1 . ①At school, students usually learn many subjects in the classroom like English, math and so on. Now there is a new one in some schools—school gardening (园艺). It is an outdoor (户外) subject. In the gardening class, teachers teach students different kinds of vegetables and how to grow (种) them. Then students work in groups.

②________ Why? Because they can have much fun in this class. They don’t have to sit at their desks in the classroom all day. They can get out, get their hands dirty, do things with their own (自己的) hands and relax.

③It’s also fun to get something to eat and see. In some schools, students like to grow carrots and tomatoes. It’s always interesting for them to get a carrot or a tomato, wash it and eat it right in the garden. In some schools, students like to grow flowers (花). When it’s spring, all the flowers come out and they’re really beautiful. Students like to walk and talk in the beauty. That’s their favorite thing to do after busy hours of work.

④Only fun from the classes? Of course not. Students can learn something, too. Keeping a school garden is difficult and all the students in the group need to come and help. This teaches students teamwork. Also, some vegetables are easy to grow, but others need a long time. This teaches students they need to wait (等待) before they get the things they want.

⑤There may (可能) be many other good things about school gardening. But one thing is for sure—students really love having outdoor classes.

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2 . ① The way we spend our time can be put into three “bottles”. These are the Necessary Tasks Bottle (必要任务瓶), the Voluntary Tasks Bottle (志愿任务瓶) and the Happiness Bottle.

②Every day, we spend time filling the Necessary Tasks Bottle with useful things, like making money, doing housework, and paying bills.

③We then fill another bottle with Voluntary Tasks. These are things we do for others, we may not enjoy, but we do them anyway. This bottle gets filled with tasks like taking children to activities, cooking family meals, and washing clothes for family.

④However, we often forget to fill the third bottle—the Happiness Bottle. This is the bottle we fill with activities that make us happy. Is your Happiness Bottle sometimes empty at the end of the day? Between doing all the Necessary and Voluntary Tasks, time flies by, and before we know, it is time for bed. We all have days like that.

⑤This is why each day we have to try to fill our Happiness Bottle. I fill mine by going to the dancing class. And I always leave classes more happily than when I arrive. This week, I had fun joining in a guitar practice in my neighborhood. We showed our musical talent and practiced music for charity (慈善). It was a time of fun, friendship and music-making. At the end of the evening, my Happiness Bottle was filled to top.

⑥The challenge (挑战) for each of us is to not let the day go by without filling our Happiness Bottle. That takes some planning. Many of us probably need to pencil happiness activities into our schedule (日程表): If we don’t do that, we will have to fill our schedule with those Necessary and Voluntary Tasks.

⑦Think about how your time is being spent. Are you doing enough activities that bring joy to your life? Or are the Necessary and Voluntary Tasks using up all your time? At the end of the day, hopefully we’ve done all we can to make sure that our Happiness Bottle is filled.

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3 .

Have you ever seen lions dancing in the streets? The lions dance to the beat of a drum. Of course, they are not real lions. They are dancers in lion costumes (服饰). Lion dancing first started in China centuries ago. It is meant to bring good luck in the coming year.

Usually, a lion is made up of two dancers. One dancer controls the head. The other controls the tail.

“I think of it as a sport,” says Anthony Huang, aged 16. He is a member of the New York Chinese Freemasons Athletic Club. Anthony performs as the lion’s head. It can weigh 20 pounds. Lion dancing is important to Anthony. “This tradition really lifts me up,” he says.

In the past, lion dancing was performed mostly by men. But it is different today. LionDanceMe is a lion dancing group in San Francisco, California. There are boys and girls on its team. They dance together. “Anyone can take up lion dancing. You have to believe that you can do it,” says Ananda Tang-Lee, a 17-year-old girl.

Lion dancing will continue to evolve (演变). But a team’s sense of community will never change.

“We call it a family,” Ananda says. “It’s really great, because we always have each other’s backs.”

4 . Chopsticks, or kuaizi in Chinese, are a pair of small sticks of equal length. The two chopsticks can work well together. ①

It is believed that the first chopsticks appeared over 5,000 years ago in ancient China.They were used for cooking and serving, but not as eating tools. It was not until the Ming Dynasty that chopsticks came into normal use for both serving and eating. The earliest evidence (证据) of a pair of chopsticks made out of bronze (黄铜) was found at Yinxu in Anyang, Henan, dating back to roughly 1200 B. C. Nowadays, bamboo and wood chopsticks are the most popular ones in Chinese homes.

② Chinese chopsticks are usually about 22~24 centimeters long. They are round on the eating end, which represents (代表) heaven. The other end is usually square, representing earth. This is because the greatest concern between heaven and earth is to keep enough supplies of food. There is an old custom in China. It is believed that chopsticks should be part of a girl’s dowry (嫁妆) since the pronunciation (发音) of kuaizi is similar to that of the words for “soon” and “son” in Chinese. It is still a popular good wish in China for newly married couples to have babies “soon”.

According to modern science, the long-term use of chopsticks makes one’s fingers flexible (灵活的). That is good for people’s health. ③ So, among the different kinds of tableware (餐具) today, chopsticks have special power. The culture of using kuaizi has spread to many other Asian countries. In Japan, people celebrate the Chopsticks Day on August 4 every year.

④ As an old saying goes, “A chopstick can be broken easily. Ten pairs of chopsticks, held together, are hard to break.” For thousands of years, Chinese people have favoured chopsticks not only because they are easy to use but also because they represent the great spirit of the Chinese people.

9 . ①Do you have trouble trying to create the next big idea? Why not try sitting back, relaxing and letting your mind wander? Yes, you heard that correctly. If you are in need of a new idea, try daydreaming.

②Daydreams allow your mind to run freely and even increase productivity in some situations. Daydreaming develops creativity which is why you have an ah-ha moment. Daydreaming allows you to come up with thoughts and ideas you did not realize you even had.

③Researchers from the University of California found relation between daydreaming and creative problem-solving. Their study includes making participants (参与者) first do an “unusual-use task”. It makes them try to think of as many different ways to use an object as they could.

④Then, the participants chose to do one of the following four things before doing the “unusual-use task” again: finish a difficult task, finish an easy task, take a 12-minute break, or skip (跳过) a 12-minute break and move right on to the task exercise again.

⑤Surprisingly, the group that performed best was the one that finished the easy task. Many participants reported that they were daydreaming while performing the easy task. So the researchers believed that this daydreaming might have helped unlock their creativity.

⑥But how could daydreaming help the brain come up with creative ways? The answer is your “unconscious thought”. Even when you are not actively working to solve a problem, it is still in the back of your mind. Your brain is still thinking about the problem, but in a much more subtle (不易察觉的) way.

⑦When you daydream, your mind is allowed to think in ways it normally would not. Because it is free of control (控制), it can create completely new and out-of-the-box ideas. Great ideas never come easily, but that does not mean you always have to work hard to get them. Feel free to do what you want and let your mind wander.

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10 . ___a___Snacks are many people’s favorites, especially children and young women. Nowadays, more and more young people like to have snacks during the middle of the night. A recent study shows that midnight snacks could bring some health problems. Namni Goel, lead scientist of the study, said, “Midnight snacks will break your normal life habits. ___b___ They will make you put on weight easily and make you get heart problems easily. Also they will greatly influence (影响) your feelings.”

This isn’t the first time a study has shown that midnight snacks could be bad for your health. According to the common studies, the following four main problems were shown. ___c___That’s because it will make a difference to your future life.

First, midnight snacks can influence your memory. The study found that midnight snacks are even bad for your cognitive functions (认知功能). Second, they can make you have weird dreams. The sugar in midnight snacks will excite your brain at night and make you feel nervous. Then you will probably have dreams which are not usual in your life. ___d___Third, midnight snacks make you get heart disease easily. Scientists have found that midnight snacks could make you have high blood pressure. As a result, you will have heart problems. Finally, midnight snacks can make you feel hungrier than usual when you wake up the next morning.

It’s high time that the young thought about their eating habits more. After all, having good health is what everyone wants most.