Bill is a middle school student. He has many subjects every day. Of all the subjects, he doesn’t like maths, so he doesn’t want to do maths homework.

One evening, when he comes back from school, he says to his mother, “I don’t want to learn maths, I don’t know what the teacher talks about. Maths is too difficult for me.” His mother says, “Don’t be disappointed, my boy. I can be your maths teacher.” “Great!” Bill says happily.

Every day after school, Bill and his mother study together for an hour. Bill likes his mother’s “class”. He becomes interested in (对……感兴趣) maths.

One day, when Bill wants to go to bed, he finds his mother is doing something at the desk. He opens the door and sees his mother studying maths on the Internet. He knows why his mother is good at maths.

A mother can do everything for her children. As children, we must thank our mothers.

Little things make a difference

I was at an empty Mexican beach at sunset (日落). I could see a woman in the distance (在远处). She kept bending down (弯腰), picking something up and throwing it out into the ocean. As I got closer, I noticed that the woman was picking up starfish that were left on the beach and, one at a time, she was throwing them back into the water.

I was puzzled. I walked up to the woman and said, “Good evening. I was wondering what you are doing.”

“I’m throwing these starfish back into the sea. You see, it’s low tide (潮汐) right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the beach. If I don’t throw them back into the sea, they’ll die here from lack of water.”

“I understand.” I said. “but there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You can’t possibly get to all of them. There are simply too many. And this is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast (海岸). Can’t you see that you can’t possibly make a difference?”

The woman smiled, bent down and picked up another starfish, and as she threw it back into the sea, she replied, “Made a difference to that one!”

Sam is a junior high school student. He l    27     going to school. He lives c    28     to his school, so he always goes to school on foot. He is s    29     late. His favorite subject is G    30    . He enjoys learning about different places in the world. In the morning, he u    31     studies Chinese, Maths and English. Then he has a morning b    32    . When the bell r    33    , he runs to play with his friends. Afternoon classes e    34     at 3:30 p.m. Then he takes part in the school band p    35    . They play great music t    36    .