Schools help protect kids’ mental health in many ways. Some states in the US let kids take mental health days. Here’s what some students have to say.

Bibi Tooren, 11

Schools should give kids days off for mental health because mental health is an important part of overall(整体的) health. If you don’t feel well, it will have a big impact(巨大影响) on your ability to focus. Kids get stressed with long school days. Plus, kids don’t have much experience dealing with mental health crises(危机).

Nugg Canales, 8

Hailey Young, 12

The weekend was created to give us time off, and we children need to learn to better manage our time. We hardly get our schoolwork done in the five schooldays we get. Plus, schools would need students to make up mental health days. They would probably do so during our real break: in summer vacation or winter vacation. Another thing is that, for some kids, school might be safe.

Johnny Gabel, 9

I don’t think schools should give students days off for their mental health. Having too many days off can have a bad influence on grades. And many students’ parents have to go to work. If students get too many days off, they might get left home too much. This could make some students’ mental health problems worse.

Why play games? Because they are fun, and a lot more besides. Following the rules … planning your next move … acting as a team member … these are all “game” ideas that you will come across throughout your life.     31    .

Think about some of the games you played as a young child, such as rope-jumping and hide-and-seek.     32    . But perhaps more importantly, they translate life into exciting dramas that teach children some of the basic rules they will be expected to follow the rest of their lives, such as taking turns and cooperating (合作).

    33    . Children around the world play games that prepare them for work they will do as grown-ups. For instance, some Saudi Arabian children play a game called bones, which sharpens the hand-eye coordination (协调) needed in fishing.

The most famous games of all, the Olympic Games, bring athletes from around the world together to take part in friendly competition.     34    . For countries experiencing natural disasters or war, an Olympic win can mean so much.

Sports are also an event that unites people. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. People on all continents play it—some for fun and some for a living. Nicolette Iribarne, a Californian soccer player, has discovered a way to spread hope through soccer.     35    . It provides poor children with not only soccer balls but also a promising future.

Next time you play your favorite game or sport think about why you enjoy it, what skills are needed, and whether these skills will help you in other aspects of your life.

A young boy received an unexpected message in the mail from his father Joseph, who died two years ago.

Rowan’s dad was a hard-working man who wanted to give his son the best life he could. It was why Rowan’s mother, Julie Van Stone, said Joseph joined the Navy and went to MIT to get two Master’s degrees.

While at school in Boston. he would often write to Rowan. Even when he left school and was driving back to Colorado, he would send postcards from each state he stopped in. Those postcards were sent in 2007. “I remember him saying he had sent 5 or 6, but Rowan had only got 3 or 4 in the mail. But I never thought anything of it,” Van Stone said.

Those postcards and pictures are priceless memories for Van Stone and her son, especially after Joseph passed away from a rare brain disease. Rowan never had a chance to say goodbye. But, on Saturday, just days before the two-year anniversary of Joseph’s death, a postcard arrived in the mail. It arrived on March 11, 2015. The message read: “Hello from Pennsylvania. I love you, and I miss you so much. See you soon. Love, Daddy.”

Neither he nor his mother knows how it happened, and they may never know. But they have their own ideas. “I feel like that was the final goodbye that he didn’t get to say,” Van Stone said. Van Stone says Joseph’s last words to her before he died were: “Everything is a circle. We will see one another again. All that matters is love.”

56. 生活中学会分享很重要。我们可以分享什么？如何分享？请结合图示和自己的一 次亲身经历，谈一谈分享的意义。

Sharing

It’s very important for us to learn to share. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________