【推荐1】During the past summer vacation, a 15-year-old boy made a model plane on his own in less than a month. Then he flew it successfully, which surprised all the people around him.

The boy named Li Banghua is from Hefei, Anhui Province. He made the plane completely by himself. The plane is 0.6 meters wide, has a wingspan (翼展) of 4.4 meters and weighs about 40 kilograms. According to a local report, Li just finished his high-school entrance exam a year ago and got good grades. After the exam, he threw himself into the work of making the model plane right away.

Li has has been interested in model plans since he was a child. Besides, he has been studying and building model planes for years. This time the model plane is the largest he has ever build and he considers it the most successful one.

Throughout the process of building the plane, he came across many failures. “But the biggest difficulty I had was that the adults couldn’t understand me well,” Li said. “When I said I was going to build a model plane, a lot of adults thought it was impossible. But I decided to keep on working hard. That is because once I start something, giving up is not a choice for me.”

What’s more, on May 1st, 2022, he took the “fire fighting drone (消防无人机)” to a test flight in the field of his hometown in Feixi County successfully.

When talking about his future, he said he dreamed of becoming a plane engineer.

When looking at old chopsticks, most people will see nothing but waste (垃圾). But Felix Bock is different. He can make boxes, tables and other useful things out of them.

In 2016, Felix Bock studied at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He found people threw away about 100,000 pairs of chopsticks every day in Vancouver alone. He decided to do something to stop waste. So he started the company Chop Value in the same year. The company collected used chopsticks from restaurants, schools and shopping centers in Canada and the US. And then the company turned them into furniture and artworks. Now the company has recycled (再利用) 32 million pairs of chopsticks.

Bock hopes the idea behind Chop Value will help people to think about what waste is. “I believe every small action can help,” he said. “And I am happy that my business offers people a new way.” Hundreds of restaurants across North America pay some money to Bock for the recycling of their used chopsticks. But Bock doesn’t stop there. Now he is busy taking his business to more countries to set up factories for recycling local wood like chopsticks.

I was walking down the road one day when my phone rang. A child’s voice on the other end said to me, “Dad, please come back soon. I miss you so much!” I thought that it was a wrong number. So I answered rudely, “You called the wrong number!” and then hung up（挂断）.

During the following days, I often got the same call. But I didn’t care much about it. Then one day she kept calling me. Finally I answered the phone and heard a weak voice, “Dad, please come back. I miss you so much! Dad, I’m in so much pain（疼痛）! Mum said you were too busy to take care of me. But, Dad, please kiss me again, OK?” It was difficult to refuse her. I made a sweet kiss on the phone and heard the weak voice say, “Thank you... Dad, I am so ... happy, so... happy...”

Shortly after this, I became curious（好奇的）about who had been on the other end of my phone. So I called back, and a woman answered, “Sorry, sir. I am really sorry to trouble you. My daughter has had bone cancer（癌症）since she was born. And her father died in a car accident two days ago. I didn’t want to tell her the news. Poor baby. When she was too painful, she would cry for her dad because her dad always encouraged her. I really don’t know what to do, so I gave her a random（随意的）phone number....”

“How is your daughter now?” I couldn’t wait to ask.

“She died. You must have kissed her on the phone, because she died with a smile, tightly（紧紧地）holding the cell phone...”

Tears filled my eyes....

【推荐1】Garbage collector （垃圾回收员） Jose Gutierrez is 53 years old. When he was young, his family was too poor to keep him in school. Jose left school when he was in Grade Two. But that did not stop him having a love of reading.

Jose said he got the love of reading from his mother. She always read to him, “She read me stories every night.” said Jose. He hopes that every poor child in his city can have books to read.

Jose started saving books from garbage 20 years ago. Every day he drives the garbage truck through the city’s rich neighborhoods to get old books. Now there are about 20,000 books in Jose’s small house. It is already a famous library in his neighborhood.

Books are rare things for boys and girls in poor neighborhoods. New books are too expensive. There are 19 libraries in Bogota, the city where Jose lives, but they are all far from poor neighborhoods.

Now Jose is famous in Bogota. Many people give old books to him. Jose plans to make more libraries to help more children.

Jose Gutierrez is a ________. When he was young, his family was so poor that he couldn’t go to school. However, he still loves reading and he wishes every poor child ________. He drives the garbage truck ________ from the city’s rich neighborhoods. Now he has a small library with ________ at his home.

【推荐2】Although most of us are staying at home because of the corona virus (新型冠状病毒), there are still many people trying to do some creative things during this difficult time. Now, let’s look at some creative indoor activities.

Write a rap song

“I close my eyes and hope everything will be okay, the one who can save you is not God but a common man in flesh and blood.”

These are a few lines from a rap song written by Liu Yixin and Li Yusheng who are Senior 3 students in Beijing. Titled An Empty City, the song became a hit because of its great words and deep emotion (感情). People was touched by their strong sense of social responsibility.

Encourage people to dance

Matthew Lee is a 16-year-old Chinese-American who is now living in Los Angeles, US. When he learned that most Chinese are unable to leave their houses, he and Jojo decided to encourage them to work out at home by making a dance video with his friends. Lee chose to dance to the song We Are the World.

Write an English poem

Du Wenwen is a Junior 2 student from Cangzhou, Hebei. While staying at home, Du and her classmates wrote acrostic poems (藏头诗) in English to help cheer people up. She said, “I found it quite interesting, because I can hide a message in the first letters of each line and surprise readers. As teenagers, we can’t go to the front line to save people’s lives, but we should learn to care about others and do something meaningful.”

【推荐3】In America, some teenagers are interested in charity. They are willing to help others. Some teenagers even set up their own charity group. Shreya Papneja is one of them.

Shreya Papneja is 13 years old. She started a charity group called Children's Health Awareness Program in Schools. Her charity group helps kids make healthy choices and tries to stop childhood obesity(肥胖).

A doctor once told Papneja that more than one-third of children were overweight. She did a lot of research about it. Then she made a website to teach other children about exercise and healthy eating.

She does a lot of things for her charity group when she is free. For example, she often organizes different activities at schools around her hometown.

"I know how hard it is to make a change, but I won't give up. At least I've changed a lot. Now I eat more healthy food instead of junk food," she said to a reporter.

Elizabeth lived with her six children in a small house. One winter, there was a big flood(洪水), and quite a few houses were washed away, but Elizabeth’s house was high enough to escape(避开) it.

One of the families lost everything. Elizabeth helped it by sharing her home until the family could build a new house. Elizabeth’s friends could not understand her, because she already had so many children to look after.

“Well,” Elizabeth explained to her friends, “at the end of World War II, there was a poor woman in a town in England. Her husband had been killed in the war and she had a lot of children, just like me now. On Christmas Eve, this woman said to her children, ‘We won’t be able to have much for Christmas. I’m going to get just one present for us all. Now I’ll go and get it.’ She came back with a little girl who had no parents. The children were more than excited to get such a present. They welcomed the little girl warmly, and she grew up as their sister. I was that Christmas present.”

【推荐2】Mr. King is our English teacher. He comes from America. He is friendly to us. His lessons are very interesting. We usually have a good time in his lessons. He knows a lot about China. And he speaks Chinese very well.

He is a tall and strong man. He lives in Beijing _______ his wife. They like Chinese food. They think Chinese food is delicious. They also like Chinese people. They want to make friends with more Chinese people.