When I was five years old, I lived with my family in my grandma’s old house. It was very old and small, but we were ______ there. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we grew our own ______ to eat and made our own clothes.

Every day after school, I would ______ outside and wait for my dad to come home from work. He worked on ______ all day for drivers. When he got home, he was tired with oil on his hands. So the first thing he would do is to ______ his hands. Then he sat in his old chair while mom and grandma were making dinner. After dinner, I loved ______ onto his back and watching TV together. His hands were strong, and I always felt ______ and loved.

Now I am 55 years old and the oldest person in my family. I have some health problems, but I still remember those happy times with my dad ______. I wish I could go back and sit with him in that old ______ one more time, just to ______ him how much I love him and thank him for making me feel so happy and loved as a child.

Our school is in the beautiful countryside near Dongting Lake. It is a tradition of our school to let students work in the fields. By doing this, we can experience the joy of farming.

The class is divided into six groups. Each group member has his or her own job in the fields, such as watering plants, growing vegetables or clearing away grass and so on. We’ve planted five different kinds of food: rice, corn, tomatoes, potatoes and cabbages. The job is not easy. Each plant has its own needs. For example, cabbages need more water, and we need to clear away the grass for the corn. But when we ate our homegrown food, we felt very happy!

We not only farm outside but also study in the classroom about agriculture (农业). For example, each group needs to choose a topic to research, such as “planting according to the four seasons” or “agricultural production in ancient Chinese poems”. Every two months, we can win prizes according to our team report and how the plants have grown.

I really enjoy this kind of learning. I think our school tradition can make students relax and let us know more about agriculture.

We have a saying that “filial piety (孝) is the first of the hundred virtues (美德)”. So you know how important it is for Chinese to respect and take care of their parents.

Our parents do so many things for us. They feed us, look after us and teach us. It’s natural that we should feel thankful and want to pay them back. For teenagers, filial piety means trying to make parents happy.

In China, many students usually do a lot to show filial piety, such as helping wash parents’ feet, cooking for parents or writing a thank-you card. By doing these things, we develop stronger love for our parents, which is great!

Confucius (孔子) believed that as long as everyone is good to their parents, they can also be good to other people. Then there won’t be many fights. Then we could bring peace to the world. I think this is a brilliant idea. It means that filial piety is not only about loving your parents, but about loving everyone!

So I think we all should try our best to be good to our parents. Be there for them when they feel lonely. Help them with housework. Give money to them when they need it. These are all actions of the greatest kindness.

Today’s students are really good at improving themselves online. Here are three apps the students like using to help their study.

Duolingo

“I love using Duolingo to learn foreign languages. I’m using it to learn French, while some of my classmates are learning Russian and Italian,” said 14-year-old Zhang Qi from Tianjin. Students can learn foreign languages in a fun way by using Duolingo. “The teachers are very cute cartoon characters. It makes the learning process interesting,” he added.

wikiHow

Li Shuhe, a 14-year-old girl from Hunan, used wikiHow a lot. “This app has over 160,000 articles that teach you how to solve all kinds of problems, from fixing a toilet to dealing with someone’s hurtful words. It even teaches you how to have fun by yourself. I find it is quite creative and useful,” she said.

Douyin

Surprisingly, many students use Douyin to study today. Zhou Caiyan, a 15-year-old boy from Zhejiang, said, “I followed a Douyin account, which includes all the important points of our biology lessons. Before the exam, I just spent one hour reviewing those videos. Thanks to Douyin, I got the fourth place in my class during the recent biology examination!”

China has many rivers. A total of 45, 203 rivers run across the country. Each river runs an area of more than 50 square kilometers.

The most famous ones are the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. They are the “mother rivers” of the Chinese civilization (文明). Chinese rivers can be peaceful yet wild, too. They can make many areas become “a land of fish and rice”.

Chinese people have been trying to keep rivers healthy for thousands of years. In 2017, China started a new way to protect rivers. Local government leaders have become river chiefs (河长), responsible for dealing with river pollution. This will help some polluted rivers become clean again.

Through these actions, our rivers have seen many good changes in recent years — birds flying above the wetlands and fishes happily swimming in the rivers. We’re on our way to living more peacefully with rivers.

51. 学校正在向同学们征集开设课后服务课程的意见。假如你是学生李华，请你给校长写一封邮件，建议学校开设以下课程，并谈谈开设这些课程的理由。

I’m Li Hua. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I hope we’ll have more interesting after-school classes. Thank you!

Yours,

Li Hua