February 2 , 2023

Core values

I feel like this is a subject that hasn't been talked about enough. So today I will discuss them and what they mean. Integrity Is where you do the right thing even when no one's looking and you're honest. This is a key part in our classroom because we need people to take responsibility for when they're an adult. Excellence Is trying your hardest. And making sure you don't rush through and you do the best that you can. Citizenship Is the system where we all help each other achieve the same goal, get an education. Justice I think this is the best one of the core values. If somebody for example needs to chew gum like I do, then they can just go to the therapist's office, fill out a form and then discuss it with the teacher and the therapist and then they can chew gum as long as it's respectful. Compassion Is understanding that other people may have less control over their actions as you do and accepting that. Honor is having respect for those around us and our fellow teachers. We are rewarded for following these core values as pulling a cube. If we pull enough, then we get to have a cube party which is where we get to spend a half of the day playing board games and having fun :D. That's all about our core values. I hope this has been informative to those who are unaware  beforehand. Thank you for reading and I hope you have a nice day.

by Rory

 Bridges Science: Birds

By Ben

Here at Bridges we have studied many topics in science. We have learned about plants, animals, amphibians, and many more. We usually talk about these subjects for about a month at a time. This guarantees that we have learned a significant amount of knowledge to satisfy our interest. This month we are studying Birds! So far we have learned many things about the history of birds and how they came to be the winged wonders we see wandering the skies today. First they were dinosaurs! The giant reptile scales were great for protection but they absorbed a lot of heat. To deal with this problem, they developed feathers that could be opened up to release and fan out the heat during the hot day and closed up to trap heat in at night. Scientists believe wings were developed to escape predators at high speeds. Given this information, we can hypothesize that them    dinosaurs that developed wings had an instinct to hide, which is probably why birds survived the extinction of dinosaurs. All of this information you just read is just a taste of what mind blowing knowledge that we learn in science. And that is why science is so amazing!

Yoga 

Hi, I’m Bryson. I’m going to be talking about Yoga. At Bridges, we do Yoga in fitness class taught by Mr. Keenan. I like Yoga because it relaxes me and it feels good. One of the positions I am good at is planks. A plank is where you lay on your hands, legs, knees, and toes. Another position I am good at is the Seal, where you lay on your stomach and stretch out your back. I am also good at lunges and squats. Lunges involve putting one leg back to stretch out your calf. Squats involve standing up and acting like you are sitting on an invisible chair. I had never done Yoga before but I was curious about it and I am glad that I tried it. I believe that I will keep doing Yoga in the future.

 by Bryson

Science: Beavers

 By Dylan

In science we learned about beavers and how they make dams. When beavers make dams, it's typically in the middle of streams. The dams comprise mud, rocks, and sticks; these materials, combined with the beavers' expert craftsmanship, allow it to make a barrier to stop the water. When the water stops, it piles up and becomes a pond. This pond will attract many examples of wildlife: insects, frogs, salamanders. etc. After some time, the beavers created their own little ecosystem surrounding the pond. And here is a fun fact: beaver teeth grow 6/10 of a millimeter every day. Which is why beavers have to chew trees every day to keep their teeth from growing too big. In conclusion, beavers are cool and I'm glad that they're not carnivores. Otherwise they'd probably chew on our legs to keep their teeth growth at bay. That does not sound pleasant.

Growing the Mind with a Growth Mindset.

In growth mindset we are working on a new topic: five things that you can control. We watched a video from Rocket Kids. Five things you can control: your attitude, your words, your actions, your manners and your effort. If you really think about it, it’s true you can't control other people. You can ask them politely to do something but you can't control them. Instead, you should focus on what you can do, which is controlling yourself. You can move away and think to yourself is it really necessary to put energy into an argument or a fight, no, no it is not. 

Another thing in  the growth mindset is the Fixed mindset. You do not want to have a fixed mindset. The word fixed might make you think that it's a good thing but it's not. It means you're focused on one particular thing. Fixed mindset means you're not flexible to slight changes and you're fixated on something. In those moments, I like to take a big, deep breath, having my hands come up and then push down when I breathe out. It really helps just to calm down and think, do you want to be that person who always wants their way and is super mean? 

So in these scenarios just take a big deep breath and calm yourself down. 

By Sampson :3

Reading: The Night of the Twister 

By Madelyn 

In Ms. Pritchard’s reading class we are doing a read-a-loud. The name of the book is The Night of the Twister. It is a chapter book. It is about two kids named Dan and Arthur who live in Nebraska. Right now we are in a part where the boys are working to get back to their homes. The main character Dan is not worried but little does he know there's a tornado coming. In the first chapter, Dan explains that there are red envelopes and black envelopes. The black envelope is not good and it means something bad is coming. The red envelope means there's something good coming. Right before Dan and Arthur left to go to Grandma's house, Dan got a black envelope. He didn't think of it at the time, so Arthur and Dan went off. And then when the boys got home they were going to eat dinner at Dan's house. At dinner, Dan has a little brother named Ryan and Ryan is a baby. Dan's dad is a mechanic and that night he was going to eat dinner and go. Dan's dad is planning to go to work at Grandpa's farm and help him fix his tractor. That is all we read. In conclusion, this is an excellent book and I definitely recommend it. 

And this is Madelyn, signing out.

     ☠️  KILLER ANIMALS 💀

By Banks

 Read at your own risk… Reading Class. We're learning about dangerous animals. Also how Australia is basically a one-word Horror Story!  This week we were learning about Puma. And read the story and then do some questions like fill in the blank.We've also learned about crocodiles🐊 and  right now I'm Reading about scorpions🦂 we've learned about killer bees🐝 and giant hornets. We learned about an elephant that went haywire at the circus! Did you know there are three types of crocodile? The saltwater crocodile AKA The Salty and the Nile and then one of the other is called? I don't know. Another shocking fact is a normal bee needs 17 seconds before it attacks but a killer bee only needs about one and a half seconds.  you must be a real grumpy bee.  They must have woken up on the wrong side of the hive. So I hope you have learned about Killer animals. Hope you like my Killer Animal story! 

Reading

The Boys in the Boat

1/31/24

By Sam L.

We have been reading The Boys in the Boat. The Boys in the Boat is a true story by Daniel James Brown about Joe Rantz, a gold medal winner in Olympic rowing. We are halfway through the book and are writing about it as we go. Joe Rantz, the main character, was abandoned at fifteen years old. From there he found work poaching and selling fish and chopping lumber and ended up going for the rowing team. If he got on the team, he could pay for his school year; if not, he would have to leave. Every day he would practice for the rowing team. There are a couple hundred people that want to get on the team every year but only fortyish get on every year. Now and then we have to write about what we learned from the chapters we read. Right now we are on chapters seven to eleven and are almost done. We are also writing connections we have with the characters. That is all I have for Reading this week!

Karaoke and why you should NEVER EVER listen to anything with the word “skibidi” in it.

By Austin.

! READ THIS FIRST! →  First off, the previous website only sounded like this school is bad but it's not and the test was just annoying. This one will be like that.

So, at my school we have electives which, to get into, you must do homework (1 piece to represent each school day that week besides Friday) to get to do electives on Friday. So make sure your kids do homework (I’m sorry, fellow students, if you feel betrayed a second time (I remember one of the previous weeks with a website)). But back to karaoke. 

My elective is karaoke, where we, well, do karaoke. Today we did a ton of songs and I thought of a new type of song known as a song break (a song break is where we get to choose a song to play but no one needs to sing it unless they want to). And Mr. Zeutzius played YMCA (we’re going to the-to the YMCA-A…) and then, (thunder noise) DISASTER STRUCK. Some people left, to go to the parking lot, and I wish I went with them. Because then they played one of the WORST songs. Skibidi Fortnite. Never listen to it YOU WILL REGRET!!!!!!!!!!!

The end.

Silent Ball

 By Mati

In indoor fitness, we play a game called Silent Ball. We sit in a circle and be silent. We pass the ball to each other. We can’t pass the ball to the person directly on our left or right. You have to pass the ball to someone who is not directly next to you. The goal is to pass the ball to everyone at least once. We do this after we put all the mats away. It could be a short game or a long game. It’s also possible there’s a chance for us to run out of time. That means we won’t have any game time. I really like this game. This is Mati saying bye.

Art with Mrs. Pritchard

By Abby 🙂

What we are doing in Ms. Pritchard’s class right now is we have started a new topic, Georgia O'Keeffe. You haven't heard of this artist she is a person who made many paintings and inspired other female artists back in her day. She wanted to be an artist because back when she was young, female artists were not allowed. In fact, they were prohibited from putting the art pieces that they made in an art gallery. If you weren't done with the project before the Georgia O'Keeffe project you would have to finish the frame from the last project.

 You have to look through a few magazines Mrs. Hofeld set out for us. Ms. Pritchard wanted us to find cool textures and shapes and cool patterns. Oh, I forgot to mention that we had to make a mini window viewer. On the sides, you can open and close it to decide how much of the paper you want to show. But we just had to make it out of paper, not out of wood, like in the video we watched. Once you get the picture or half picture if it was already cut out approved, Mrs. Hofeld can cut it out. But you have to ask a student if they are willing to help you; otherwise, if the student is busy cutting out their own thing. I’ve got to run, bye!

Improv but 1.0 

By: Theo who “borrowed” ←this idea  

I'm in the improv elective “taught” by Mr. Keenan and last week there was a game. A game that was called Freeze. That game was very fun. In freeze 2 people act out a scene like world’s largest pizza pie 🇮🇹 and most of the time it ends with stabbing and it’s really dark. There is another game known as zip zap zop. I will call zip zap zop ZZZ from now on. In ZZZ you start by pointing at a player and say zip, then that player points at someone else and says zap and that player points at someone and says zop. We also play a game called “statues.” (I think) in statues Mr. Keenan chooses 3 players and then the first two players make an abstract poses and then the 3rd player names the “statue”. 

Ravens don’t fly F-18s

A hungry raven observed a snake, which was basking in the sun. “Now I shall have some lunch,” thought the raven. Swooping down, the raven seized the snake in his beak and tried to fly to a place where he could eat peacefully. In his pain the snake twisted, turned and tightly wrapped himself around the raven. Then the snake bit the raven with his poisonous fangs. Mortally wounded, the dying raven confessed that he deserved punishment. He had tried to satisfy himself at the cost of the snake's welfare. He died in no time.

Moral: you cannot succeed at another’s expense.

This was the classic Aesop’s fable’s tale. In writing class we are instructed to put our own twists onto a story whilst still using the basic skeleton of the original story. I wrote this re-telling of the original story:

Raven (his callsign) was in a squadron of F-18 E Super Hornets on patrol over US airspace at 12:52 PM. He was at 83% fuel and hungry for the kill. His squadron observed 4 Russian MiG 27s taking surveillance. They rolled over and dove, full guns and missiles blazing.

If Raven shot down one more, he would become an ace. He fired upon three MiGs and two of them went down. The MiGs used their supermaneuverability (thrust vectoring to maneuver whilst stalling) to get behind Raven.

Raven did a cobra (A cobra is when a pilot pulls up sharply to decrease speed and oftentimes get behind another plane) and the third MiG did one to meet him. 20mm cannon rounds tore right through the plane and right through Raven’s chest. A wing ripped off of the fuselage and as Raven drew nearer to the sea, he was thinking that dying was not worth that extra kill.

-Kalman’s fable

Reading: Scorpions

By Daniel

This week we started a story about scorpions. The story was about a little boy by the name of Ross Brown who was a few weeks from his first birthday. His family was coming home from a trip to Mexico. His mother and father were getting ready for the drive home. Suddenly he ran to his parents crying. His parents thought nothing of it until the crying turned to screaming. He started foaming at the mouth and his skin looked pale. And it turns out he got stung by a bark scorpion. Which is very dangerous because when you get stung it leaves no visible marks. His parents got him to a hospital before he could succumb to the poison. He got well treated and soon after that was back on his feet. We found out that scorpions have roamed the Earth for 450 million years. Scorpions also turned out to be able to survive one entire year without food and nearly a lifetime with almost no water. On top of that they can also survive being trapped in ice for a week and come back swinging. We also learned that they can survive blistering levels of heat and people have discovered scorpions 16,000 meters above sea level. That’s all I have for now, have a good day.

Art Class 

By Freddie and Tessa

Hi Guys! It's me ,Tessa, and I'm here with Freddie and we are writing about art class. I am here to tell you about what happens in art class, or sketch class as we can call it. During sketch class we have worked on shading for the last couple classes and that is what Freddie will be talking about. I on the other hand will be talking about why the students were chosen to be in this sketch class. Because they need to work on certain qualities to be in an art class. Like focusing and drawing without doodling while the teacher is teaching. How we are doing in this class is pretty good so far. We've learned a lot of lessons and learned a lot. And I am still interested in hearing what the other half of the art class is doing. I think they're doing painting and something with wax.  Back on the subject, let's see what we can do on sketching. So far, we have done some excellent art. 

Hi, I'm Freddie telling you about what we are drawing. Right now, we are working on shading and creating 3d models on paper. Shading in general is more complex than I thought. There are more than one way to shade. You can use hatching, cross-hatching, circulism, and contour lines. These are all great forms of shading. One thing you also need to know about shading is the heavier your lines are and the general quantity of lines can determine the texture of the picture you are creating with your mind powers. You can use contour lines to add depth to a shape, say you use a cylinder or a circle. You can put your lines in a configuration that will make the surface of the shape appear curved. So in conclusion draw anything you know you can. See ya later. 

Credits and stuff

Written by Freddie and Tessa

Edited my Freddie and Tessa.

GOOD BYE! Signing off from Flamingo South and Art News.

                                          Fitness?                                                                  We learned a new game in Fitness . It’s called Flinch Ball. This game is where one person, Mr Keenan, is in the middle and the rest of us are in a circle. You have to keep your  hands behind your back the whole time except for when you're catching the ball. He will try to make you think he's throwing it at you by moving his arms  but then pull it back. He’s not actually throwing it at you but he’s trying to make you think so. It's really fun, one of the most fun games I've ever played. I think everyone is probably really grateful that we get to play it. I think everyone thinks it's fun and amazing. At least I do  anyway! But before we get to play the game we have to do yoga.  It's nice that we get to do it because it gets us to stretch and it's nice we get to do it because  if we didn't get to do it we wouldn't be able to play the games at the end.  That wouldn't be very fun. We love fitness. Does it make you feel good? Do you do Fitness? Anyway thanks for listening in! Bye!!! 

By Scarlet .# #

                                \

 Ps: The question mark was just to make you read it!

Fitness On A New Level

By Adam and Nelson 

Hello! Today we are writing about Fitness again. To start us off, Fitness happens twice a week: Monday and Wednesday. Typically, we have Fitness outdoors if we can. Although if it's raining and cold it's better to have it inside, as nobody wants to stand in the rain for an hour. Although let's be honest, some of us do. If it is outdoor Fitness, the schedule includes warm-ups which are what we start with, and they're pretty fun. Typically, during warm-ups we will do Knee Raises, Windmills, Frankenstein's and other things like that. Then we go into the interval rectangle. It's a sort of competition between the Flamingos and the Ravens. You might wonder what the interval rectangle is. Well, it's a rectangle with two different speeds. You do a light jog on two shorter sides and on the other two sides you do a heavy jog. And then we go to the games. Sometimes we'll play Secret Agent Tag, and other times we'll play Here Come the Gators. Overall, Fitness is fun, and most importantly, it's on a new level. Thank you for reading.

                   Karaoke by Ethan

In Karaoke, we write songs on sticky notes and put it on the board. We picked songs and Zethus did  YMCA. It was miserable, and it embarrassed me. Alana was laughing. It was funny. In Karaoke, we have a new student who joined us. I sang some songs. We sang the YMCA song. We sang Party In The USA. In Karaoke, we do solos sometimes, maybe duets. We sing together.              

  Reading: The Westing Game

By Rowan 

The Westing Game is a book we are reading in class. It's a mystery. The plot is where a guy invites 16 people to the Sunset Towers, an apartment near a lake with 5 floors. The building is near a mansion called the Westing House. One character tells the main character a story about the Westing House. A kid made a bet that two kids wouldn’t be able to stay in the house for 5 minutes for a dollar or something like that. They barely made it in the door before they came out screaming like they had been chased by a ghost or worse. One of them ran off a cliff and the other had warm wet blood on their hands. The one who survived is in the state mental asylum and can't stop saying “purple waves.” That's a quick preview. The most fun thing about this class is we do questions and activities about the book. Another really fun thing is every time we pause and talk about the book. We think about how to solve the mysteries in the book. It's a really fun thing to do in class and I think you should read it.

   Art Time!

By: Saminam

Hieee. This week I am going to be talking about art. We just finished learning about an artist named Yayoi Kusama. She loves dots and we just finished some different dot art projects. Another thing we just finished is some painted wax paper window filters. We started out with a medium-sized piece of wax paper. We choose two paint colors. I choose purple and yellow. We used paint brushes to make big circle paint blobs with our different colors on the wax paper. We spread out the paint on the wax paper but we had to be careful not to spread too much. We wanted the marble effect with the paint. While the paint was drying, we made frames out of paper. We cut out the frames and made our own shape but it had to fit in the wax paper. Anyways, now we are working with an artist named Georgia O'Keeffe. We just started with her, so we haven’t figured out too much of the art project yet, but I know it is with an art viewfinder to narrow down what we are looking at.

Thanks for reading! Byeee :)

• Sam the Pro Artist
  
  

The Justice deal system allows students at the school to get what they need. Which they may not have normally. This can be helpful but sometimes if can be bad. Oftentimes, if someone misuses a justice system, it can be harder for that person to learn because it may distract that person from their job. 

For me, they are super helpful. I have the ability to listen to music when you are writing I use it during writing because it helps me maintain focus. it's just helpful and it is useful. I thank the teachers for these Justice deals.

by Desmond

! Word Problem Wednesdays !

By Hudson

You might ask, what's Word Problem Wednesday? Word Problem Wednesday is something we do in Mr. Keenan’s math class. It is a word problem packet. The packet has five-word problems and each week we have a different theme. For example, this week we had a science experiment theme. We also split into groups of two or four to work on the word problems. The last one is usually the hardest. The word problems range anywhere from addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication to fractions, decimals, and measurement. In conclusion, Word Problem Wednesdays are very enjoyable. 

Birds Aren't Real, Or Are They? 

By Riley 

In Science, our new subject is Birds. Also, if you're wondering about the title, I just had to. Anyway, we're learning about birds and some bits about their evolution.

We watched a David Attenborough video about birds and flight, so… my rant begins. In the Carboniferous Period, that was when most of the insects started flying. They started out by gliding. It is believed that they then developed wings to fly. Later on, early in the Cretaceous Period, the pteranodons started flying. And they stayed the primary flying animal that was bigger than your average house cat. There were still massive bugs back then which were as big as a house cat. Anyway, it is believed that they hunted in similar ways to hawks and other birds of prey. Though they were not birds. They swooped over the water's surface and snatched fish out of it. But a decent amount of them fell into the water, and that's why we have a lot of fossils of Pteranodons in lake beds. 

Later on, the Raptors began getting more feathery. Most dinosaurs at this point were extremely feathery. But Raptors started gaining bigger feathers and we don't exactly know much about the change that happened here, but it seems to have happened fast. We have very few fossils of the in-between phase. Then we see fossils of things that are almost birds but they have teeth. They later got rid of their teeth and their jaw and in its place, they developed a beak that was much lighter and made them much less front heavy. This allowed them to glide much better, possibly even making them light enough to fly. Birds then exploded in diversity when the dinosaurs went extinct. Or at least the non-avian, non-bird dinosaurs went extinct. The birds exploded in diversity, some birds even undeveloped the ability to fly by losing their flight feathers. 

Speaking of flight feathers, let's talk about those. There are a few different feathers. I'm going to simplify it a bit and just tell you about the two main types. So there are the feathers for flight and feathers to keep warm. The feathers for flight involve one side with very short bristles and the other with very long bristles. That creates an airplane wing-like shape. The feathers for warmth are more fuzzy. Ostriches have a lot of these fluffy feathers as they have lost the ability to fly, but can run fast for their larger size. After millions of years of evolution, we have the birds that are around today. Kiwis are a very specialized bird that lives on a small island and take the place of shrews and rats. It is nocturnal and a decently small bird. Its legs are about as long as your pointer finger and it's basically impossible to tell that it could ever fly. It has no flight feathers and its wings are so small that you can't even see them, but it is a bird. Birds also diversified into creatures like flamingos, ravens, and many other things. 

There you go, that is my very very short rant on birds. By the way, all that information was from that video. There was enough information for about 15 other pages. See you later.