1 . I was driving on the freeway when I noticed heavy clouds roll in. A storm was coming. The rain began beating ______ against my car windows, making driving impossible. I ______ onto the shoulder of the road and stopped. The rain ______ me of Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina struck when I was nine years old. I had worried it would strike us in Houston. It missed us, but other cities were not so lucky. I remembered watching the ______. A reporter stood inside the Houston stadium, ______ people. Many wore dirty and ______ clothes, and some had no shoes on their feet. I noticed a little boy behind the reporter ______ an old teddy bear. Watching him, I knew I had to do something.

The next day, my friends ______ me for our volunteer club and we came up with a plan. We wanted to ______ toys and give them to the kids at the stadium, which would bring some ______ into the lives of these families. We ______ the word to the school and other organizations. Three days later, the donation boxes were overflowing with new toys! When we ______ the stadium with our gifts, children ______ toward us from all directions, smiles lighting up their faces.

Suddenly, a phone call brought me back to the present. To my joy, the storm had ______. “Hector, we have more ______ of yesterday’s tornado.” “Well, I’ve brought clothes I’d like to donate to them. The storm stopped me, but I’ll be there soon!”

2 . Jodi and Chase’s family liked to kayak (划皮艇) out to a small cabin down the river. Each summer the parents always ________ them of the dangerous brown bears nearby.

Today, Jodi and Chase were allowed to paddle ahead alone. They put on life jackets and started their ________. After a while, Jodi took a break and laid her paddle (船桨) ________ her kayak, taking out their smoked salmon sandwiches with onions. Chase raised his eyebrows. “We’ll have to ________ the fish smell on our hands when we’re done,” he said “We don’t want to smell like a bear’s favorite snack.”

Jodi stared at him as she ate. “Not funny.”

“I never ________ about bears.” Chase responded.

Shortly, they arrived at the usual stop: a cove (小河湾). Stepping out of their kayaks excitedly, they ________ it above the waterline, secured the rope around a tree, and washed their hands in the water.

“You go ahead,” Jodi said. “I need to grab some berries.” Then she got off the road. Walking alone, suddenly, Jodi sensed ________. She stopped and listened carefully. There was rustling (瑟瑟声) on the far side of the stream. She wanted to ________ down the road immediately. Would that be a ________? Just as what Dad had told her?

Then, a giant creature came out from the shadows. At that moment, Jodi was ________, going through a checklist in her mind: round ears, dark fur and a straight body… It’s a black bear! She ________ breathed out, for this kind was not so dangerous as the brown ones. But still, she could smell its stinky breath from across the ________. Yet, as quickly as it had appeared, the bear escaped. Jodi breathed a sigh of ________. When she arrived at cabin. Mom, Dad, and Chase were already there.

“How did it go?” Dad looked ________ Jodi smiled broadly. She did have a ________ for them!

4 . Two hundred years ago the English poet William Wordsworth wrote I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, a poem that was _______ when he came across a field of daffodils (水仙花). It expresses a basic spirit of early English Romanticism.

What makes this poem a (n) _______ of Romantic thinking? It isn’t that Wordsworth chooses to write about a natural _______: it is the way he describes the scene as if it had human _______. For him, _______ is not only a neutral (无感情色彩的) mixture of scenery, colors, plants, rocks, soil, water and air. It is a living force that feels joy and sadness and even tries to _______ us human beings and show us the beauty of life.

Wordsworth’s home is now one of the most popular _______ in the Lake District. You can go on a tour of the garden where wild flowers still survive now regardless of the change of the _______. The place, where Wordsworth saw the daffodils, is at the southernmost end of the lake. When you are walking in the _______ of William from two centuries ago, the first group of daffodils ________, but they aren’t tall yellow trumpets (小号状的花) proudly swinging in the gentle wind as ________ in Wordsworth’s poem. They are just tiny wild daffodils grouped around individual trees rather than ________ together. But as you look north, from beside a huge ancient oak tree, you ________ this is what delighted Wordsworth; group after group of daffodils, spread out to left and right but coming together in your ________ so that they form a beautiful, pale yellow carpet. What you’re seeing at last is nature transformed by human sight and ________.

6 . Last night my husband and I were walking when we saw a man bent over on the ground, crushing (碾碎) something with a rock. He was so focused on his _________ that he didn’t look up at anyone passing by. We kept noticing him and _________ what he could be doing. I thought he was crushing stones to make sand, but why would he do that?

_________, we decided to go up and ask him. He was crushing pieces of left-over bread that he had _________ to prepare food for the birds that come there early morning. The large pieces of bread would be _________ for the birds to eat so he crushed them into powder. Every _________, after coming home from his job as a tailor, he goes around the villa (乡间别墅), collecting left-over bread from all his housemates. He then eats a quick meal and comes here, and spends the next 1 — 2 hours _________ crushing each piece and makes a neat pile for the birds. He has been doing this for the last 3 — 4 years. What _________ us more was that he was _________ that we were even taking an interest in this, since for him it wasn’t a big __________.

8 . Natalie and Callie, both 13 years old, started raising monarch butterflies for fun in 2020.

But after realizing the monarchs were an endangered species, their _________ soon turned into a serious mission.

They learned that the population of monarch butterflies had _________ since the early 1990s, due to habitat _________ and widespread use of chemicals, which made the milkweeds (马利筋草) that the monarchs _________ for their main diet dangerous to eat.

So the girls teamed up with a national nonprofit group to plant a native garden _________ for the monarchs. The garden grew organic milkweeds that _________ and kept the butterflies. To help _________ the locals to sustain the monarch population, they created an exhibition about the monarchs in the local library. They also wanted to put up an educational sign in town, but it _________ a lot. To cover the expense, they set up a stand at the Farmers Market to sell their healthy milkweeds for people to _________ . Although the fund-raising days were ____________, they finally succeeded in earning enough money with their hard work and people’s support.

The team has won the Silver Award for their ____________ of taking care of butterflies, but they are not ____________ with their work. “Our next step is to cut down on the use of ____________ to guarantee a safe environment for the monarchs,” said Natalie. In the award ceremony, their teacher Brian ____________, “I am so proud of them for their constant ____________.”