Turning soil, pulling weeds, and harvesting cabbage sound like tough work for middle and high school kids. And at first it is, says Abby Jaramillo, who with another teacher started Urban Sprouts, a school garden program at four low-income schools. The program aims to help students develop science skills, environmental awareness, and healthy lifestyles.
Jaramillo’s students live in neighborhoods where fresh food and green space are not easy to find and fast food restaurants outnumber grocery stores. “The kids literally come to school with bags of snacks and large bottles of soft drinks,” she says. “They come to us thinking vegetables are awful, dirt is awful, insects are awful.” Though some are initially scared of the insects and turned off by the dirt, most are eager to try something new.
Urban Sprouts’ classes, at two middle schools and two high schools, include hands-on experiments such as soil testing, flower-and-seed dissection, tastings of fresh or dried produce, and work in the garden. Several times a year, students cook the vegetables they grow, and they occasionally make salads for their entire schools.
Program evaluations show that kids eat more vegetables as a result of the classes. “We have students who say they went home and talked to their parents and now they’re eating differently,” Jaramillo says.
She adds that the program’s benefits go beyond nutrition. Some students get so interested in gardening that they bring home seeds to start their own vegetable gardens. Besides, working in the garden seems to have a calming effect on Jaramillo’s special education students, many of whom have emotional control issues. “They get outside,” she says, “and they feel successful.”
What can be a suitable title for the text?
| A．Rescuing School Gardens | B．Experiencing Country Life |
| C．Growing Vegetable Lovers | D．Changing Local Landscape |
相似题推荐
Conduct a survey about organic food in a supermarket
在超市做一次关于有机食品的实地调查
【推荐2】The Government’s sugar tax on soft drinks has brought in half as much money as Ministers first predicted it would generate, the first official data on the policy has shown.
First announced in April, 2016, the tax which applies to soft drinks containing more than 5g of sugar per 100ml, was introduced to help reduce childhood obesity (肥胖). It is believed that today’s children and teenagers are consuming three times the recommended level of sugar, putting them at a higher risk of the disease.
Initially the sugar tax was expected to make £520m a year for the Treasury. However, data of the first six months showed it would make less than half this amount. At present it is expected to generate £240m for the year ending in April 2019, which will go to school sports.
It comes after more than half of soft drinks sold in shops have had their sugar levels cut by manufacturers (制造商) so they can avoid paying the tax. Drinks now contain 45 million fewer kilos of sugar as a result of manufacturers’ efforts to avoid the charge, according to Treasury figures. Since April drinks companies have been forced to pay between 18p and 24p for every litre of sugary drink they produce or import, depending on the sugar content.
However, some high sugar brands, like Classic Coca Cola, have accepted the sugar tax and are refusing to change for fear of upsetting consumers. Fruit juices, milk-based drinks and most alcoholic drinks are free of the tax, as are small companies manufacturing fewer than 1m litres per year.
Today’s figures, according to one government official, show the positive influence the sugar tax is having by raising millions of pounds for sports facilities (设施) and healthier eating in schools. Helping the next generation to have a healthy and active childhood is of great importance, and the industry is playing its part.
What can be inferred about the adoption of the sugar tax policy?
| A．It is a short-sighted decision. | B．It is a success story. |
| C．It benefits manufacturers. | D．It upsets customers. |
【推荐3】When you think about it, food is an important part of our lives. Family gatherings center around food and the celebration of major life events and milestones involves food in one way or another. The same holds true for us here on the Space Station. Food is important and ends up usually being a topic of discussion for almost every crew.
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Our food also comes packaged in many ways. But no matter what the form of the food though, you still have the same problem eating it- - you do not want it flying away from you and making a mess when you open it up. In this case a little bit of extra water is extremely helpful. It keeps the food kind of sticking together and to the package and to your spoon. Small things do escape from time to time, but we really try hard to minimize the random flying food problem. That is enough for now! Next time I will write about how to cook in space.
Where is the text most probably taken from?| A．A food magazine. | B．An astronaut’s journal. |
| C．A sci-fi handbook. | D．A space history website. |
A. The shy animals are attracted and coming around the equipment so that they can be watched by researchers and carefully protected by human beings.
B. In the Northeast, China, wolverines (貂熊) are being studied by scientists in an effort to learn how to protect the population by videoing the animals’ daily activities.
C. We all know that it’s of great importance for mankind to protect nature and wildlife. It may seem that protecting wildlife is something far from the life of a high school student, but in fact, a lot have been done by young people around the world.
D. However, during the winter it is difficult to attract the animals to cameras hidden in snowy forests because these animals are too shy to be found.
E. A group of high school students heard about the problem and created a special device which has been tested deep in a snowy forest. Their invention is able to send out a certain smell near the cameras.
【推荐2】When the explorers first set foot upon the continent of North America, the skies and lands were alive with an astonishing variety of wildlife. Native Americans had taken care of these precious natural resources wisely. Unfortunately, it took the explorers and the settlers who followed only a few decades to decimate a large part of these resources. Millions of waterfowl were killed at the hands of market hunters and a handful of overly ambitious sportsmen. Millions of acres of wetlands were dried to feed and house the ever-increasing populations, greatly reducing waterfowl habitat.
What was a cause of the waterfowl population decline in North America?
| A．Loss of wetlands. | B．Popularity of water sports. |
| C．Pollution of rivers. | D．Arrival of other wild animals. |
【推荐1】My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all papers and documents. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar papers...At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend. That family not only returned the important documents to us that day, but also restored our faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.
What does the underlined word “restored” in the last paragraph mean?
| A．showed. | B．sent out. | C．delivered. | D．gave back. |
I’m a gift-giver. I always have been, especially at Christmas. There s nothing more exciting than shopping for the people I love, then watching them open the present that’s perfect for them.
But this year I was afraid there’d be no shopping. It was a few weeks before Christmas and I sat at my kitchen table staring at my checkbook. Bills had left me with next to nothing in my gift budget. There were a dozen people on my list—my husband, Frank, our son, my sister, nieces, nephews (basketball lovers).
The newspaper was on the table next to me. I read it, and an article about a weekend estate (财产) sale practically stood out on the page. I decided to check it out, so I wrote down the address. I turned the page. There, in the middle, was an ad for the Goodwill Store. On the next? A garage sale listing. After that, one for a thrift (节俭) shop.
That weekend I drove over to the estate sale. First I looked through the living room. There was antique furniture, tables crowded with vases and lamps. Nothing caught my eye. I walked over to an office area and looked at some electronics. Nothing there either. Another room had beautiful artworks, but everything was out of my price range. “Maybe this is a waste of time,” I thought, wandering into the kitchen. A table loaded with lace handkerchiefs for a dollar apiece. My sister collected handkerchiefs!
The race was on! The next day I hit the Goodwill. I found a men’s designer dress shirt, in just the right size for my hard-to-fit son, still with original packs, for just a few dollars. A couple of days later I discovered a beautiful necklace with an unusual stone in the center. Just the thing for my fashionable niece! Next up were the garage sales. There were two terrific finds for my husband, Frank: a CD of Oklahoma’s centennial anniversary celebrations and a movie featuring Andy Griffith, his favorite actor.
“Have you bought anything for yourself?” Frank asked one afternoon when I came home with more packages.
1. 阅读短文，完成下面的表格(每空一词)5W | Details |
When | A few weeks before |
Where | A |
Who | The |
Why | To buy |
What | Perfect presents with the limited gift |
But I went to the thrift shop the next day.
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Not only did I have special gifts for everyone on my list,
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【推荐3】This was the first communication that had come from her aunt in Jessie’s lifetime.
“I think your aunt has forgiven me at last,” her father said as he passed the letter across the table.
Jessie looked first at the autograph(签名). It seemed strange to see her own name there. There was a likeness between her aunt’s autograph and her own, a hint of the same decisiveness and precision. If Jessie had been educated fifty years earlier, she might have written her name in just that manner.
“You’re very like her in some ways,” her father said, as she still stared at the autograph.
“I should think you must almost have forgotten what Aunt Jessie was like, dear,” she said. “How many years is it since you last saw her?”
“More than forty,” her father said. “We disagreed. We invariably disagreed. Jessie always prided herself on being so modern. She read Darwin and things like that. Altogether beyond me, I admit.”
“And so it seems that she wants to see me.” Jessie straightened her shoulders and lifted her head. She was excited at the thought of meeting this mythical aunt whom she had so often heard about. Sometimes she had wondered if the personality of this remarkable relative had not been a figment(虚构) of her father’s imagination.
But this letter of hers that now lay on the breakfast table was admirable in character. There was something of intolerance expressed in its tone. It was just like what her father had told her.
Mr. Deane came out of his past memories with a sigh.
“Yes, yes; she wants to see you, my dear,” he said. “I’ve heard she has set up a school and helped many youngsters. I think you had better accept this invitation to stay with her. If she took a fancy to you, you could get a better education…”
He sighed again, and Jessie knew that for the hundredth time he was regretting his own past weakness...
How was the relationship between Jessie’s father and her aunt?
| A．It remained very close over the years. |
| B．It was broken when they were young. |
| C．It got tenser due to a misunderstanding. |
| D．It was uneasy for their financial differences. |
