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.
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/