.

Our D.A.R.E. essay winner was amazing. I am proud of all of our participants, especially proud of those who could attend the celebration and complete the class.

Social Studies with Mr. Bird and Mr. McCarthy

This week in social studies, students completed their first quiz on Ancient Egypt focusing on the pharaohs they’ve studied and vocabulary terms. On Friday, we took a break from Egypt to learn about Diwali, the popular Hindu festival of lights. After learning about the holiday, students were able to color a rangoli or diya design for Diwali.

This week, students participated in a pyramid challenge in small groups after learning about the pyramids. They worked together to brainstorm how they are going to work together to build the tallest pyramid in the class. They used toothpicks and marshmallows to put together their pyramids – the tallest one was 16″!! Please see pictures below of students having fun with this activity.

Students in all classes will continue learning about ancient Egypt for the remainder of this trimester. The next lesson focuses on the daily life in ancient Egypt. They started their lesson with a group discussion about social structure and created a social pyramid for our school. Students will be working in groups again to act out scenarios as different classes in ancient Egypt’s social structure. Students will be able to bring props, costumes, and food next week for their act-it-out, but it is not required.

Science with Ms. Diaz:

Greetings scientists! This week students burned the midnight oil, I’m sure, because they had their Trimester 1 final on Thursday. The final covered “Science and Data”, “Forces, Motion and Energy”, and “Magnets and Electricity”. Aside from the final, students found out how mixtures and solutions are different, what parts make up a solution, and thought of examples of mixtures and solutions. They also took open notes quizzes on the material that they learned, really pushing their brains to the max. Friday was a designated SWO work day as the acrostic poem was due. It was a busy week indeed, so do give your great little scientist a hug and perhaps a nice treat (or two?).

Next week we will be doing our first mixtures and solutions experiments.

Last but not least, come one and come all to check out the DCS science blog site at: www.tlcdiscoverychannel.weebly.com. Read all about The First Ever Track Meet (Ava Moschetti), Peculiar Animals (Madison Harrison), Favorite SCPs (Harold Ferea). Prepare to be SCIENCED!

Awesomely, interesting announcements:

• The next SWO (family tree) is due Nov. 8th
• Please don’t forget to check Google classroom and/or the science class website regularly with your student
  Google Classroom Hon/Scholastic code→ jp9wlua
  Google Classroom Varsity code→ 8d4s9b
  Science class website: https://diazdoesscience.weebly.com 

Mission to Mars:

• Next payment is due Monday, Nov. 4th. Your balance needs to be $900 or less to stay on time with the payment schedule.
• Next parent meeting is Tuesday, Nov. 19th, 6pm, D9 DCS building

Rube Goldberg:

• Teams have been registered and training is Tuesdays/Thursdays (4-5pm, picked up by 5:15)
• This starts next week, Nov. 5 & 7. You MUST attend either the 5th or 7th. Thereafter, attendance is not mandatory, however this is designated time to work with your group and train.

Stay curious & keep exploring!!!

 

 

 

Discovery Middle School 7-8

• No School November 11th
• Parent Teacher Conferences begin November 12th in the DCS Hallway
• Tri 1 Music Concert is Nov. 6th

Week 10 Top 5 Nest Earners!

DCS Spirit Wear:

Our Discovery Spirit Wear is on sale once again! Students have the option of buying a variety of spirit wear and may choose colors specific to their Nest Color. The store is open from Monday, October 28th, to Monday, November 4th. Fliers were also sent home this week to all Discovery students. Please click on the link below to purchase your spirit wear and for more information.

https://www.selectspiritwear.com/shop4/pc/viewCategories.asp?idCategory=1173

 

 

 

Leadership:

Congratulations to team TYSL who won our Discovery intramural sports!! They beat out Team Barcelona during penalty kicks after both teams had scored one point each during the game. Their trophy will be placed proudly in our soon-to-come Discovery trophy case upstairs! Congratulations to these boys and all our students that participated! Stay tuned for next month when we begin basketball!!

October/November Wall Decorations:

 

 

Campus Beautification:

This past Saturday, students came to campus to participate in our 2nd campus beautification. Due to a change of plans, students spent time pulling weeds out that have grown around our discovery fence by our eating area. Students worked hard and diligently to pull out those stubborn weeds!! Thank you to all that helped!

 

 

Halloween Dance:

This week, leadership hosted not one, but TWO dances!! 5/6 had their dance on Tuesday and 7/8 had theirs on Wednesday. Thank you to all the parents who donated food to both dances; it was greatly appreciated! Check out the pictures below to see what decorations our students created.

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Halloween PCS Trick or Treating:

Below are pictures from this years PCS trick or treating in the DCS hallway!

DISCOVERY ATHLETICS

The 6th Grade Girls basketball team defeated Art Freiler with the score 23-9. The girls improve to 3-0 on the season. They will play North @ The Boys and Girls Club gym on Tuesday, November 5th at 3:30pm.

 

The 7th/8th Grade Girls basketball team defeated Art Freiler with the score 32-2. The girls improve to 2-1 on the season. They will play Monte Vista @ The Boys and Girls Club gym on Wednesday, November 6th at 5pm.  

  

A Note from Mrs. Cerezo:

In 7th and 8th we have decided to make some changes to our weekly Charter Chatter! In an attempt to be more efficient and to get the most relevant and important information disseminated to all, we have decided to feature a content area/class each week! We will follow this same pattern each week, beginning with this week. This week we are featuring Science and Social Studies in 7th/8th.

Social Studies

For the last several weeks, 7/8 has been learning about Islam and the Islamic empire. Students researched the geography of the Arabian peninsula and its surrounding areas and using their newly found information, explained how the desert life shaped Arab life and influenced their trade. Students also had to locate key places important to the Islamic Empire on a map in their social studies notebooks.

Students learned about the early life of Muhammad and the four rulers, or Caliphs, that led the empire after his death. They discussed the separation of the religion into two major branches, and how the values important in their religion were Bedouin ideals well before Islam was founded. After learned about each of the caliphs, students created paper “Instagram” accounts for the first four Caliphs and of the Ummayads and Córdoba.

Throughout the unit, students participated in warm up a activities such as heads up to help refine their vocabulary skills for the Islam unit. Next week, students have a final on the Islam unit: students are either taking a traditional unit final or creating a Crash Course video on Islam. Check out John Green’s crash course videos on YouTube to gain an idea of their videos will look like!

 

Science with Ms. Dominguez

As we get closer to wrapping up our first trimester at DCS, 7-8 Science has continued to explore the causes and risk factors of cancer as part of the 2019-2020 Academic Pentathlon curriculum. In order to understand the causes and risk factors associated with cancer, we have taken a closer look at one cause and one risk factor through the use of clips from documentaries and one project.

The risk factor that we chose to explore was “Obesity”. Through our notes from Academic Pentathlon, students learned how much of the population here in the United States is affected by obesity, and how obesity alone can increase an individual’s risk for roughly 13 types of cancer, with some of those types of cancer affecting more women than men. After learning this information, we explored as a class how we can reduce this risk through our food choices. Students were assigned over the course of two weeks to keep a food journal. For three days during one week they tracked all the food choices they make on a regular basis without considering the nutritional value of the food or buying any new types of foods from the store. Students returned to class with their food diaries, and we discussed the various items they had noted.

Next, we watched clips from a new documentary on the benefits of a plant based diet as experienced by professional athletes that hold world records in various events and sports. The students were shocked to find that the strongest man (He holds the record for the most weight carried by a human at 1200 pounds) was completely vegan. They learned about how the idea that a real athlete needs meat to perform at their peak might be mostly based on marketing.

After watching the documentary clips, students were challenged to find ways they could adjust their own diets in order to test if adding more fruits or veggies and reducing processed foods would provide the same benefits as the completely plant based diets in the documentary. Some students chose to cut out certain food groups or food items altogether (meat, bread, sugars, carbs), and some chose to try a new diet such as paleo, vegetarian, or pescaterian. They had to use the same food diary to track their food choices for another three days.

During those three days, the response of the students to their diet were fascinating and extremely entertaining. Some noted their failure to stick to their diet within the first day. Some were shocked with how much “bad food” they had been eating before changing their diet. Some even reported having more energy throughout the day, and most interestingly, doing better during PE with better times on running the mile.

Next we will be taking a closer look at the role of Genetics in cancer with projects on our own family trees and how traits are passed down from one generation to another, and a research project on selective breeding.

---

Millennium High School

Congratulations to our top nest point earners this week!

We celebrated these students Wednesday morning at Unity.  Their reward was their choice of t-shirt, bucket hat, water bottle, or fanny pack from the student store!  Two of our lucky winners are pictured below.

Scott Malsack, Saker (9th), 575 points; and Natalia Chavez, Kestrel (12th), 360 points; Not pictured: Vivian Luera, Amur (10th), 445 points; and Xitlali Reynoso, Peregrine (11th), 330 points. Vivi and Xitlali were not in attendance due to taking their PSAT — great hustle, ladies!

ACTIVITIES

Band and Guard

Saturday was an exciting competition day for our marching band.

Overall, the band took an outstanding 1st place for our show!

Colorguard took 2nd place.

Percussion took 2nd place.

Woodwinds took 1st place. (we compete in division 2A but the woodwinds are scoring so much higher than everyone that they are scoring in the 6A division range!)

Brass took 1st place.

Ximena Garcia, our drum major, had an especially great personal night as well. Drum majors are scored across all divisions. Out of ALL the bands that attended (divisions 1A-6A) Ximena was awarded 1st place drum major!

We are so proud of Ximena and all the members of band and guard. Congratulations to Mr. Zepeda and the amazing Falcon marching band and colorguard!

Speech and Debate 

Back row: Christian Silva, A’Ni Clepper, Grace Bhatia, Scott Malsack, Danica Knowlden, Arianna Billings, Lucy Lamanna; Front row: Anton Souza, Anahi Rodriguez, Shika Acolatse, Logan Malsack, Lilliana Zapien

12 members of our Speech and Debate team competed at a prestigious collegiate invitational at University of the Pacific last weekend. There were over 1,000 competitors from three states on the UOP campus, and the tournament was both Saturday and Sunday. Congratulations to the following students on their top 20 placements in their events:

• Arianna Billings, 20th, Novice Oratory
• Lilliana Zapien, 14th, Novice Oratory
• Lucy Lamanna, 13th, Novice Oratory
• Danica Knowlden, 8th, Novice Dramatic Interpretation
• Anton Souza, 13th overall, and 5th in his semi-finals round!, Novice Impromptu

THIS WEEK IN MHS LANGUAGES…

Students enrolled in Spanish 1 with Mrs. Amador recently took their unit test and the majority passed with very good grades. They continue developing conversational and grammar skills through games, songs, Quizlet flashcards, and worksheet exercises.You may want to ask your child to sing to you one of our most recently learned songs “¿Cómo soy yo? Y tú, ¿cómo eres?” or “Mambo mambo, ¿qué te gusta hacer?” These songs reinforce difficult grammar concepts such as verb conjugations and using adjectives to describe people and objects. One of their favorite games is Quizlet.Live, where they work in small groups and compete against other teams to identify Spanish vocabulary and verb conjugations. They will be working in creating a skit that they will present in front of their peers to apply and demonstrate their learning in a real life situation.

Spanish 2 students are in the process of completing a cultural research project on the country of Costa Rica during our unit related to traveling. They are thinking critically to answer go into detail about that country and to better understand the people. In doing so they had to write a short reflection to answer one of the essential questions for this unit, “Why is it important to learn about other people’s culture and traditions?”  Please ask your child in Mrs. Amador’s Spanish 2 to show you their beautiful work. They had to research, add pictures, and answer questions in Spanish in order to practice their Spanish vocabulary and grammar skills in the process. They will be presenting their work in front of the class next week.

Spanish 3 students just finished working on their 1st project assigned in this unit. They had to create a script and use the imperatives and superlatives while explaining how to make flour tortillas to an audience as you would on a cooking show. Most students have presented in front of the class already. This was a creative expression artifact and students have showcased their unique artistic skills and point of view, plus their technical abilities in their presentations. Of course, they also showed their confidence and fluency in the Spanish language as they presented to their peers while being evaluated and sharing their “Wows & Wonders” with each other, after each presentation. Below is Ms. Katie Estrada looking so professional while presenting to her peers.

   

Spanish with Sra. De La Torre

Spanish I 

We just started our new unit this week. In this new unit students learn to talk about daily schedules and time.  Students are learning numbers up to 100, which they are supposed to use with time. They are also learning to conjugate the verb “tener” to say which classes they have or what they have to do throughout the day. Students are also learning about “Día de los Muertos.” The students are watching the movie “Coco” for them to better understand the traditions of this Hispanic celebration.

Spanish II

We have been reading the novel “Casi se muere” in Spanish II.  This novel tells the adventures of Ana, who is traveling to Chile.  As we read, the students are learning new vocabulary, new grammar, and the culture and geography of Chile. The students are doing a great job at reading and translating every chapter as a class.  Every two chapters, the students are required to present a complete summary of one of the two chapters.  The students do this by memory.  First, they illustrate every sentence of their summary, and this is all what they use for their presentations.  The illustrations help them remember what they are supposed to say next.  They just finished presenting their summary this week, and they all did an amazing job!

Spanish III

We are currently covering past tense in Spanish III.  Students are learning how to use preterite tense to talk about completed actions in the past.  They are learning how to use imperfect tense to talk about what they used to do or what they were doing in the past. This week, I had students write about their childhood memories, in which they were required to use imperfect tense to talk about what they used to do when they were little. They made a PowerPoint presentation with pictures. They all did an excellent job at presenting these to the class!

ASL

ASL Level 3 using their newly acquired storytelling skills to interpret a video presentation in groups. They had a great time and we shared many laughs. Deaf Studies Professors from CSU Sacramento were very impressed with our students.

ASL Level 2 class focusing on facial expressions and use of classifiers to portray a story. Kyle Carlos, Taylor Norwood, Cat Diaz, and Tommy Duncan using amazing facial expressions to portray about two friends discussing their obsession with Chipotle.

ASL level 1 had an amazing project due this week. They’re main focus was on family discussion signs. The project was to rank their family for oldest to youngest. Project was video recorded and students had good times.

More pictures from the week.

YEARBOOK ORDERS and SENIOR DEDICATION AD ORDERS NOW OPEN!

Yearbooks are on sale now! Yearbooks are $75. Now is the perfect time to order a 2019-20 yearbook for your student. We look forward to yearbook delivery day, May 15th. Orders are open through April 11th. Click HERE to go to our convenient online order center! Or you may go to yearbookordercenter.com and enter code 21362. You may also pay by cash, check, or card in the front office or by contacting Miss Lamanna, blamanna@tracylc.net

Senior Dedication ads in the yearbook are available and can include photos alongside a personal message to your son, daughter, or teammate. There are a limited number of pages available, so act quickly. The deadline to place an ad is 3/15/20. Credit cards accepted! If you have any questions, please direct them to blamanna@tracylc.net.

NEW FEATURE: FALCON CULTURE SPOTLIGHT

Left to right: Taylor Gonser, Emma Sales, and Alondra Camarena

Emma

Hi, my name is Emma Sales, and I am a senior here at Millennium. Taylor, Alondra, and I have created this feature for parents and students to be able to meet other students and learn about their culture and history. We will soon be adding a tab on the Falcon website as well. Every 1-2 weeks we will interview a student and share their story in the Charter Chatter and our Twitter Page, @falconculture.

A little about me: I am Filipino American and my family immigrated from the Philippines to California and Hawai’i. I wasn’t always proud of my heritage because I had never seen my culture in movies or media, but I am going into the film industry hoping to change that. One of my favorite things to do is make Lumpia with my family because although it is a lot of work, we have fun bonding over dinner table. I am incredibly grateful for the challenges and sacrifices my family has overcome because I wouldn’t have any of the opportunities I have today without them.

Alondra

Hello! My name is Alondra Camarena and I am a senior at Millennium High School.  I have been a part of Tracy Learning Center since kindergarten and can truly say it is my home away from home.  A little bit about my background, I am a proud Mexican-American womxn; while I was born and raised in the United States, my parents immigrated from Mexico to America to strive for a better life.  I grew up speaking Spanish and eventually learned English by the time kindergarten came around.  Being raised in a Mexican household has taught me valuable life lessons about the importance of family and appreciating what you have.  One of my favorite activities to do with my family is barbequing or “carne asadas” (as we like to call it) and enjoy each others company by sharing stories and having good laughs.  My parents sacrificed so much to make sure I am where I am today, and I will always be thankful for the love they have given me and I hope to share that love throughout our school.

Taylor

Hello, my name is Taylor Gonser and I am also a senior at Millennium! I am mostly European and I have close family that lives in Denmark. Even though it is rare, I love visiting with these family members because I get to learn more about my family history and Danish culture. I also have Mexican family whom I visit quite often. My favorite thing to do with my family is to celebrate the holidays with everyone and make traditional food dishes. In everything I do, I strive to represent my culture well.

Athletics

Interested in donating to the Athletics program?  Here are 2 great opportunities!  If you would like to help us purchase the padded flooring for the weight room we hope to have open by winter, you may donate here (We are just about $10,000 shy of FULL completion!!):  https://www.gofundme.com/f/falcons-weight-room

Weekly Schedule (Girls Volleyball, Cross Country and Football): 

11/2- Football @ Stone Ridge Christian (7pm kick-off, played at Castle Field in Atwater)

Sports Scores from 10/25/19:

XC:  League Championship: Lady Falcons took 1st place for the CCAA!

Meet The Coaches!

  About me:  I moved to Los Angeles to attend the greatest institution of higher learning in the world, the University of Southern California.  After college, I began teaching in Compton, California, where I validated my passion for educating students and coaching. From 1998 to 2001, I coached RB’s and LB’s at San Gabriel High School. From 1998 to 2003, I coached Boys and Girls Soccer in Compton, California.  I have been coaching football at Millennium High School since 2008 and became the head coach in 2014.  Ladies and gentlemen, Coach LaVale Woods… avid Giants fan  😉 

For donations towards Millennium Athletics in general, you can go here:  https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=JV4bGcCRYeBxsAoeIm9378Hq0cPdQ5v5cVuYxrIDCxod5qM0FM8eQcBKQ-YhqrA_hGj2tG&fromUL=true&country.x=US&locale.x=en_US

Follow Millennium Athletics on Social Media:  

-Instagram- @Millennium_Athletics

-Twitter- @MHS_Falcons

-Facebook- http://www.facebook.com/BalsamoPE

We appreciate your continued support!  FALCON PRIDE!!

Upcoming Fundraisers for Athletics:

-Pancake Breakfast (Hosted by Girls Soccer) November 2, 2019

-Daddy Daughter Dance: December 14th, 2019

-Mother Son Dance: February 8th, 2020

COUNSELING NEWS!

 

Spring College Early Start:  Our deadline for College Early Start forms is Monday, November 4th at 4:15pm.  Students who do not complete all steps before then, OR do not submit their forms by 11/4, will not be permitted to take a Delta class this spring.  Please see our website for more details:  http://www.tracylearningcenter.com/counseling/college-and-carrer-planning/

The PSAT (Preliminary SAT) was administered in the Gym on Wednesday, October 30th.  We had over 100 students take the test!  When we receive results, we will hold a results interpretation workshop for students.

Millennium High School 12th Annual Community Service Fair

Millennium High School hosted its 12th Annual Community Service Fair on Friday November 1, 2019. MHS students had the opportunity to network with local non-profit organizations in hopes of finding a community service source to fulfill their community service requirement.  Millennium High School would like to thank all of the wonderful organizations that came to support our students!