A simple wooden box attached to 8-year-old Alex Benitez-Alvarez’s walker made it easier for the boy to carry school supplies and allowed him to do more things on his own.
“Now if he wants to go to the library and get a book out, he can.” said Tommy Johnson, one of three high school students who helped Benitez-Alvarez.
Their idea came from an engineering project that pairs young engineers with people from local special education programs. Engineering teams from Shakopee East and West junior high schools designed models of several devices to make their disabled partners’ lives easier. Some of the simplest ideas were the most useful, such as an adjustable chair to help a child put his or her shoes on. They also came up with special building blocks that can help blind babies learn by touch.
In an education system driven by exams, engineering teacher TJ Hendrickson said the project gave students the chance to create something they could actually see for themselves. “Students stopped worrying about their grades and started worrying about failing their clients,said Hendrickson, a teacher at Shakopee West Junior High.
Group projects encourage teamwork and motivate students differently from independent projects. In this case, the project also taught a much-needed lesson in developing people skills. The meetings also helped engineers add special touches to their finished products. Benitez-Alvarez, who loves soccer, got the Minnesota United logo and a soccer ball printed on his wooden storage box.
The project encouraged students with special needs to describe their physical disabilities while also teaching engineers about the struggles of living with a disability.
“Everyone in the world should do this.” said Stephanie Betley, a teacher at Shakopee who hopes to see the project spread to other schools. “It’s for someone else rather than yourself.”
1.What was the purpose of the engineering project?
A. To show how special education helps disabled kids
B. To try out engineering knowledge learned in class.
C. To improve the life of disabled kids.
D. To provide jobs to a group of young engineers.
2.How did the project influence the engineers in Hendrickson's opinion?
A. It helped them pass their exams more easily.
B. It caused them more stress than their exams.
C. It helped them put their knowledge into use.
D. It improved their communication skills.
3.What did Betley think of the engineering project?
A. It did a lot of good to people in need of help.
B. It reminded people not to look down on the disabled.
C. It made more students interested in engineering.
D. It reminded people to care more about themselves.
4.What is the best title of the passage?
A. Practice makes perfect B. Helping others out
C. Living with a disability D. Challenging oneself
In our life,they are two different types of dreamer，一low-recall dreamers and high-recall dreamers. According to researchers at the Lyon Nero-science Research Center in France, high-recall dreamers reported they remembered their dreams almost every day while low-recall dreamers said they only remembered their dreams once or twice a month, reported Live Science.
Perrine Ruby,a lead scientist at the research center in Lyon, studied 41 people (21 high-recall dreamers and 20 low-recall dreamers) and recorded their brain activity. She found that a part of the brain called the temporo-parietal junction ( 颞顶叶交界处）was more active in high-recall dreamers. This was true both when they were sleeping and awake. This area of the brain is responsible for collecting and processing information from the outside world. This means that high-recall dreamers are more sensitive to what is happening around them. For example, when they are awake, they respond more strongly to hearing their own names. When they are sleeping, they tend to be woken up more easily by sounds and movements.
By closely studying people’s brain activity, Ruby found that high-recall dreamers have twice as much “wakefulness time” during sleep as low-recall dreamers do. And it is during these short periods of wakefulness that the brain memorizes dreams.
This is not hard to understand. Just try to think of your own sleeping experience. If you are restless during the night, you are more likely to remember your dreams, but if you sleep well and soundly, you tend to remember very little in the morning. This is because “you never get a chance to remember”, Robert Stickgold, a Harvard Medical School researcher, told The Washington Post.
As another research project at the University of Turku in Finland showed, dream content can also affect our memory. Negative dreams are easier to recall than ordinary dreams. Nightmares are often recalled because they are emotionally negative, and such dreams cause fear.
1.What can we know about high-recall dreamers according to the article?
A. They have very little brain activity when they sleep.
B. They can remember their dreams clearly.
C. They don’t know how to describe their dreams.
D. They can’t remember their dreams.
2.Which is true about low-recall dreamers compared to high-recall dreamers?
A. They have higher quality sleep.
B. They have more sleepless nights
C. They are more easily woken at night.
D. They respond faster when hearing their names.
3.What is the main purpose of the second to last paragraph?
A. To explain Ruby’s findings.
B. To attract readers, interest in future studies.
C. To show the advantages of being a low-recall dreamer.
D. To suggest what to do to become a low-recall dreamer.
4.What did the research project in Finland find?
A. Ordinary dreams can help our brain rest.
B. Dreams are often affected by our emotions.
C. Nightmares often happen when we don't sleep well.
D. Negative dreams are more likely to be recalled.
I moved from the busy downtown to the countryside around Shanghai when I started elementary school. At first, I thought I was going to hate it, but to my surprise, I found that I preferred the quiet country life over the noisy city life.
The next move was more of a surprise for me. I was having a good time with my friends at school. But all of a sudden, my mom told me that we were going to move to the United States. Can you imagine how I must have felt ?My English wasn’t that good, though I did know the basics.
The day I arrived in the US was a snowy day. For a girl who grew up in Shanghai and hadn’t seen real thick snow on the ground, it was a big thing. Compared with my school in China, there were a lot more creative thinking questions, which I was better at anyway.
Time flew by and it had been almost four years since I moved. Then again, I was told we were going to move to Singapore.
As I’m writing this article, I am still new here and have been going to school for about two and a half months. I found out that the education here is quite special. Different from AP system in the US, the Singapore CIS uses the IB system.
This switch drowned me in constant stress. I was confused about the new curriculum, and I knew it would take me a long time to adapt. But what I’ve gotten out of my experience over three countries is that no matter where you are studying, you are always learning. And a piece of advice to people who are going to move around the globe: It’s always best to just roll with it.
1.What did the writer think of life in the countryside?
A. It wasn’t as interesting as she expected.
B. It was no better than city life.
C. She wished she had moved to the countryside earlier.
D. She loved to live in the countryside.
2.What did the writer worry about most about before moving to the US?
A. It would be difficult to make new friends.
B. Language would be a big problem for her.
C. She wouldn’t get used to the weather there.
D. She wouldn’t like the schools there.
3.What does she say about her school life in Singapore?
A. Creative thinking is more common.
B. Students are asked to do many projects together.
C. Students have more freedom to choose classes than in the US.
D. It is different from the US school system.
4.What is the writer’s attitude towards her worldwide schooling?
A. Positive. B. Negative.
C. Critical. D. Doubtful.
Blowing our nose, burping (打饱嗝）after dinner and pooping (排便）…Unpleasant as they are, these things, according to Live Science, make up “the impolite science of the human body”.
Snot (鼻涕）
Snot's job is to protect our body from harmful viruses. Quite often, dirt, ash, or sand fill the air we breathe. But thankfully, snot stops these unhealthy things, which are taken out of our nose when we blow it.
Apart from protecting our nose, snot can tell us whether we’re healthy or not according to its appearance. When it’s clear and colorless, that’s a sign of good health. If it turns green or yellow, however, it could be a sign that our body is being attacked by a virus.
Gas
From drinking fizzy (起泡的）drinks to eating food, we often breathe in gases like carbon dioxide, which end up in our stomach. Naturally, if we take in too much gas, our stomach will be filled with pressure and we may suffer from pain and cramps(痉挛).To stop this from happening, burping is an effective way to get these gases out of our stomach.
Occasional burping benefits our body. However, burping too much isn’t a good sign. That’s because it may suggest that we’re suffering from a digestive disorder.
Poop
Pooping is an extremely important function of the body. Every time we eat. the food is passed through our digestive system. Once our body has taken everything it needs from the food, it leaves our body as poop.
And though it’s gross, checking our poop after we go to the bathroom could tell us more about our health.
1.What does it suggest if snot is green?
A. There might be dirt in it. B. It is protecting our nose.
C. You are very healthy. D. Your body might be fighting a virus.
2.What do we know about burping from the article?
A. Fizzy drinks make people burp more than food does.
B. People may suffer from pain or cramps when burping.
C. It makes gases like carbon dioxide leave our stomach.
D. Burping a lot can make digestive disorders go away.
3.What does the underlined word "gross’’ in the paragraph probably mean?
A. Unpleasant. B. Unnecessary.
C. Unimportant. D. Unhealthy.
假设你是李华，你的美国朋友Michael正在一家孔子学院学习汉语和中国文化，知道中国人很重视家风传承。他在给你的电子邮件中想了解你家的家风以及家风对你的影响。
请你给他回复一封电子邮件。开头和结尾已经给出，不计入总词数。
注意：1.词数100左右； 2．可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
参考词汇：家风family spirit
Dear Michael，
I'm glad to know that you are learning Chinese language and culture.__________________________________ _
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Yours，
Li Hua
假定英语课上老师要求同桌之间交换修改作文，请你修改你同桌写的作文。文中共有10处错误。错误涉及一个单词的增加、删除或修改。
增加：在缺词出加一个漏字符号（/\），并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）花掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词。
2. 只允许修改10处，多者（从11处起）不计分。
Dear Sir,
I’m writing to request a valuable chance to be one of the host family of the British students.
I’m good at English and my parents are both professors of English, so we won’t have any difficulty communicate with English speakers. My father is a excellent driver and they will be very glad to show foreign students around some nearby places of interest. Last month we received from two American students. We have a wonderful time. Besides, my mother is gift in cooking, but the students will be able to enjoy delicious Chinese food. I would great appreciate it if I could have the chance make friends with them.
Looking forward to your reply.
Li Hua
