A Message from the Director –
The good news of the week seems to be that it is possible to get off the state-county watch list and reach 14 days of consecutive no new cases of COVID. San Diego County has reached that target. The San Diego Schools are taking it slowly and not reopening right away, but it seems to be in sight. Our county is still on the watch list, but I am certain with continued mask-wearing, hand washing, and social distancing we can get back on track before much longer.
Meanwhile, the state is considering ways that EL and special education students can come back to school in person in small groups of no more than 14. I will be exploring things we could do with that permission. Some of our special needs students could benefit from in-person tutoring and some of our EL students are already coming to school one at a time for EL testing.
So the moral of this is that things are starting to happen. Meanwhile, I am convinced that the Tracy Learning Center schools are doing a great job with distance learning. We have mastered the idea of synchronous online learning and are doing much more than many of the schools around us. I believe that is the case because our staff is very dedicated to student success and they truly care about their students. As the leader. I am very pleased with the staff’s continued effort.
Finally, I am also very pleased with the support we have from you as parents. Distance learning does require a community effort. It requires parental support as well as student and teacher support for lasting effectiveness. Thank you so much for supporting your student’s learning.
Your Feedback is always appreciated. We wanted to share the results of our last parent survey with you all. Thank you to everyone that tool the time to fill out the survey, this information has been past on to our TLC Board to help us continually improve our Distance Learning and plan for the future. We will be sending out more surveys next week for staff and students. This is an important process and helps ensure everyone has a chance to contribute in our educational program
TLC July Distance Learning – Parent Survey
PCS
DCS
| Discovery Charter Chatter |
DCS Leader Announcement Board:
Please Join us!
Discovery is looking for parents to become members of our School Improvement Committee for the 2020-21 school year. Committee members will join the Discovery Leads as we discuss our schools individual Action Plan. Our Action Plan discusses DCS’s actionable steps toward whole school improvement. We are looking for members to join our team and help us to continue to improve our school!
If you are interested in joining or for more information please email Ashley Cerezo acerezo@tracylc.net or Kathy Prescott at kprescott@tracylc.net
The SIC committee meets monthly! Our next meeting will be on September 29th a 4pm
Ms. Zaca’s Leadership Corner:
Welcome! Applications were sent out last Sunday and were due to Ms. Zaca by Friday, August 21st. Students who were accepted to leadership were contacted by Ms. Zaca on Saturday, August 22nd. As of right now, Leadership will be meeting once a week, from 1:00 pm-2:00 pm on google classroom every Tuesday. Students who were accepted into Leadership have been given the google classroom code and class info in their emails. Just a friendly reminder, Leadership is an elective in Discovery and not a graded class. Questions about leadership, please email Ms. Zaca at szaca@tracylc.net.
For our first Leadership event, we are having a raffle event with all 5th-8th grade students. Check out our weekly announcements videos to see what our raffle event is! The winning prize is a $25 Visa gift card! Good luck to all students!
Week 3 DCS Announcements
Also, check out our Falcons of the Week! These students went above and beyond during our third week of school and the teachers could not be any more proud! Congratulations!
Mrs. Prescott’s Counseling Corner:
Hi everyone! Remember, I started a Google Classroom for counseling information and services: Discovery Counseling Corner. I’m offering drop-in counseling via Zoom every Monday and Friday from 1-2pm. The link is in my Google Classroom, code: qxe5cac. If there are students in the waiting room, sessions will be limited to 10 minutes and a one-on-one follow up appointment will be scheduled. To schedule time with me outside of these hours, please feel free to contact her via email at any time: kprescott@tracylc.net.
Last week, I shared a video about teens and digital drama. Who hasn’t heard about or experienced that?!? I know that while we’re all spending more time at home and not able to connect with our friends at school or in person, social media, texting, and other online activities are how we’re interacting with each other. What are you doing to make sure things stay positive? What are you doing when things turn negative or hurtful? How do you know how to walk away or tell an adult when someone has gone too far? Be sure to check out the video and share what you think. And check back on Monday for my newest topic!
***8th graders: Are you interested in joining the California Junior Scholarship Federation (CJSF)? Remember, the application can be found as a Form in my Google Classroom. All applications are due by Monday, August 31th, no later than 11:59pm! Our 1st meeting will be Wednesday, September 2nd, at 1pm. I’m looking forward to seeing what projects we come up with together.***
Study Club is Now Open
Need some help with homework or help with navigating your on-line classes, Study Club is now open on-line Monday – Thursday from 1-2 pm. It is set up through a Google Classroom – class code i4qa3ga. Click on the Meet link in the banner box to get help. Periodically, how-to videos and links will be posted to help you with Distance Learning.
A peek into our Virtual Learning Classes
| 5th/6th Grade Classes: |
Social Studies with Mr. Bird and Ms. Ferguson:
This week in Social Studies the students finished learning about the different Native American Regional groups. A fry bread recipe from one of the Native American tribes was posted in Google Classroom, please look under the “stream” section if you and your student are interested in making it! We would love to know how they turned out, feel free to share pictures with us!
The students also made digital totem poles this week! Here is an example of one of the totem poles:
Next week we will prepare for the unit test with a project and review games. The unit test will be on Thursday of next week, September 3rd.
If your child needs to locate the readings for this week and last to study they can find them in Google Classroom under the “Classwork” tab in the “Native Americans” section!
Science with Ms. Diaz and Mr. Dougherty
Greetings Scientists! What an exciting month in the lab!
This week: we took our first science test, covering the Scientific Method, sound, ways to earn (+) and (-) points and class expectations. This week has been the most interesting so far because 1) we did our first hands-on, making “singing straws” to HEAR the sound of science in action. Since we have the privilege of Mr. Dougherty’s expertise, we learned about the science in music. But the best part? Wait for it….wait for it…2) we learned that something as simple as figuring out “how to make your own instruments” has a real world application by watching the Landfill Harmonic. This talented group of students from Paraguya have the desire to play music, but due to circumstances, do not have the resources to buy nice instruments. Therefore, as a community, they collaborated with each other to take items from the local landfill to make instruments. That’s an awesome “design, science, engineering, music and environmental conservation” collaboration if I don’t say so myself (but I do).
Next week: we write-up our first lab report on the “singing straws” activity and then have the weekly quiz on Friday.
Exciting news: congratulations to our fellow 6th grade scientist, Nayomi Shih, who has been made an honorary member of the Behavioural Neuroscience Laboratory, led by Prof Andreas Heuer, at Lund University in Sweden. Click this link to see her profile: https://behavioural-neuroscience.com/team.html
Mission to Mars: The trip, rescheduled to November, is still a go, I repeat, is still a go. Over and out. If you have any questions please feel free to email me cdiaz@tracy.lc.net
Math with Mrs. Zuniga
Varsity: We learned about multiplying 2 x 2 digit numbers this week. The students also spent a class day learning how to submit their work through google forms and slides on our googleclassroom. We will be practicing multiplying much more next week and looking at 3 x 2 digit multiplication. Parents, please make sure students are practicing their multiplication facts at home as well!
Scholastic: We spent the week reviewing for our unit test. Our next unit will focus on all things decimals! This will start on Monday with an introduction to decimals before we dive into the four operations.
Honors: The students finished their second quiz of unit 1 this week. Next week we will move onto exponents!
Math with Mrs. Nijjar 
All of my students took the Davis Test this week.
Varsity: Students this week learned about multiplying whole numbers using an area model and took the quiz for the same. In the coming weeks, students will be learning about different strategies to divide whole numbers.
Scholastic: Students this week learned about properties of addition and multiplication, and took the quiz for the same. In the coming weeks, students will be learning about place value and rounding whole numbers.
Honors: Students in this week learned about integer exponents and the laws associated with exponents. In the coming weeks, students will be learning about PEMDAS and solving algebraic equations.
Language Arts with Mr. Harding
This year’s Pentathlon topic is the Cold War. It has been somewhat refreshing to go back into history and see our greatest fears still not realized. As we read about the organizations and the individual spies that changed and maintained the balance of superpowers, we are learning how fear is generated and how it affects people.
This week, we studied Cold War era propaganda from both superpowers and noticed themes. We may have a project in the near future where the students must create propaganda to promote an agenda.
Language Arts with Ms. Rodieck
During Week 4 Scholastic and Honors started Sentence Diagramming!! This is a way to practice the parts of speech and learn how words can be used in a sentence. It will improve sentence structure and overall writing. We did not have a weekly quiz this week, instead it will be at the end of each Chapter in our Novel.
Next week all groups will continue to learn about Spies. We will be learning about the FBI units that were first involved in spy hunting. And we will learn about breaking early encryption codes.
Varsity will be split into smaller groups and we will be doing small group reading instruction on Ms. Murzi’s days to help the students with their decoding and fluency skills, in addition to comprehension. On the other days, we will continue to learn about Spies and work on our writing skills.
| 7th/8th Grade Classes: |
Science with Ms. Dominguez and Coach Williams:
During Week 4, 7th and 8th grade Science started the unit “What is Motion?”, and we began this unit with some math. During this first week of our new unit, students learned how to calculate for speed, velocity and acceleration. While the inclusion of math in science was a shock at first, I was very impressed to see how students asked questions and tackled the practice problems until they started to see and understand the consistent use of the speed formula in calculating for, not only, speed; but also velocity and acceleration.
Friday, we also started our egg drop challenge! This challenge involves two goals: the first is that the egg is prevented from breaking when it’s dropped onto the ground, and the second is to slow down the speed of the egg’s fall. But there’s a catch! There’s a limited list of supplies that students are allowed to use to create their egg drop “devices”, and they have an imaginary budget of $100 (each item on the list comes with a price tag). I’m so excited to see what everyone comes up with, and can’t wait to share their egg drop videos in class!
Social Studies with Ms. Zaca and Coach Penirian:
Welcome to Jeopardy!
Now entering the Official Kitchen Studio, are our hosts Ms. Zaca and Coach Penirian!
Week 4 is officially in the books! Students finished the week off by participating in our Jeopardy game on zoom. The game was our second review game of the week (the first being on Monday with Kahoots!) to help the students prepare for their Unit Test. Students on Thursday were asked to put their knowledge of the Declaration to the test. On Friday, students began Unit 2, the Constitution. This unit will cover all aspects of our Constitution in terms of the different branches in power, learn about our first constitution, the division of power between the federal government and states, and our bill of rights. 
Congratulations to our student groups who won our Jeopardy game:
Scholastic: Chelby, RJ, Jillian, and Andre.
Honors: Justin, Emily, Ashlan, Isaiah.
Varsity: MichaelAngelo, Ismael, Osvaldo, Aiden, and Angelee.
Math with Mrs. Linarez and Ms. Losen 
This week all students played Gimkit and I am happy to announce each class earned over $1,000,000! They all worked together to make this possible and each student had great practice while having fun. The UC Davis was also administered this week. Four honors students received perfect scores on their Unit One test!
What to look forward to next week!
Varsity 2 – We will be starting our next unit, Decimals. We will be focusing on the place value of decimals, rounding decimals, and comparing & ordering of decimals.
Scholastic 2 – We will be learning about scientific notation and operations with scientific notation. Hopefully by the end of the week we can take our Unit 1 test.
Honors 2 – We will be focusing on Linear Functions. Students will be able to write an equation in slope-intercept form, then graph the line. By the end of the week students should be able to write a linear equation given two points or one point and slope.
Math with Mr. Dhillon and Coach Levand
*All students will be taking the first UC Davis test next week.
Varsity: We completed lesson 2 ( Variables and Algebraic expression ) and we will have quiz 1 on Tuesday . We will be starting with lesson 3. We are practicing basic concepts of math on IXL everyday .
Scholastic: we have completed lesson 7 Combining Like Terms and lesson 8 Simplifying Expressions (Distribute/Combine).. And lesson 9 and will haveQuiz 3 and will start it lesson 10
Honors: we are doing the review of unit 1 and then take the test for unit 1 on Tuesday
Language Arts with Mrs. Cerezo
This week in Language Arts all classes completed and turned in their second round of introduction paragraphs. We discussed what went well and which areas needed more improvement. All also continued their work with reading comprehension by reading from our class novel Spies and reading academic articles (PSAT/Newsela).
Using Whiteboard.fi (as picture below) students were able to draw their own diagrams and post their results to their digital journal. This was a fantastic way to practice sentence structure for the whole class to see and participate in.
We had our second test on Friday and will continue to develop our writing skills! We will soon move on to studying body paragraphs!
Language Arts with Ms. Greene and Mrs. Polo 
This week in Language Arts we focused highly on reading comprehension and understanding the key concepts of our book Spies. We practiced through writing summaries, stopping for understanding and reading EVERYDAY so the book is fresh in our minds.
Along with the focus on the book, we have also finished writing the second introduction paragraph and will swiftly be moving to writing body paragraphs in the coming weeks. Our first timed write went very well, this was done in class last week.
Look forward to some interesting videos on the Cold War!
MHS
MHS Back to School Night (Virtual Edition)
We will miss seeing all our students and parents but we still want to share some important information from all our MHS academic departments. Please take some time to watch the following videos and feel free to email us with any questions or concerns. Go Falcons!
Good Morning Falcons! Here are your unity announcements for the Week of Aug 31st
MHS Counseling News
2020-2021-SENIOR-ACTIVITIES-Final2020-2021-College-Calendar-Dates