Jessica Westervelt, a Spanish teacher at Bethlehem High School in New York, created an activity called "House Hunters", which was inspired by the popular television show "House Hunters International", for her Spanish class about four years ago.
Similar to the show, students work in groups, pretending to be real house agents, and look for three houses in Spanish-speaking countries. She uses the activity to teach vocabulary related to the home, chores, travel and vacation. She created the exercise because she wanted to incorporate her students' interests into the curriculum（课程）. At the time, a group of her students were big fans of the show.
The students look for a home for Westervelt to buy to live in, or rent for vacation. She tells them what she is looking for in a home and gives them a budget. Students work in groups of three, and each group is responsible for finding one house in a Spanish-speaking country that fits the requirements.
The groups usually make a brochure describing the houses they find. Each group presents their findings to the class, while the other students take notes. The entire activity is done in Spanish, so students get to practice their writing, listening and conversation skills. They also get some cultural education when researching homes in Spanish-speaking countries. Westervelt says that students planning to take the class look forward to her project.
Westervelt says, "I think any time that you can find a way to link into something that they are interested in outside of school, it makes it more realistic for them and it makes that activity much more enjoyable for them."
1. How did Westervelt come up with the idea of the activity?| A．She got it from a TV program. | B．She was inspired by her students. |
| C．She learned it from a house agent. | D．She was taught that in high school. |
| A．change. | B．absorb. | C．force. | D．persuade. |
| A．Live in the houses for a while. | B．Rent the houses for their vacation. |
| C．Write an introduction to the houses. | D．Choose and buy one for their teacher. |
| A．Most school activities are not enjoyable. |
| B．Students should be realistic about study. |
| C．Out-of-school activities are very important. |
| D．Learning should be combined with interest. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Recently I attended several meetings where we talked about ways to attract students and keep younger faculty members from going elsewhere. It seems higher education has become an industry of meeting-holders whose task is to “solve” problems — real or imagined. And in my position as a professor at three different colleges, the actual problems in educating our young people and older students have deepened, while the number of people hired — not to teach but to hold meetings — has increased significantly. Every new problem creates a new job for an administrative fixer. Take our Center for Teaching Excellence. Contrary to its title, the center is a clearing house (信息交流中心) for using technology in classrooms and in online courses. It's an administrative sham (欺诈) of the kind that has multiplied over the last 30 years.
I offer a simple proposal in response: Many of our problems — class attendance, educational success, student happiness and well-being — might be improved by cutting down the bureaucratic (官僚的) mechanisms and meetings and hiring an army of good teachers instead.
If we replaced half of our administrative staff with classroom teachers, we might actually get a majority of our classes back to 20 or fewer students per teacher. This would be an environment in which teachers and students actually knew each other. The teachers must be free to teach in their own way — the curriculum should be flexible enough so that they can use their individual talents to achieve the goals of the course.
Additionally, they should be allowed to teach, and be rewarded for doing it well. Teachers are not people who are great at and consumed by research and happen to appear in a classroom. Good teaching and research are not exclusive, but they are also not automatic companions. Teaching is an art and a craft, talent and practice; it is not something that just anyone can be good at. It is utterly confusing to me that people do not recognize this, despite the fact that pretty much anyone who has been a student can tell the difference between their best and worst teachers.
1. What does the author say about present-day universities?| A．They are effectively addressing real or imagined problems. |
| B．They often fail to combine teaching with research. |
| C．They are over-burdened with administrative staff |
| D．They lack talent to fix their deepening problems. |
| A．Good classroom teachers. |
| B．Efficient administrators. |
| C．Talented researchers. |
| D．Motivated students. |
| A．They facilitate students' independent learning. |
| B．They help students form closer relationships. |
| C．They have more older students than before. |
| D．They are much bigger than is desirable. |
| A．Creating an environment for teachers to share their teaching experiences. |
| B．Hiring more classroom teachers and allowing them to teach in their own way. |
| C．Using high technology in classrooms and promoting exchange of in formation. |
| D．Cutting down meetings and encouraging administrative staff to go to classrooms. |
【推荐2】Despite the general rule for quiet demanded by libraries, they’ve been the subject of some fairly significant noise
Why should parents or pupils be concerned whether or not school libraries close? Are they surely just mausoleums(陵墓) to the paper-bound past? Or are they rooms that are of little use to today’s Internet-connected student population, who have access to a world of books and information through their digital devices?
Quite simply, school libraries, as well as their librarians, are critical to our children’s future.
Research has proved this to be the case. The level of development of a school library is a highly accurate predictor of academic success, which means that parents should perhaps go so far as to compare the libraries of the schools they are considering, rather than look at league tables, when seeking the right schools for their children. Chris Riddell and his fellow former Laureates are absolutely right to emphasize the importance of librarians in introducing children to life-changing books and turning them into lifelong readers. Reading is a skill that needs to be developed.
Librarians play the crucial role of introducing pupils to different genres or authors, as well as encouraging children of varying abilities to read—from the reluctant readers to those with higher than average reading ages.
However, if libraries were to have a "job description", cultivating a love of reading and promoting literacy(误写能力) is just one of their essential roles. The other role is, to be at the very centre of learning, a resource, for students to use in acquiring knowledge. Ultimately, as students get older they need to become increasingly experienced readers for information, as well as, hopefully, for pleasure. They need to be able to find out and access, through reading and understanding, the answers to their questions themselves.
Independent learning skills are very much in demand by pupils and parents, as well as universities and employers, because real education is about so much more than just academic success or grades on a piece of paper. As Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, pointed out, "the simple truth is that we can't teach all that we would like them to know." The emphasis therefore must now be on teaching children how to learn for themselves.
Talking of libraries, we would always focus on the collection of books and the dissemination(传播) of knowledge to aid learning. Therefore surely, it makes sense that if libraries are given the right status and adequate resources, they will play a vital role in the development of these much-needed independent learning skills. This has never been more important than in today's information age, when everything we need to know is only a few clicks away.
Libraries and librarians should be central in helping pupils understand how to access data or knowledge for their studies or interests—regardless of whether this is from a book an online resource or a journal.
It is equally important that libraries guide students on how to "read" the information that is available to them—a vitally important skill given that the Internet contains a large amount of mistakes and misinformation. But, of course, libraries can only offer this support and guidance if they are properly valued and resourced, which means that we need as many voices as possible to be "shouting" about the importance of libraries in the education of our children.
Chris Riddell is encouraging children to ask their teachers where their school library is. Perhaps parents also need to be asking their current and prospective schools about the same question. Let’s make the "noise" far louder—it needs to be uncomfortably deafening(震耳欲聋的).
1. What does the underlined sentence in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Schools have realized the importance of libraries. |
| B．More rules should be established for libraries. |
| C．Libraries are not quiet any more. |
| D．Libraries have been a hot topic. |
| A．libraries are almost useless to today’s Internet-connected students |
| B．libraries can reflect the academic success of schools |
| C．parents have begun to prioritize libraries when selecting schools for their children |
| D．librarians are crucially important to students’ future development |
| A．turning students into lifelong readers |
| B．introducing students to different genres |
| C．developing students’ ability to read and write |
| D．encouraging children of different abilities to read |
| A．It helps students achieve high grades in their exams. |
| B．Universities and parents don’t pay much attention to it at present. |
| C．Students can’t acquire enough knowledge through being taught by others. |
| D．Real education is about learning independently rather than about academic success. |
| A．libraries may be a source of false information |
| B．students’ ability to obtain information is vitally important |
| C．libraries should teach students how to seek the available information |
| D．students should learn to distinguish between true and false information |
【推荐3】A student’s life is never easy.
●Knowing the country.
You shouldn’t bother researching the country’s hottest tourist spots or historical places. You won’t go there as a tourist, but as a student. I’ll be helpful to read the most important points in their history and to read up on their culture.
●Studying their language.
Don’t expect that you can graduate abroad without knowing even the basics of the language. Before leaving your home country, take online lessons to at least master some of their words and sentences.
●
Check the conversion(兑换) of your money to their local currency, set up your bank account so you can use it there, get an insurance, and find an apartment. The Internet or your intended school will be very helpful in finding an apartment and helping you understand local currency.
Remember, you’re not only carrying your own reputation but your country’s reputation as well. If you act foolishly, people there might think that all of your country men are foolish as well.
| A．Packing your clothes. |
| B．And it is even more difficult if you have to complete your study in a foreign land. |
| C．That would surely be a very bad start for your study abroad program. |
| D．This will be useful in living and studying there. |
| E．Most importantly, read about their laws. |
| F．Going with their trends will keep it from being too obvious that you’re a foreigner. |
| G．Preparing for other needs. |
