1 . Each year, my kindergarten students in Armour, South Dakota, learn to identify hundreds of birds by sight and more than 50 species by their song or call. It started out simply enough. Bird-watching is my hobby, so about six years ago, I started sharing my love for birds with my students. I’ve always felt like it’s important to get kids outside and away from so many screens, and I consider this doing my part. And guess what? They absolutely love it!
Kindergartners are pretty amazing at identifying birds, especially by their songs. I find that younger children are naturally tuned into nature and have great curiosity about it. This became quite obvious once I began teaching about birds. You wouldn’t believe how easily these 5-years-olds learn to identify different species.
With every year that I’ve done this, the kids immediately get hooked. Then we have this common passion to share and build on it throughout the year. I’ve found that my students’ love of birds is a great way to get them more interested in writing, reading and story problems in math.
So how do I do it? With identification(识别), I use a flash-card approach. We also use a Bird Bingo game that the kids love. Then I introduce one or two bird songs a day. Learning about bird songs is a lot like learning a foreign language. It teaches students to think in a different way by learning to recognize different sounds. The best part is that it makes them more aware of nature and which birds are in their area.
If you want to try teaching bird songs to your students, I’d suggest starting with the common backyard birds. Check out the All About Birds website, where you can look up the species, find photos and even play the bird songs right there!
1. What inspired the author to start teaching kindergartners about birds?| A．His love for bird-watching. |
| B．The science teaching standards. |
| C．The students’ curiosity about nature. |
| D．The students’ talent in identifying birds. |
| A．Annoyed. | B．Amazed. | C．Disappointed. | D．Discouraged. |
| A．Interested. | B．Challenged. | C．Encouraged. | D．Praised. |
| A．By listening to bird songs. |
| B．By studying bird photos on a website. |
| C．Through writing and reading exercises. |
| D．Through flash cards and a Bird Bingo game. |
2 . When most kids go to the beach, they’re too focused on making sandcastles and splashing around to notice litter, but several years ago, for 7-year-old Cash Daniels, noticing a plastic straw sparked a lifelong passion for saving the planet.
Cash, who is now known as the “conservation kid”, has always loved nature. He grew up fishing along the Chattanooga River, after all! But once he learned that 80 percent of all trash from land and rivers ends up in the ocean, he couldn’t sit back.
He started with cleanups along the river, something that quickly went from a family affair to a community effort with volunteers and neighbors. In 2019, Cash, together with a Canadian conservationist, Ella Galaski-Rossen, started a nonprofit called the Cleanup Kids. Despite living in different countries, they managed to create educational videos on their YouTube channel. “We hope to be a really big nonprofit that eliminates plastic in the U. S. and Canada,” Cash said. “We want to inform kids and adults in the landlocked states of how their actions are connected to the water and the ocean,” Cash said.
Cash was selected as one of America’s top 10 youth volunteers of 2021 by the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards. He also earned the title of National Honoree, where he received a$5,000 grant to go to a nonprofit of his choice, and he became the first person to win the Youth Conservationist Award two years in a row from the Tennessee Wildlife Federation.
“I want to travel the world, teach others, and help them feel connected to the ocean. Because if you are connected to the ocean-if you love it and what lives in it—you’ll want to protect it,” he said. “This is my fun, and it becomes more fun with every new discovery.”
1. Which can replace the underlined words “sit back” in paragraph 2?| A．Fall asleep. | B．Lose heart. |
| C．Turn a blind eye. | D．Lend a hand. |
| A．To recycle waste plastics. |
| B．To make instructive videos. |
| C．To spread marine knowledge. |
| D．To appeal for ocean protection. |
| A．Sympathetic and devoted. | B．Initiative and talented. |
| C．Ambitious and humorous. | D．Determined and modest. |
| A．Passion fuels dreams. |
| B．Great minds think alike. |
| C．Helping others is of great fun. |
| D．Actions speak louder than words. |
People gathered at the US National Zoo to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the
Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing arrived 50 years ago,
Pandas are the symbol
4 . Our city is in a sorry state. Outdoor pollution kills 4.2 million people a year, according to the World Health Organization. Concrete and tarmac (柏油碎石材料) absorb the sun’s rays rather than reflecting them back into space, and also replace plants which would otherwise cool things down. The continuous spread of buildings and roads thus turns urban areas into heat islands, discomforting residents and worsening dangerous heatwaves.
A possible answer is trees. Their leaves may destroy at least some chemical pollutants (污染物) and provide shade. In 2019, researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that American cities need 40% tree coverage to cut urban heat back meaningfully. Unfortunately, not all cities — and especially not those springing up in the world’s poor countries — are blessed with parks, private gardens or even street trees in sufficient numbers.
Miyawaki Akira, a plant ecologist at Yorkhama National University, in Japan, has developed a new way to increase unban greening. It is to plant miniature simulacra (微型仿制品) of natural forests in the unpromising abandoned areas. Dr Miyawaki has organised the planting of more than 1, 500 of these miniature forests, first in Japan, then in other parts of the world. Others are following in his footsteps. India is particularly keen. In Mumbai, more than 200,000 trees are found in Miyawaki forests throughout the city. Hyderabad started growing the largest individual forest of the lot in 2020.
The Miyawaki method will never work out on a large scale. Relying on nature and the passage of time is probably the best for replanting extensive areas of damaged woodlands. But if your goal is to better your immediate neighborhood, rather than to save the planet from global warming, then Dr. Miyawaki might well be your man.
1. What do we know from Paragraph 1?| A．Plants are replaced to cool things down. |
| B．Urban areas are becoming pollution hotspots. |
| C．Buildings and roads make residents comfortable. |
| D．Concrete and tarmac reflect heat back into space. |
| A．Plants provide shade for urban residents. | B．Tree coverage needs to be further expanded. |
| C．The situation in urban areas gets steadily worse. | D．Trees cut down chemical pollution from factories. |
| A．It originated from India. | B．It takes effect as expected. |
| C．It makes no difference to Mumbai. | D．It is finding increasing favour. |
| A．A practical strategy to save our planet. | B．A flexible schedule to settle a challenge. |
| C．A partial solution to the lack of urban greening. | D．An effective measure to prevent global warming. |
1. What are the speakers discussing?
| A．The man’s house. | B．The effects of global warming. | C．The man’s job. |
| A．Animals can get more food. |
| B．Green can be seen all year round. |
| C．He lives by the sea. |
| A．Grass. | B．Vegetables. | C．Trees. |
6 . Used electronics are piing up fast: they are filling up landfills with dangerous pieces of waste. Some e-waste is relatively large, such as air conditioners; other e-waste is more unnoticed, such as smart labels that contain disposable batteries and other equipment.
“It’s these small batteries that are big problems,” says University of California, Irvine, public health scientist Dele Ogunseitan, who is a green technology researcher and adviser for major tech companies and was not involved in developing the battery. “Nobody really pays attention to where they end up.” Researchers at the Cellulose & Wood Materials Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology are working to address this problem. Their new paper describes a water-activated paper battery developed from environmentally friendly materials that could eventually present a sustainable alternative to the more harmful batteries common in low-power devices.
The paper battery has the same key components as standard batteries but packages them differently. Like a typical chemical battery, it has a positively charged side and a negatively charged side. A traditional battery’s components are covered in plastic and metal; in the new battery, however, the positively and negatively charged sides are inks printed onto the front and back of a piece of paper. That paper is filled with salt, which dissolves (溶解) when the paper becomes wet. When the paper is dry, the battery is shelf-stable. Once the paper is wet, the battery starts working within 20 seconds. The new battery’s operating performance declines as the paper dries. When the scientists rewet the paper during testing, the battery regained function and lasted an hour before beginning to dry out again.
That future may not be so far off. It is hard to predict a time line for manufacturing such items at scale, but the head of the study says he is in contact with potential industry partners and believes these batteries could make their way into products within the next two to five years.
1. Why is e-waste mentioned in paragraph 1?| A．To introduce the topic. | B．To give people warning. |
| C．To show the seriousness of it. | D．To call on people to take action. |
| A．Objective. | B．Carefree. | C．Indifferent. | D．Concerned. |
| A．The difference between the paper battery and the traditional battery. |
| B．The working principle of the paper battery. |
| C．The problem of the paper battery. |
| D．The advantage of the paper battery. |
| A．Paper battery: Is it far off? |
| B．Paper can work wonders. |
| C．Paper battery: A creative way to reduce e-waste. |
| D．Let’s work together to fight e-waste. |
7 . Honeybees are in trouble. While they’ re crucial for promoting biodiversity and producing food for healthy human diets, honeybees face many threats, including habitat loss, climate change, air pollution and disease-causing organisms.
But now, there’s hope for helping honeybees fight back against one of the many stressors they face, a deadly infectious disease known as American foulbrood. To fight the disease, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved for use the world’s first honeybee vaccine (疫苗), developed by Dalan Animal Health.
Bacteria called Paenibacillus larvae cause American foulbrood, which kills honeybees while they are in the pupal (蛹的) or pre-pupal stage. Until now, there was no “safe and sustainable” way to prevent American foulbrood. The only treatment involved antibiotics (抗生素), which are expensive, have limited effectiveness and take lots of time and energy for beekeepers to apply. To stop the spread, beekeepers are often forced to burn infected bees. That makes the vaccine a game changer.
“Our vaccine is a breakthrough in protecting honeybees,” says Annette Kleiser, CEO of Dalan Animal Health. “We are ready to change how we care for insects, impacting food production on a global level.”
Beekeepers will mix the vaccine, which contains dead P. larvae bacteria cells, into the food that worker bees eat. Then, when the worker bees produce their milky royal jelly (蜂王浆), the queen will eat it and the vaccine. Then, the vaccine will protect her developing offspring from the disease.
Under a conditional license from the USDA, Dalan Animal Health now plans to distribute limited amounts of the vaccine to commercial beekeepers. From there, they hope to offer it for sale throughout the U.S. sometime this year.
The federal agriculture agency awards conditional licenses to products that meet an emergency, situation, limited market, local situation or special circumstance. The USDA requires products that receive these types of licenses to be pure and safe, and have a reasonable expectation of effectiveness. Generally, conditional licenses come with restrictions and cover a limited period of time. Once that period ends, the agency evaluates the product’s effectiveness to determine whether to renew the conditional license or award a regular product license.
1. What’s the function of the first paragraph?| A．To stress the importance of honeybees. |
| B．To lead to the topic of the passage. |
| C．To list the threats honeybees face. |
| D．To arouse readers’ interest. |
| A．Because it has changed the way we care for insects. |
| B．Because it’s the only treatment for American foulbrood. |
| C．Because it breaks through the limitations of the former treatment. |
| D．Because the previous treatment has no effectiveness. |
| A．Queen bees. | B．Worker bees. |
| C．Adult bees. | D．Young bees. |
| A．They promote the commercial success of honeybee vaccine. |
| B．They guarantee the full effectiveness of products. |
| C．They can be renewed with no strings attached. |
| D．They are in effect within a period of time. |
According to a new study, penguins didn’t originate in Antarctica, as scientists
The study suggested that penguins originated in Australia and New Zealand 22 million years ago, not in Antarctica as
Then the opening of the Drake Passage—the body of water
These findings also support the theory that king and emperor penguins are the “sister groups” to all other penguin families,
Today, the flightless birds can
Imagine a place where, as a nature lover, you have a chance to see 17 species of animals, 94 different kinds of birds and 230 types of plants in just four days.
It might seem like an impossible task, especially for someone who is not a
The event,
For the festival, more than 50 wildlife enthusiasts from across China, Australia, France, the United Kingdom and the United States formed 17 teams and did
Members of the local community
10 . As the carbon countdown clock ticks on, cities must be more imaginative and cooperative, a lively round table hosted in Newham by a non-profit organization Friends of the Earth said.
“Net zero is around the corner,” said Mike Wake, Director of Friends of the Earth. “The UK has cut greenhouse gas emission (排放) by 40% to date mostly through the growth of large renewable generation on the grid (输电网), but further cuts will be needed as London tries to find new ways of using energy.
“While Newham has lower greenhouse gas emission per head than the UK, it has high levels of fuel poverty, poor air quality and leaky homes. Vastly improved energy efficiency, especially on older and leakier homes, along with more efficient forms of heating and an expansion of low carbon heat networks, will help,” said Wake.
“But the future requires a shift to a more communal solution,” the representatives said. District heating, which pipes hot water from a central source to connected homes or businesses, is often a cheaper and lower-carbon method of heating highly populated areas. “It’s the lowest cost and low carbon solution for the future,” Wake added.
“There are new technologies to use wasted heat,” Wake said. “We worked with businesses to decarbonise (使环保) energy supply. Rather than wasting, spare heat generated by manufacturing and other activities can be captured and used to heat nearby properties. Friends of the Earth has already helped save Newham thousands of tonnes of emissions through district heating plans, solar PV and more energy efficient measures in the homes.”
But the challenges are substantial. Newham has London’s second-highest rate of fuel poverty. “Anyway, I’m confident and hopeful about the collective challenge,” said Wake. “But for Newham to be at the forefront of a green economy, to solve fuel poverty and deal with structural equalities, we must spare no effort.”
1. What does Wake think of cutting greenhouse gas emission in the UK?| A．It doesn’t work at all. | B．It ended a short time ago. |
| C．It is very difficult to continue. | D．It still needs to be improved. |
| A．Expensive. | B．Peaceful. | C．Public. | D．Complex. |
| A．By releasing wasted heat. |
| B．By starting up many businesses. |
| C．By making national heating plans. |
| D．By solving the issues about energy. |
| A．Worried. | B．Positive. | C．Uncaring. | D．Critical. |
