1 . Life will be peaceful if you always do kind things. I teach my daughters to develop a habit of ______ others. The little acts of ______ give you chances to provide service for others. They can make you feel how ______ it is to be kind and helpful.

We ______ in a rural (乡村的) area. Most of what we ______ is beautiful nature. One of the exceptions to the ______ is the rubbish that some people throw out of their car windows as they drive along the rural roads. One of the few ______ of living here is short of ______ public services, such as rubbish collection, which is common in the ______.

A helping behavior that I practice regularly with my daughters is driving around to pick up rubbish in our neighborhood. My daughters often have a ______ to see who can collect the most rubbish. They will often say to me in a(n) ______ voice, “There’s some rubbish, Daddy－ ______ the car!” And if we have time, we will often get out of our car and pick it up. ______ it may seem strange, we do it. In fact, we ______ it. We pick up rubbish in parks, on sidewalks, almost anywhere. One day, seeing a stranger picking up rubbish or the road, I stopped. He ______ his head and smiled, “I saw you doing this with your family. It’s a good ______ to protect our environment.”

There are many other ways to ______ kindness for others. You may share a dinner with a beggar, visit ______ old people in the nursing home, or help the blind ______ the street. You can think of something that can be finished ______ but helpful. It is fun, self-satisfying, and what’s more, it can set a good example. Helping others is helping yourself.

3 . When I spent the summer with my grandmother, she always set me down to the general store with a list. Behind the counter was a lady like no one I’d ever seen.

“Excuse me,” I said. She looked up and said, “I’m Miss Bee.”

“I need to get these.” I said, holding up my list. “So? Go get them.” Miss Bee pointed to a sign. “There’s no one here except you and me and I’m not your servant, so get yourself a basket from that pile.”

I visited Miss Bee twice a week that summer. Sometimes she shortcharged me. Other times she overcharged. Going to the store was like going into battle. All summer long she found ways to trick me. No sooner had I learned how to pronounce “bicarbonate of soda” and memorized its location on the shelves than she made me hunt for it all over again. But by summer’s end the shopping trip that had once taken me an hour was done in 15 minutes.

“All right, little girl,” she said. “What did you learn this summer?” “That you’re a meanie (小气鬼)!” I replied. Miss Bee just laughed and said, “I know what you think of me. Well, I don’t care! My job is to teach every child I meet life lessons. When you get older you’ll be glad!” Glad I met Miss Bee? Ha! The idea was absurd…

Until one day my daughter came to me with homework troubles. “It’s too hard,” she said. “Could you finish my math problems for me?”

“If I do it for you, how will you ever learn to do it yourself?” I said. Suddenly, I was back at that general store where I had learned the hard way to add up my bill by myself. Had I ever been overcharged since?

6 . On August 26, 1999, New York City was struck by a terrible rainstorm. Unfortunately, this happened during the morning rush hour. Many people who were going to work were _______ to go home. Some battled to call a taxi or to get on a bus. Still others faced the _______ bravely, walking miles to get to work. I _______ to be one of people on the way to work that morning. I went from subway line to subway line only to find that most _______ had stopped. After making my way _______ crowds of people, I finally found a subway line that was _______.

Unluckily, there were so many people waiting to _______ the subway that I could not even get down the stairs to the _______. So I took the train going in the opposite direction, and then switched back to the downtown train. Finally, after what seemed like forever, the train _______   my stop. Then I had to walk several blocks in the increasingly heavy rain. When I finally got to my office, I was ________ through, exhausted and discouraged.

My co­workers and I spent most of the day drying off. When it was 5:00 p.m., I was ready to go home. I was about to turn off my computer ________ I received an e­mail from Garth, my Director: “I would like to thank all of you who made the effort and ________ reported to work. It is always reassuring (令人欣慰), at times like these, when employees so clearly show their ________   to their jobs. Thank you.”

Garth’s e­mail was short, but I learned more from that ________ message than I ever did from a textbook. The e­mail taught me that a few words of ________ can make a big difference.

7 . Take a look inside a high school classroom. You will most likely find a teacher at the front of the class and students sitting at their desks. Yet, look closer, and you might notice a familiar scene: many of these students are not paying attention. Instead, they are dozing off (打盹) or even completely asleep.

Today, the majority of high school students are not getting enough sleep. This is a serious problem, especially as students are doing more than ever with their time. They come to school early, spend hours listening to teachers and taking tests, then run off to practices and meetings, and come home to be faced with even more work. And the homework load these days is not light; teachers give hours’ worth of homework each night.

Most kids need at least nine hours of sleep per night in order to function properly. Yet the period of this nine hours shifts as a child gets older. After puberty (青春期), the body’s internal clock changes so that it is difficult for teens to fall asleep before 11 p.m. So even if a student falls asleep at eleven, they would need to sleep until at least 8 am, to get a full night’s sleep. Considering the time at which most high schools in this country begin, those nine hours are clearly being shortened. Few high schools start after 8 a.m.

However, there are schools that have paid attention to this research and pushed backward the start of their school day. In schools where the start time is after 8:30 in the morning, the teachers believe that there has been a real change in their students. They note that the students miss class less, pay more attention in class, perform better in class, and report lower levels of depression. The researchers of these studies say that the results are quite important and that more schools should consider pushing backward their start time of their school day.

8 . My mother left the field of education formally after I was born. However, she did not leave it _________. She made learning a _________ part of my life. I never watched television, not because I was not _________ to, but because it was more fun writing stories with my mom.

On my first day of kindergarten, I was excited, but _________. During snack time that day, I sat quietly and opened my _________. Inside, I found a note from my mother written on a napkin(餐巾纸). The note said that she _________ me, that she was proud of me and that I was the best kindergartener in the world! Because of that napkin note I _________ my first day of kindergarten successfully and many more school days to follow.

There have been many napkin notes since the _________ one. There were even napkin notes _________ to me in college, far away from my home. __________ I changed majors, changed the way I looked at the world, there was one thing that never __________ — my mother’s encouragement, support and __________ in napkin notes.

This year, my mother __________ to go back to school to earn her degree in teaching. Although I was in __________ of my mother for following her dreams, I wanted her to __________ that she didn’t need a(n) __________ to make her an excellent teacher.

So I gave her a __________ for school: a lunch bag filled with her favorite foods. She laughed as she __________ the lunch bag. Then she pulled out a napkin with __________ on it.

As she opened up her “You can do it!” napkin note from me, tears began to run down her face. When her eyes met mine, I saw she __________ my unspoken message: My mother is, and always has been, a teacher.

9 . Everyone experiences tiredness at work sometimes. At some point (usually around 2:00 pm), you find yourself ready for a nap. Your energy changes naturally throughout the day. Productivity expert Chris Bailey recorded his motivation, focus, and energy levels for 21 days and found that all three tend to spike between 7:00 and 8:00 am, 11:00 am and 12:00 pm, and 6:00 and 7:00 pm. For all those highs, he also noticed time when focus, energy, and motivation were nowhere to be found.

Your peak productivity time may be different from Mr. Bailey’s, but you also have your own ups and downs. The amount of sleep you have, the food you eat, and how you exercise are a few of the factors that cause rises and falls in your energy level.

We can fill up on coffee and sugar as much as we want, but we’re fighting a natural downturn (消退期) in energy when we do this. Your tiredness may seem like an inconvenience, but it’s really your body telling you that it needs rest. The best way to beat it is to satisfy this need.

Our bodies operate on a natural clock called a circadian rhythm (生理节奏). This sleep/wake cycle is perfectly adapted to give us enough sleep over the course of a 24-hour period. Natural light is the primary way that your body uses to decide whether or not you should be asleep.

Therefore, circadian rhythms do not agree with the average 9 to 5 job. Irregular sleep schedules, the light from electronic devices, and natural light exposure (暴露) for a long time can also affect the cycle. This is why people working the night shift (夜班) have an increases risk of developing health problems. They must remain awake when their body tells them it’s time for bed, and their sleep schedule is constantly ruined when they try to stay awake on days off.

10 . She was sitting up at four months, walking at eight months and completing 100-piece jigsaw puzzles (拼图玩具) at 15 months. So it is no surprise that Abigail Wilson, 15, from Connecticut, USA, recently made history when she became the youngest black girl ever accepted into an American university! “I’m proud of myself for getting in, but I usually find it hard to get excited. It’s pretty cool, I guess,” said Abigail.

Her mother, Nancy, said that Abigail was a quiet baby. She didn’t speak her first words until she was 22 months old! Her parents thought something must be wrong, but when she started to talk, her speech was perfect. She already knew colors, letters and was able to read. Her parents read her normal bedtime stories and they didn’t know she was learning all of it.

Abigail has always been the youngest person in her class. At six she was in the fourth grade, at ten she took her first high school class in Maths. She has studied several languages, including Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian, Arabic and German.

Abigail says that she doesn’t usually plan when she studies, she calls herself scatterbrained (浮躁的) and she always delays things up to the last minute. This gives her the motivation to really do something.

In her free time, Abigail plays basketball, surfs the Internet, reads, cooks and hangs out with her friends. She has also studied music. Her mother says that Abigail’s music lessons helped her to be a normal teen. She believed that Abigail needed to be in a situation where she had to fail in order to learn. “She found playing the piano very difficult, but it made her learn better,” said Nancy. “She can’t always be successful, she won’t be able to learn anything! People always learn more from their failures than from their successes.”