Greg Woodburn, a university student, spends a lot of time cleaning sports shoes. Some of them once belonged to him; some belonged to his friends. But soon the shoes will have new owners, poor children in the USA and 20 other countries, thanks to Greg’s Share Our Soles(鞋底) (S.O.S) charity.
Greg was a high school running star in a small town in California. He had to stop running for months because his knee was injured. “I started thinking about all the things I got from running, the health, the friendships and the confidence.” he says. And I realized there are children who don’t even have shoes.
Greg collected his own sports shoes and then called his friends and the town. His aim was to have 100 pairs by Christmas 2006. When the number climbed to more than 500 pairs. Greg know that he could collect sports shoes all year round.
Now he has set up collection boxes in his town. So far, S.O.S has collected and donated more than 3,000 pairs of shoes. And Greg has cleaned almost all of them. “People think of it as duty work,” he says, “but I like doing it, because I feel happy when I’m doing it. It’s not work I want to pass on to someone else.”
In just three years, Greg has started three branches(分部) of S.O.S and there are more and more sports shoes.
For many poor children who have received the shoes mean opportunity. Two young boys in southern California used to go to school on alternate days(隔日) because they both shared a pair of shoes. They were too big for one boy and too small for the other. Thanks to S.O.S, each brother received his own pair of shoes. The boys now go to school every day. When they graduate, they say they will help others, just as Greg helped them.Who will Greg donate these sports shoes to?
_____________________________________________From running Greg got health, friendships and confidence, and what did he realize?
_____________________________________________How many pairs of shoes has S.O.S collected and donated so far?
_____________________________________________Why does Greg like to clean the donated shoes?
__________________________________________________What did the two boys in southern California learn from Greg?
___________________________________________________
One morning, a blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held a sign which said, “I am blind. Please help me.”
There were only a few coins in the hat. A man was walking by. He took out a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words on it. He put the sign back so that everyone walked by could see the new words.
Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Are you the one who changed my sign in the morning? What did you write?”
The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said, but in a different way.” What he had written was, “Today is a beautiful day, but I can’t see it.”
Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing? Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first simply told people to help by putting some money in the hat. The second sign told people that they were able to enjoy the beauty of the day, but the boy could not enjoy it because he was blind.
The first sign simply said the boy was blind, while the second sign told people they were lucky that they were not blind. There are at least two lessons we can learn from this simple story. The first is: Treasure what you have. Someone else has less. Try your best to help those who need your help. The second is: Be creative. Think differently. There is always a better way.Did the boy need help?
What did the man write on the sign?
What happened after the man wrote something on the sign?
Why did the man come back that afternoon?
How did people probably feel when they saw the second sign?
Do American children still learn handwriting in school? In the age of the keyboard, some people seem to think handwriting lessons are on the way out. 90% of teachers say they are required to teach handwriting. But studies have yet to answer the question of how well they are teaching it. One of this year’s studies found that about three out of every four teachers say they are not prepared to teach handwriting. Some teachers are teaching handwriting by providing instruction for 10 to 15 minutes a day, and then other teachers who basically teach it for 60 to 70 minutes a day — which really for handwriting is pretty much.
Many adults remember learning that way — by copying letters over and over again. Today’s thinking is that short periods of practice are better. Many experts(专家) also think handwriting should not be taught by itself. Instead, they say it should be used as a way to get students to express ideas. After all, that is why we write.
Handwriting involves two skills. One is legibility, which means forming the letters so they can be read. The other is fluency(流畅) — writing without having to think about it. Fluency continues to develop up until high school.
But not everyone masters these skills. Teachers commonly report that about one fourth of their kids have poor handwriting. Some people might think handwriting is not important any more because of computers and voice recognition programs.
But Steve Graham at Vanderbilt says word processing is seldom done in primary school, especially in the early years. American children traditionally first learn to print, and then to write in cursive, which connects the letters. But guess what we learned from a spokeswoman for the College Board(大学委员会). More than 75 percent of students choose to print their essay(article) on the test rather than write in cursive.From Paragraph 1 we can learn .
| A．teaching handwriting is a basic requirement in the teaching job |
| B．most teachers prefer to teach handwriting |
| C．teachers spend little time in teaching handwriting |
| D．a keyboard has taken the place of the handwriting |
Which of the following is WRONG for traditional handwriting in the USA?
| A．Handwriting includes two skills. |
| B．To write in cursive is taught first. |
| C．The letters are repeated many times. |
| D．The students are taught by practicing a long period. |
The underlined word “legibility” in Paragraph 3 means .
| A．easy to read | B．easy to write |
| C．unexpected | D．unreadable |
The best title for the passage is .
| A．How to Improve Handwriting in School |
| B．Right or Wrong: the Death of Handwriting |
| C．Handwriting Involves Two Skills |
| D．Handwriting Lessons Are on the Way Out |
Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten(幼儿园), and certainly I wished her success. I was saying something that is not true. What I actually wish for her is failure. I believe in the importance of failure.
Success is boring. Success is proving that you can do something that you already know you can do, or do something correctly the first time, which can often be a problem for the future. First-time success is usually a fluke(侥幸). First-time failure, in fact, is the natural order of things.
Failure means how we learn. I have been told of an African phrase(短语) describing a good cook as “she who has broken many bowls”. If you’ve spent enough time in the kitchen and have broken a lot of bowls, probably you know a lot about cooking. I once had a dinner with a group of cooks, and they spent time comparing knife wounds and burn scars. They knew how much their failures gave them.
My younger daughter is a dancer. She spent three years getting ready for an act. She did it successfully for years. There was no reason for her to change the act—but she did anyway. She said she was no longer learning anything new and she was bored; and if she was bored, she couldn’t play well. So she changed the act. She risked failure in order to feed her heart.
My granddaughter is a perfectionist. But I will also, I hope, remind her of what she learned, and how she can do whatever it is better next time. I probably won’t tell her that failure is a good thing, because that’s not a lesson you can learn when you’re five. I hope I can tell her, though, that it’s not the end of the world. Indeed, with luck, it is the beginning.What did the writer really wish for her granddaughter in the kindergarten?
| A．Success. | B．Failure. | C．Kindness. | D．Care. |
The third paragraph mainly tells us .
| A．what “a good cook” means | B．a cook should often cook |
| C．a cook must break many bowls | D．failure means how we learn |
Why did the younger daughter change the act?
| A．Because she didn’t do well in it. |
| B．Because she was asked to change it. |
| C．Because she wanted to feed her heart. |
| D．Because she wanted to try a failure. |
What does the writer hope to tell the granddaughter?
| A．Failure is a good thing. |
| B．She can’t fail any more. |
| C．Failure is not the end of the world. |
| D．Success is the end of the world. |
An old gentleman who lives a few doors away from me can always be seen with a bag. He goes out by himself and picks up plastic bottles, plastic bags and pieces of paper everywhere. He does it all carefully and never complains.
The children in the nearby school are probably responsible for some of that litter. “There will come a time when they know better,” he said. “It’s just not yet. So, I’ll do it for them.”
Well, this morning I was out walking my neighbor’s dog when I saw another neighbor, a much younger man, out doing the same thing! He had his two little sons with him and they were having good fun trying to pick up the litter.
“What a good job you are doing”, I said to him. “Well, an older fellow in our street does this”, said he. “And my friend and I thought it wasn’t fair that he had to do it all the time, so now we take turns.”
Not only was he taking a turn, not only did he have a friend join in as well, but he was passing on the lesson to the nextgeneration(一代)！
By the time I had returned the dog to my neighbor, I looked again and his children’s friends had joined in!
This man was teaching a whole group of young children to keep their own streetclean. An older man had set an example for him and now he was passing it on—the next generation is doing what he did and the generation to come after that!The old gentleman picks up the litter .
| A．to make money | B．to help the cleaners |
| C．to have a good fun | D．to keep the environment clean |
The younger man did the same thing as the old gentleman because .
| A．it was his turn |
| B．it was interesting for him |
| C．he was the old gentleman’s good friend |
| D．he wanted to share the job with the old gentleman |
When the writer returned the dog, joined in picking up the litter.
| A．the writer | B．the old gentleman |
| C．the children’s friends | D．the younger man’s friend |
What can we learn from the text?
| A．The power of example is endless. | B．Like father, like son . |
| C．Two heads are better than one. | D．No pains, no gains. |
Take a look at our library! Our library is open to everyone and the library card is free.
| Books |
●books in 36 languages ●information about the world ●all kinds of stories ●picture books for children ●novels You can enjoy newspapers and magazines in the reading room. You can borrow two books at a time and keep them for three weeks. |
| Videos |
●all kinds of video films ●music videos ●TV plays You can enjoy yourself and watch your favorite videos at home. You can rent(租) a video at two yuan for a week. |
| Audios (音频) |
●music for everyone ●language cassettes; 42 world languages Special rooms for you to enjoy listening. CDs and cassettes can be borrowed — FREE. You can borrow one CD or one cassette at a time and keep it for one week. |
| E-books |
●many different kinds of e-books ●e-newspapers and e-magazines You can browse(浏览) all the e-books in the computer room — FREE |
How many books can you borrow at a time?
| A．One. | B．Two. | C．Three. | D．Four. |
How much should you pay if you rent a video for a week?
| A．Two yuan. | B．Three yuan. |
| C．Four yuan. | D．Free. |
What can you do in the computer room?
| A．Enjoy e-books. | B．Borrow some books. |
| C．Enjoy music videos. | D．Borrow some CDs. |
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