September 22, 2023
IT: Informational Technology
By Penn
A few days ago, we did an IT class with Mr. Keenan. He taught us to write a google doc. An example of what we did is above.
He's teaching us facts and skills that we will use in the future for high school and college. Alas, the water of time flows fast, so it would help for work. In these grueling times, skills like these are helpful, considering most work is online now. These classes take place on Fridays. The assistants for the classes are Ms. Quinter and Ms. Hofeld.
Care of Magical Creatures Lessons
By Tessa In Flamingo South
In the first lesson of the Care of Magical Creatures elective, We were studying dragons. The next lesson was Phoenixes. It is really interesting to hear that there are such things as Firebirds, which are new to me. They are like phoenixes but made out of fire. We are making our Beast book so if we find one in the wild we know what Beast it is. I love Dragons and other creatures. There are different breeds of dragons and that means that not all dragons hoard treasure. That is just a certain breed of dragon that I recommend calling the hoarder, but there are different types of dragons. Phoenixes are not Firebirds just so you know. Some people get confused that Firebirds are phoenixes and phoenixes are Firebirds, but correctly the firebird is a myth and the Phoenix was also a myth but my studies have shown that the firebird was made up because of the Phoenix.
I don't know what is going to be in the next lesson on Care of Magical Creatures but I will tell you that everything belonging to the subject is very interesting to study. I also wanted to say that there are books about dragons almost everywhere. You can find them in places and you can find them online. My favorite book on dragons is Wings of Fire and I highly recommend it. This is not about the study and research of dragons. It is a book with a cool story in it but all the characters are dragons I highly recommend it because if you look at the names of the Dragons you can use that to study what their species are and the difference between how they act from each other and their different body shapes and habitat features. Phoenix's I don't really have any books to recommend on Phoenixes or Firebirds but I do want to tell you that you can find some books I think somewhere.
Care of Magical Creatures lessons are very fun and interesting and they hold a lot of interesting stuff about different mythical creatures and where to find them. We are currently studying Phoenixes and for the next lesson I have no idea what's coming as I said before but I have written a lot. I do love dragons and I know how to make dragon eggs. If you want me to tell you, look online for instructions. There are lots of different ways to get dragon eggs and there are lots of different methods and different breeds. So I will tell you not to just look at one book for inspiration. I'll tell you to look at all the different books for all the different things and needs for dragons and phoenixes.
That's Tessa signing off from Flamingo South
Color Wheel Art
In art class we are doing the color wheel monster project. First, you trace a circle onto cardstock. Then you split it into six parts and then we glued torn-up colored paper pieces onto the wheel. So far I used red, orange, and yellow. I need three more. I need purple, blue and green. When all the colors are in the wheel, we will make the eyes, legs, and arms. I will do Africa with them on paper. we're doing lots of things. Class, we cut the paper in the circle by Ethan
ECONOMIC ELECTIVE/ CATAN
BY HUDSON
At 12:00 p.m. on Fridays, the entire school has electives. I'm in the Economics elective. In, the first week of the Economics elective we watched a video about trading. We also watched another video about money. Then we learned the rules of the board game Catan. In the second week of the Economics elective, we split up into two groups. One group was for the kids who had never played Catan. The other group was for the kids who had played Catan before. Both groups played Catan until the electives were over. In conclusion, the Economics elective is interesting.
Art class by Pachi
For art class we made eyeball color wheels.
How we made it First
I got a piece of paper. Then we got a CD or a DVD. When I got the cd we traced the outside of the cd to make a circle. When we were done tracing the circle I drew lines in the circle. People were already painting their eyeballs. I had to cut out the eyelashes for my eye. By the time I was done doing my eyelashes, it was the end of the class. Fast forward to the next class. At the beginning of class, I started painting my eyeballs. I messed up a couple of times but that's okay everybody makes mistakes. Then I was done and it was the end of the class and that was my presentation.
Darby
By Daniel
At Bridges, we have a therapy dog named Darby. He is very kind. Whenever someone rings the doorbell Darby goes on high alert. That's his way to keep us safe and we appreciate him and we always want him at school every day. And Miss Pritchard takes great care of Darby and we all show him a lot of kindness and he is very fluffy. I interviewed a few students about how they feel about Darby. Freddy said Darby is the best dog that he knows. Dylan said Darby is handsome and sweet and also fluffy. And on Thursday Darby has the day off, but will he be back on Friday? Also, Abby said he is very sweet and cute when he's on high alert. Sadly on Tuesday Darby started to throw up, but the next day he was back. Apparently, he just ate something that wasn't good for his stomach. That's all for this week, have a great day!
The Holiday Express
My proposal for a field trip is a steam train ride for the Holiday Express. The ride goes from the Oregon Rail Heritage Center to Oaks Amusement Park. and back. The whole ride is around 90 minutes. You know it will be on schedule because most trains are on a tight schedule. In fact, Daylight 4449 sometimes had to go over 100 MPH to meet her schedule!
On the Friday of Sunday, Nov 26 we can depart from 2250 SE Water Ave. Portland OR 97214 at the Oregon Rail Heritage Center on the steam train ride of the year! This next part is all from memory and might not be correct because I did this probably 7 to 8 years ago: Santa goes all throughout the train cars giving out candy canes. The snacks are all around $1 (I think). End memory. The price is just unbeatable! At $31 for adults (14 years of age and older), and everybody else is dirt cheap at a price of $25 per person! The costs might even be as cheap as the air around you because I was offered this field trip by a volunteer there.
For me, the ORHC is a place of pure bliss for me, and I hope it can be for you too. If you help make this field trip possible then your kids will get to ride on a full-size steam train. I might even get my first experience as a teacher there too.
By Commercial Kalman
Social studies
So far for Social studies, we've been working on geography last year and worked on the age of exploration. And both of which I like. In geography, the class was working on how to use a compass. And we drew a compass rose.
On Monday we worked on making symbols for roads and a city that I really liked. Now what I just said is what the class worked on so far in a nutshell, but that's still a little confusing.
So let's do a bit of detail. Compass rose we've been demonstrating in the four cardinal directions. And the cardinal directions. And if mayonnaise is an instrument. I hope it was pretty obvious I was kidding, but that would be a cool discussion. Interesting to say the least. We've also made our own decorative compass roses and we've been experimenting with roads, signs, and insignias. Making stuff like that in the directions are North, West, South, East and then we have southeast, northwest, Northeast, and southwest. Overall, geography has been really fun. I hope it continues for a while and we do more fun and activities. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you like it.
Written by Sampson and Adam
Edited by mainly Sampson and Adam
Ideas by Sampson
Publisher Miss Pritchard
Flamingo math
In math class we started homework. There is a math table where kids get math. I picked subtracting 3-digit from 3 -3-digit numbers. I like getting math homework so I can learn better.
By Alana
My Second Message
By DYLAN
For my second message, I’ll be writing about the stuff that’s been happening at Bridges. Ms. Pritchard got a haircut and it looks really nice. Darby did not have the best day because he threw up four times in class. I hope that he feels better soon. My job is watering Mr. Keenan's plants and I like it. Also in Art, we've been working on a lot of things like a color wheel eye, a brain, and a color wheel monster. In Writing, I've been writing a paragraph about stars and I should be finished soon. In other news, the water jug in Flamingo South which is where I am is not working. I've also been doing good in Math and the word problems that we've been doing are really fun, just like the word ladders in Reading. In conclusion, this week was an 8.5 out of 10.
Lego
By Theo
Lego is an elective taught by Mr. E. It has lots of legos and for an unknown reason, it has 2 rival factions. But Lego is mostly about challenges so far we have only worked on mazes. Austin and I made the maze of depression. It is ‘not’ dangerous and then there is a human\minifigure catapult It is really cool and a cool castle and a shipyard and a trap for mini-figures. Remember the cool castle and the shipyard ya those are 2 rival factions and I don't know the lore but I do want to know. The catapult uses science\physics to actually throw the mini-figure or it really flings.
Math
By Madelyn
In Math I'm working on Rounding and Math Antics helps with that. Math Antics is a website with videos that we watch on our Chromebooks. It helps us learn rounding and other math. My teacher prints out math worksheets and then I watch the video. There are also exercise videos that we can do too. There's homework every night and it's one sheet every night. Tonight I have multiplication, but some nights I choose adding and some nights I do subtraction. I like math. I wish that we played games in class but we have too much work to do! We split up for Reading but we don’t for Math. Thank you for listening.
Improv 2.0
Breaking news! Improv is back, and there is plenty to be excited about, new games, and lots of dramatic roles. But Regardless, hello citizens, the name is Abiir, and welcome to this very exciting article about IMPROV IS BACK!! Oh sorry, I got carried away there. Okay let's talk about when you start Improv: First, we do crazy eights, you might know what are crazy eights, but just in case, it’s an exercise that we get our heart rates up. After crazy eights we get into the games, the first one we do is called dramatic roles, this is when you act like a character from a video game, a movie, or a book, it could be anything for the story for your role and the other person to make their role, and also you do not have to be funny, it will be funny when don’t even notice it, so there you have it folks, I’m Abiir saying PEACE OUT!
So we made color wheel eyes with watercolor. And we cut out black eyelashes and glued them on and now we are making some color monsters. It's cool and we also made some brains.
To show how we think and it is nice here and I think I'm happier now and smarter and more.
by Desmond
MATH
Math can be fun but sometimes it can be hard. I have been working on getting better at math for a long time at many different schools. I think that I am improving since starting school here. I have been doing place value, adding and subtracting, and also multiplication.
by Bryson
Math Class: Fun, Homework, and More
By Riley
I have a super fun math class. In it, we do really amazing math work and extremely mind-boggling Ted Ed riddles. Let's go back to the start. Imagine it is the first day I went to math class. I haven't done a website yet. I am just getting into math class. It's the first week of school and I find my math class is upstairs with Mr. Leonette, one of our counselors! I'm already pretty excited but then a lot of my friends are there too! We didn't do that much that day. We just did a Ted Ed riddle, but it was fun. By the way, I will do the Ted Ed riddles at the end of this website. I will put the answers to them below. Thank you for this intermission
Anyway… this is the next day of math class and now the second week of school. I go up and I continue the Ted Ed riddle. We kept doing that for two more days. Yes, it was really hard, but I did it and so did everybody else up there. Now we're getting on to when we start our normal math work. One of our equations involves pi, anyway, we go through these questions and it's extremely fun. Still no homework on Monday this week. Wow, we know we're doing even more work and it is amazing. It really exercises the mind. It's difficult math; some of the math even requires calculators. But it is amazing that now we're earning our next riddle Tuesday. This week we have just unlocked our next riddle once again at the bottom of this article. Wednesday we continue the rest of the day to continue the riddle and almost all the day I'm writing this.
Puzzle Number One: The Zombie Puzzle
You are in a lab that is on one side of a deep gorge. There's only one way to get out of the lab and that is an old rope bridge. You are an intern and you pulled a lever with a skull on it so now there are zombies after you. You have the lab assistant, the professor, and the janitor with you. You need to get everybody across before the zombies get to you. The rope bridge can only support two people. You have a lantern with you that could illuminate a small area. It is pitch black. You can only cross the bridge if you have the lantern or next to the person holding the lantern. You are the fastest, taking one minute, the lab assistant takes 2 minutes, the janitor takes five, and the old professor takes 10 minutes. They believe it'll take the zombies just over 17 minutes to reach the bridge. You need to get everybody over to the other side of the bridge and cut the ropes. You can't do anything to escape it and you have to get everybody across the gap. You can't swing on it and you can't use it as a raft, so just do it the right way.
Puzzle Number Two: The Dungeon Riddle
You and two other people have been taken into a dungeon by aliens. They will let one of you escape if that person solves the riddle. As you were taken down you noticed a bunch of hallways with doorways with an electrical barrier stopping you from going through. You sent out somebody who was the best at puzzles like this and you put a microphone in their hair. They went up and you heard a voice saying find the three-digit code on the right hallway to escape. The number has to follow this pattern: either they stay the same for example 1, 1 or they get bigger for example 1, 2. However, they cannot get smaller. All the numbers multiplied together equal 36. All the numbers added together equal the whole way number that is two hints down. They ask for the final hint: The answer is the biggest number is unique. Meaning it cannot be the same as the one smaller than it. Then you hear them escape but the microphone is out of range. Now you need to figure out how to escape. Now remember the rules and personally, I would advise you to do them in the order provided. Can you escape the dungeon?
Answers
Zombie Puzzle
You and the lab assistant travel across. This takes you 2 minutes. Then you run back, which takes 1 minute. You hand the lantern to the janitor and professor. They go across. This takes them 10 minutes. Now the lab assistant dashes over to you and you cross the bridge to safety. This takes 4 minutes: 2 for them to get to you, and then 2 to run back. The zombies are now exactly at the end of the bridge when you cut the ropes and escape.
Dungeon Puzzle
You find all the factors in 36. Now you do the thing where you make sure that they are in the correct setup. That brings it down to just seven. Now let's add all the numbers in them up. Each problem is on its own. We now have two that have 13 on them but wait! Think carefully. One is 2, 2, 9 and the other is 1, 6, 6. And remember they needed the final hint to figure it out. They knew what hallway number it was but the fact that they needed the final hint meant it had to be the one of these two. Which is it now? Let's think about the final rule. The biggest number can only be used once, meaning it has to be 2, 2, 9 in the hallway 13.
Sharing Lunch time
Writing Class
In writing class we have been doing two things, IEW and Website. Since I am writing a website right now you probably already know what that is so I am going to tell you about IEW. IEW stands for Institute for Excellence in Writing. When we do IEW we get a short story and we edit it. We begin with reading over the mini story and highlighting three primary words in each sentence that will help us remember what the sentence means and copy those words down below the story. After we do that, we begin our first draft. We have to rewrite the story enough that they will not consider it plagiarism. After that we get suggestions from Miss Pritchard or Mister Keenan on how to edit it and make it sound and look better. Then we write our final draft with all the edits and that’s it! I really enjoy writing IEW. I find it very interesting. Thanks for listening!
By Sam S.
Language Arts
By Abby :)
In Miss Pritchard’s reading group we are doing a read-aloud, Half Magic by Edward Eager. If you like magic, family, plus chaos, I think you would like this book. I already read the book but it's been a while so I don't remember most of the book. We are also doing this thing where we separate words by syllable. Then we underlined these combinations, ay, au, ai. Can you guess what these combinations say? Ok now Miss Pritchard will write words up on the board and we will have to find the word combinations and syllables. By the end of reading class we will either do Half Magic or the spelling bee. If You haven't heard of the spelling bee, it's awesome. I'll put the link down below at the end of this website. We didn't leave enough time for either of those objectives so we will go straight to math. In Miss Pritchard's classroom, I am the queen of the spelling bee. I even made a Flamingo dictionary with fictional words. (When we did the spelling bee we wrote down words that we think should exist. So Miss Pritchard thought that there should be a Flamingo dictionary of fictional words. Adam and I made the dictionary together. We still are.) Connections are also really fun. My Family loves it so much. It's on the New York Times Spelling Bee. I hope you enjoy it and have a great day :)
CATAN ELECTIVE
By President Ewan
Hello again! Last Friday (and the Friday before that) we had a new elective, which was… drumroll, please. bbbdbbbddbbbdbbbddbbb ECONOMICS!!!
Now, you might think “Economics?! That’s boring!
Why’s this guy so excited?!” Well, I can assure you that economics is fun when we’re playing…
CATAN
CATAN is basically a game about making your own country. Put simply, you (and the other players) each rule part of the island of CATAN. You all have to harvest resources (wheat, sheep, bricks, ore, etc.) and develop CATAN by building things (roads, settlements, cities, etc.).
There’s a catch, though. There’s a robber in the game, and every time you roll a 7, the robber steals some of someone’s resources. And if the robber comes to you? THIS MEANS WAR– – No, wait, that isn’t right. You just have to give away some of your resources to the “bank” (that is, the draw piles.)
Here is the Catanian Economic Trade and Construction Report (or how I was doing at the game):
In the first third of the game, I had a steady increase in resources (I rolled wheat 4 times in a row. Wheat is now my least favorite resource.) and trading (The first leg of the Trans-Catanian Highway had just been established with a neighboring state). In the second half, the robber came to me, I lost almost all my wheat trying to build a city, I discovered I couldn’t build a city, and I built a settlement instead, so I spent the third third in poverty.
This elective is fun, and I’m sure there’s more that’ll happen during this elective!
Bye for now,
PRESIDENT EWAN I OF UPPER CATAN
Bridges Writing
By Ben
Society has created many great things. From convenient home gadgets, to revolutionary inventions that change the future. But one of the most amazing things that people create is art. Art can be in many different forms, one of which is writing. At Bridges we practice writing with I.E.W.! I.E.W. is a method for writing stories from a 3rd person perspective where we split the stories so we can divide and conquer. Right now we are working on a story called Attaboy. It is really educational and interesting. It's still early in the year so there are many great stories to come, all thanks to I.E.W. In the end we learned that the I.E.W. method is great!
Electives: Legos
Electives is where everyone picks an elective. I picked Legos because I enjoy playing with Legos. Also, there's currently a war between the Dinkle Empire and (I forgot). I'm on the Dinkle Empire’s team. I'm bringing GENERAL X, an unstoppable super mech with a death ray and the “Blade of the Fallen God” (an item from a video game that I like to play that's called “Stone Story”). I also helped create the “Maze of Depression” or MD with Theo, which is “totally not” dangerous. Anyway, there are also multiple mazes that include the MD that I will talk about soon.
By: Austin
Class Pets
Hi, my name is Oats and I am a class pet. I am a girl. I am gray and have brown eyes. I sleep a lot and do not run a lot. Me and my sister Pumpkin are best pals. In my classroom, people take care of me.
Hi, I am Pumpkin and I am orange. I like to run on the wheel and eat pumpkin seeds but only for a treat. I can't run on the wheel sometimes because it gets stuck. Sometimes my sister Oats is in the food bowl. Sometimes we also like to bury the food bowl. It is fun for me and my sister Oats.
by Scarlet and Braylee
ART
By Mati
In Art we are making brains, eyes, and monsters. For the eyes we paint the iris (red, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange) and cut out the pupil and the eye lashes from black paper. We glue it all together and hang it up. For the brain we color it in with different colors that represent us and then cut it out and then hang it up. For the monster instead of painting it we glue torn pieces of paper on and then cut out the hair, legs, arms, eye (or eyes), and mouth. Then we glue them on and then we take a blank piece of paper and draw the background and then glue the monster on the piece of paper and done.
Geography
In geography we learned how to use compasses and the cardinal directions Northeast South and West (And if you're wondering yet North is in the north and Flamingo South is in the south). We also got to do it where we studied Maps and what the symbols meant. Then we got to make symbols for a map that you might encounter like say, for example, a speed limit sign.Got to make them where in the city we should put buildings such as hospitals, police stations, schools and libraries. We also recently learned grids. The thing you play battleships on. Send a missile at E3!* Miss darn it. Anyway we learned they used it in Maps because you could just go look at a specific square and then it will have some things marked there. We also learned that the Letter (*Yes I know that is wrong, but it just sounds better than 3E).
by Rory
Electives
Economy/Catan
9/20/23
By Sam L.
The teacher of Economy/Catan is Mrs. Quinter. The first day of class we learned about the categories of Economy. We started out by learning about how resources and humans work together to create many things. Then we learned about how to play Catan. We first learned about how to set up the board. To set the board up you fit five outer pieces to make the border. Then you set up the inner pieces and put numbers on them. Once done you choose one of the four colors. The colors are blue, orange, white, and red. You only let someone play red if four people are playing. You then set out two roads and two settlements for each color being played. The inner pieces are comprised of wood, wheat, brick, metal, and sheep. You place settlements, roads, and cities in between the inner pieces. The settlements and cities go in the gap between three inner tiles. The road goes along two tiles.
You then get a piece that tells you how to make stuff. To make a road, you need wood and brick. To make a settlement, you need wood, brick, sheep, and wheat. These are the main things you can build but you can also make cities and development cards. For cities you need two wheat and three metal, for development cards you need a sheep, metal, and wheat. To win you need ten points. A settlement is worth one point, and a city is worth two points. There are other ways to get points. For example if you have five roads in a row you get two points unless someone gets more roads in a row then you and steal those points. You can also have those conditions if you have three knights. You get knights from development cards. Development cards can also give you points. To build a settlement, you need to have at least two road spaces in between any other settlements and the same goes for cities except you have to build cities on settlements.
To get a card you roll two dice and whatever the number you get, if someone has a settlement next to a tile with that number they get whatever resource is on that tile. Cities get doubled though. If you roll a seven, you move the robber. The robber stops any resources from coming out of the tile you put them on. If someone has a settlement or city on that tile you can steal a card from them. When a seven is rolled anyone with over seven cards has to get rid of half of their cards rounding down. If they half their cards and still have over seven cards, they have to half their hand again. You can not steal a development card if you are going to steal a card from someone. Also all the development cards have everything you need to know about that card in its description. Finally you can't go off other peoples roads. Last week was the first game of Catan. It is a fun game and is very entertaining. That is all I have for you so far on electives.
Math
By Nelson
Today I'm writing about Math. At my old school Math was a 500 page textbook and sitting for 2 hours looking at random numbers. Well obviously they weren't random, but it still felt like it. At Bridges there's a huge difference for me, like if you really need to move, you can take a bike break and you can take it at your own pace. I am learning about long division or any type of division. I usually don't like math but in this case you get to watch a video and it's super fun. Division is really cool. I've always liked multiplication, division, and subtraction, since they've always clicked for me. When I first learned it, it was tricky but after some time I got the hang of it. It's been great at this school so far. It's way better than my last school. I do miss some of my friends, though that's the only downside. That's all. Bye!
Reading
By Rowan M
Bonnie and Clyde were robbers who weren't very good at robbing. The reason they're well known is because they were a crime couple and they're ruthless. In the end, they got around 1500 dollars, a good amount for the time. So now the details of the essay. Basically, we read a short story about Bonnie and Clyde and answered questions about it. There was a page where you decide whether an inference is correct or false. At the end of the questions is a vocabulary piece where you find the opposite and the closest definition. And that is what we are doing in reading class.
Fill In The Cracks
By Freddie
The classes are good and all, but you should know what goes on in between. So today we're going to fill in the cracks. Between the classes, there are transitions and some silent reading. Sometimes if a student has not finished their assigned work then that time before or between classes would be a good time to try to finish, unless given directions to do otherwise by the teacher.
Students may also just spend the time traveling between classes. It could also be a good resting time for sleep-deprived students or students who are just having a bad day. However, the time between classes is not, under any circumstances, playtime. It’s for getting ready to learn. but if you did everything you need to do then quietly chatting with friends is still ok.
Writers Notes and Stuff