• Memorial Day (no school): May 30
• Celebration of Learning: June 9
• 8th grade poetry SLAM!: June 7
• The Great Skate: June 10
• Passages: June 15-16
• 8th grade graduation: June 16 
• Last day of school: June 17 (tentaive)

The Great Skate!!

We’re so excited to celebrate the end of the 2021/22 school year with you and your families at the Northstar Village Skating Rink on June 10 from 5-9PM. Anyone and everyone is invited, we love to see smiling faces from other local schools. The theme is "Rolling into Summer", and costumes are always encouraged!

Come join in for activity booths, live music, silent auction, and more! If you bring your own roller skates, you'll get a free raffle ticket at the check-in booth. 

We can still use volunteers on the day of! Please email ptc@truckeecharterschool.org if you can help. 

We'll see you all there! 

Our plant expedition is in full spring swing! The Bell Crew has visited two farms and begun planting seeds and starts in our own SELS garden. Our recent fieldwork to River School Farm in Reno taught us a great deal about things that help plants grow—bees, compost, and even goat and chicken poop!

The kindergartners have been busy using their new writing skills to record information in their science notebooks—even taking a break-out in the field to jot down new information. What an impressive bunch of learners!

The Bell Crew has also been focused on growing their hearts and the important skill of empathy. Students transplanted sunflowers they had started from seeds to gift to their moms for Mother’s Day. And with the help of their 8th grade buddies, they created signs about kindness to be placed in the elementary courtyard. This group has been busy as bees!

Second graders have continued to enjoy our Ready, Set, Go! Expedition while looking at the science behind sports. With spring in the air and bikes, skateboards, and roller blades making their way back outside, we talked about the importance of wearing a helmet when on wheels. Students were challenged to create a protective “helmet” around a raw egg using recycled materials families kindly donated.

While learning more about baseball, students attended the Reno Aces game and filled their bellies with ballpark popcorn. They showed their school spirit by wearing matching SELS hats and baseball shirts, purchased with our Bear Walk money. In the classroom, we determined where the sweet spot of various baseball bats are by gently using a hammer to test their vibrations. By paying more attention to where the ball and bat make contact, you can transfer the momentum for a maximum drive out of the stadium and also avoid a zinger up the arm. As we wrap up the school year, students are looking forward to visiting Woodward for more hands-on science. 

Fieldwork is BACK and the Welch Crew has taken full advantage of our adventure norm. Students have jumped in with both feet with swimming lessons at TDRPD, Reno Aces Baseball, and our 1st crew overnight campout.

We look forward to our upcoming trips to Woodward Tahoe and TDRPD for Rock Climbing to round out our year. Learning to swim is a lifelong skill that is necessary for many reasons. Our children are surrounded by water with lakes, rivers, and ponds in all areas of Tahoe/Truckee. The basic skills are necessary for their safety, no matter where they live.

Our Expedition, Ready, Set, Go! took us to Education Days in Reno, where students watched a minor league baseball game and participated in educational activities at the ballpark.

Our overnight campout was a great success for students who have never been camping before with their crew, or never camping at all. We had a great evening hike on the Nature Trail at Davis Creek Regional Park, and Ranger Nick came to our campsite to share campground etiquette and lessons on animals in the area. Everyone came home tired and dirty. Mission accomplished.

The Akers Crew is on our final case study of the year, "human impact on our water and land." Our learning target is: I can explain how humans use science to protect Earth’s resources and reduce impacts of hazards. We have been researching how plastic use affects our environment and how we can help reduce the use of plastics. The students are in the process of writing letters of persuasion to a person or company of choice and explaining how plastics are hurting our oceans, lands, and waterways with science-based facts. They are also making a poster to go along with their letter, and finally, with the help of Ms. Lobo, we are creating a bear out of found plastics. 

The rest of our days are spent finishing up projects for Celebration of Learning, and we will have some great things to share! The students have been busy with geometry towns, rock cycle narratives, book clubs, and portfolio work. 

The Brisbin Crew has begun our final product for our expedition, H2Oh! How Water Shapes Land, by focusing on human impacts that are affecting our hydrosphere. Students have collected plastic trash from the community to build a bear sculpture for our campus. Our first step was to collect the plastic, then sort it by type. We also watched videos from environmental artists who have showcased similar art pieces in the Smithsonian. We can't wait to unveil our contribution to our SELS community!

What starts with an F and ends with ieldwork? The Worster Crew was so excited to be working from the field again. The "Coastal Climate Tour" was jam packed with visits to a solar farm, wind farm, Moss Landing battery energy storage plant, Watsonville Slough farm and restoration site. The crew interviewed Adrianne Kimber about solar power, Mike Jacox about physical effects of climate change on the ocean, and Yesenia Jimenez about restoring biodiversity and ecosystem resiliency. The crew was also given the challenge by choice to surf the waves at Monterey and explore roller coaster physics at the boardwalk. In the end, there was a lot of fun, learning and growing on this memorable trip!

The Santos Crew had a busy month. Between Better World Day, learning about genetic editing, planning for Dia del Niño, and completing state testing and fieldwork, we barely had time to write creative, dystopian narratives about what happens when genetic editing goes wrong!

Our fieldwork to Half Moon Bay was just what we needed to build crew comradery and learn by exploration. While we were there we got to go to the Cal Academy of Science, The Tech Interactive, tide pools and Edgewood Natural Preserve. The students enjoyed seeing organisms from different biomes and collected tons of data. We also got the opportunity to genetically edit bacteria to turn different colors. Exploring and playing brings our crew together. 

May fieldwork took McMains Crew to San Francisco to engage in the immigration experience. We traveled by ferry across the bay to tour Angel Island Immigration Station, took a self-guided tour through the Japantown district, and sampled the foods, street art, and people of Chinatown and Little Italy to better understand cultural differences and the challenges of assimilation. It was so refreshing to be out in the field again, and we all laughed a lot during silly meal-time games and campfire shenanigans with our parent volunteers!

We had our last library visit and Coffee Shop Book Discussion on the theme of high school. Eighth-grade students demonstrated more leadership by partnering with Ms. Starkey to help younger crews create their Cinco de Mayo instruments, and with the Bell Crew to make playground posters promoting kindness.

There was an air of intensity in the crew room as students dug deep to prepare genuine reflections for Passages and develop their slam poems on social justice issues for our upcoming open-mic SLAM! event at Alibi Aleworks, June 7 at 5:30. The crew is excited to end the year at Lava Beds, exploring caves and participating in rituals and ceremonies to close their time at SELS prior to graduation.