A third-grade class knows exactly what will brighten an older neighbor's holiday meal — and it isn't a roast turkey. In October, I told the eight-year-olds I taught in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, about my Thanksgiving plan. "I'd like all of you to do extra jobs around the house to earn some money," I said. "Then we'll buy food for a Thanksgiving dinner for someone who might not have a nice dinner otherwise."
I wanted the children to experience that it's more blessed to give than to receive. I wanted them to understand that love of society and love of life is not just lip service; that people somehow have to make it come alive.
Early in Thanksgiving week, the boys and the girls arrived in class with their hard-earned pocket money and couldn't wait to go shopping. After pacing up and down in the supermarket, we put a turkey and decorations in the shopping cart (购物车). At last we headed toward the checkout, and then someone found a "necessity" — flowers. It was more reasonable to use any extra money to buy food. I pronounced, "You can't eat flowers." "But Mrs. Sherlock," the group replied, "we want flowers." I was defeated, and the children put a bunch of pink roses into the cart.
An organization had given us the name and address of Maria, a needy grandmother who had lived alone for many years. Soon we were driving along a rough road to her house. We finally pulled up in front of a small house in the woods. A thin woman with a tired face came to the door to welcome us.
My little group hurried to get the food. As each box was carried in, the old woman kept saying "Thanks" — much to the visitors' pleasure. When kids put the pink roses on the table, the woman seemed surprised. "She was wishing it was a bag of flour (面粉)", I thought. Having talked for a while, we returned to the car.
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As we fastened (系上) our seat belts, we could see the kitchen window.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Upon seeing the moving scene, the children became quiet.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Pimple on the Nose
“Nooo!” screamed Asha as she saw a huge pimple(痘) on her nose. She didn’t have time to cover the pimple as she was running late to school. She gobbled her breakfast, grabbed her bag and got into her school bus just in time. As soon as she entered, kids started laughing. Nobody was willing to make her sit beside them. Even Anita, her bus mate acted a bit differently with her.
Asha was lost in thoughts. A new thought popped in her mind every second. Once she thought “Great! As if homework and exams were not enough, I have to worry about my pimple as well.” The next minute another thought popped in her mind. “I am tired of using that face wash. I still wonder how I agreed to use that horrible thing! How can…” Mr. Shetty, the bus driver said “Asha, do you want to miss the class?” Asha was so lost in her thoughts that she did not even notice that everybody had got down the bus except her.
She did not want to step into the campus. She thought, “What will my teachers think? What will my friends think?” After some time, she gathered courage and entered her class expecting that she would be laughed at.
It was a very hard day at school for her. As soon as she got home, she hugged her mother tightly. As she did so she felt all her worries were not even a dot in front of the warm and loving hug.
Later that day, she went to the supermarket with her mother. While coming back she heard people commenting on her pimple. A small child cried, “Daddy! My cherry is on her nose! Get it for me.” She heard some boys murmuring, “If she would have been in our school, she would definitely be chosen as the joker in the dance.”
Asha wondered why people cared so much about her appearance.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Finally it was time for bed story, and mom asked her to choose a book.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Her mother asked her never to judge a book by its old cover but to pay attention to the details.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________When I look back on my childhood, the first image that springs to my mind is the daisy (雏菊) kept in my dictionary, which always reminds me of my lunchtimes with my mother.
When I was in the third grade, I was picked to be the princess in the school play, and for weeks my mother had practised my lines (台词) so hard with me. But no matter how easily I delivered them at home, as soon as I stepped onstage, every word disappeared from my head. Finally, my teacher took me aside. She explained that she had written a narrator’s (旁白) part to the play, and asked me to switch roles.
I didn’t tell my mother what had happened when I went home for lunch that day. But she sensed my pain, and instead of suggesting we practice my lines, she asked if I wanted to walk in the yard.
It was a lovely spring day and the rose vine (藤蔓) was turning green. Under the huge trees, we could see yellow daisies popping through the grass in bunches, as if a painter had touched our landscape with a little bit of gold. I watched my mother casually bend down by one of the daisies. “I think I’m going to dig up all these weeds,” she said, suddenly pulling a flower up by its roots. “From now on, we’ll have only roses in this garden.”
“But I like daisies,” I protested (抗议). “All flowers are beautiful——even daisies.” My mother looked at me seriously. “Yes, every flower has its own beauty, doesn’t it?” she asked thoughtfully. I nodded, feeling pleased that I had won her over. “And that is true of people too,” she added, “Not everyone can be a princess. Hence, there is no shame in that.”
Relieved that she had sensed my pain, I started to cry when I told her what had happened. She listened and smiled.
注意：1. 所续写的短文的词数应为150左右；
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Paragraph 1：
“You will be a beautiful narrator,” she comforted.
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Backstage on the night of the performance, I still felt nervous.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Bus driver Charlie was out at 3 am to drive his bus around Torresdale Avenue near Cottman in the Tacony neighborhood when he saw a tiny girl waiting at the bus stop. It was Jill, a 4-year-old little girl.
It was the early hours of a rainy morning and Charlie was out to drive his SEPTA’s 56 bus on his regular route. As usual, he picked up his passengers one by one. Of course, he had no idea that he would pick up a special passenger at this time in the morning. Just as he was about to pass a stop near the Tacony neighborhood, a woman passenger told him about a little girl she had seen, all alone waiting at the bus stop. He stopped his bus and was amazed at what he had seen. Wearing her purple raincoat, sleeping clothes, and her boots, little Jill waspatiently waiting for the bus to stop so she could ride on it.
The bus driver could not believe his eyes. His passengers at the time were also surprised to see a tiny kid all alone in the rain at that moment. Seeing a child about the age of a preschooler at 3 am without any adult with her was surely a shock. Charlie was worried about her and then he had an idea. He had to do something to take the little girl safely back home.
He and the passengers on the bus tried to find out how this had happened. As it turned out, Jill even walked 5 blocks in the rain before she reached the bus stop where she was found. Without hesitation, Charlie called the local police and told them of the little girl.
As Jill sat on the bus, the passengers comforted her and made sure she was okay. As the little girl sat with the other passengers, she shared her mission (使命) that early morning. “All I want is a box of chocolates,” she said.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Charlie drove the bus until it got to the stop which was not far from a police station.
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Jill’s parents hurried to the police station.
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My little sister, Meg, said that she wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore and she’d be OK staying with Aunt Lily in the country. “As long as you’re there, Mike,” she had said. Still, Mum was worried. Meg had never slept away from home, away from the city. So I told Mum I could handle everything.
Even though we were only staying overnight, Meg had brought six books-all about fairies (仙女). After we unpacked, Aunt Lily invited us to pick some flowers. As we followed her through the forest, Meg held my hand tightly. But once we reached the sunlit grassland, she let go. “Butterflies!” whispered Meg. She screamed with delight when one flew near her.
Maybe I had nothing to worry about, I thought. I still remembered when I was here last summer, I found some amazing insects, like fireflies (萤火虫) and walking sticks which I’d never seen in the city.
“Fairies are magical. See these beautiful flowers they grow!” she kept telling absolutely everything she knew about fairies. I was glad that if she kept it up until bedtime, then maybe she’d fall right to sleep.
Meg did keep chatting, right through supper. Then the sun began to set. “Does it get really dark out here at night?” she asked. Her eyes were fixed on the window.
“Sure, but we’ve got plenty of lights inside,” said Aunt Lily. She leaned over and gave Meg a warm smile. But I could tell she was still worried. “I could read to you.”
I hadn’t even finished a page when her bottom lip started shaking slightly. “Mike,” she said, her eyes starting to fill. “I want to go home.” I quickly searched through her book for something to keep her from crying.
The book fell open to a page that was dog-eared from use, a page that was obviously one of Meg’s favorites. The text read: “Among the trees deep in the forest, the lights of fairies gleam (闪烁).” Aha! How could I forget those “tiny fairies” out there?
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
“Meg, there’s something outside I want to show you,” I whispered.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________“Tiny fairies, Mike!” she said, pressing her forehead against the window, “Everywhere!”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________On a cold winter evening, I, together with my 6-year-olds on Bob, was on our way home, heading towards a bridge, when I heard some strange noise ahead.
As we approached the bridge, dusk was starting to fall and I could see a figure lying on the bridge floor, uncomfortably close to the railing (栏杆) of the bridge. It was a young man, clearly in great pain, crying and shouting, and his whole body was shaking. I was shocked, and suddenly realized the serious situation. The bridge ran over a high-speed train track and was a well-known death trap. A local family had lost their teenager in that exact place a few weeks earlier.
I quickly looked around but there was no one else nearby. I knew I wouldn't be able to live with myself if his death was reported the next day and I'd done nothing about that.
Without any hesitation, I inched towards the figure, and little Bob followed quietly on my side. I asked the young man if I could sit down, and then lowered myself on to the bridge floor opposite him. I tried a few gentle questions, asking, “What's your name? How old are you? What do you do?” His answers were rather simple, which were “Tom. 21. Computers.”
“Are you OK?” I asked. “No, I'm not!” He shouted back. He said something about a betrayal (背叛), and not knowing what to do. His emotions were changing wildly. I tried to make a connection, so It old him my name, where I lived, and how I was a mother of two children. After asking him where he went to college, I pretended to be amazed that my niece (侄女) had studied there, too. I told him that his life was very valuable and the betrayal was just one tiny part of it. I even found myself telling the story of Neil Lay bourn, who had persuaded a man to be down from Waterloo Bridge in London, “They're great friends now and have even run a marathon together for charity,” I said. “Who knows? That could be us.” I kept talking gently and eagerly.”
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡相应位置作答。
I thought a train could come at any time.
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Then I broke the silence.
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A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, immediately announces she never did care for pie.
—Tenneva Jordan
I knew I was not supposed to be quite so excited. I was too old for that. At age eleven, as the oldest and my mom’s “grown-up” girl, I had to keep myself cool. I was in middle school after all. But when I got every chance and I was alone. I checked each present under the tree. I read every tag(标签)and felt every package, guessing at the contents within. I examined each gift so often that I could tell which present went to which person without even looking at the tags.
It had been a tough year for my family. Whenever my mom looked over at the tree and scattered(撒)presents, she would sigh and warn us, “There won’t be as much for Christmas this year. Try not to be disappointed.” Christmas had traditionally been a time for my parents to spoil us. In the past, the presents would pile up and spill out from under the tree, taking up a lot of space of the living room. I had heard the phrase, “Giving is better than receiving”, but thought that whoever had said that must have been out of their mind. Getting presents was the whole point! It was the reason why I couldn’t get to sleep on Christmas Eve.
On Christmas morning, we eagerly waited in the hallway until Dad told us everything was ready. We rushed into the living room and let the wrapping paper fly. Some of us made weak attempts to wait and watch while other family members opened their presents, but as the time passed, we lost our self-control.
“Here’s another one for you,” said Mom as she handed me a package. I looked at it, puzzled. Having spent so much time examining the presents before Christmas, I recognized this one. But it was not mine. It was my mom’s. A new tag had been put on it, with my name written in my mother’s handwriting.
“Mom, I can’t…”
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
“This is your present and it belongs to you,” said my mother.
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That Christmas is quite meaningful to me.
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My Father, My Hero
I consider my father to be the most important person in my life. This is not because he is famous or wealthy. We do not have a big car, and there are no old, expensive vases or paintings in our house. Rather, what I value about my father is the care and love he shows for me and my family. What blesses my father most is being able to put food on the table and a roof over our heads.
My father might work hard, but he is always there for us. Whenever I trip or hurt myself playing sports, he's there to pick me up. My brother and I grew up with his constant care and the funny nursery rhymes and stories he told us.
My father also helps our local community. My father has been successful as he never shrinks from helping others. People also like him because he often has a smile on his face. He is optimistic and finds good in all situations. He is great at problem-solving, and his favorite phrases are “Don't worry! It’s not worth it” and “It will be all right—just you wait and see”. He is always right! And I have learnt from him the need to be patient and honest, and to care for other people.
I can well remember that when my mother and father got married, they did not have much money. The situation got worse when they had children. When we were very young, my father had an extra job as a hotel porter, and he also mopped the floor of a hotel every night so that he could give us a special treat or a vacation. At the start of last year, my father began putting at least fifty cents every day into a jar on a shelf in his bedroom. We all wondered what he was saving the money for, but he refused to tell us.
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2．请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Then, in December, I noticed that the jar was empty.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Later the next year, I found that his best friend passed away, leaving the family too poor to send the son to school.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Different sports filled my days in my youth. I dreamed or a big win some day, with a big trophy (奖杯). I was skillful and fast, or so I thought. However, I soon learned my skills seemed quite weak because the bigger, stronger boys seemed to occupy every corner of the playground. Once I was in the 100-yard hurdles, the only recognition I received for my performance was two bloody knees.
In college, I took a swim competition, dreaming of the glory! It turned out I achieved nothing. As an older adult, I still maintained an active lifestyle. In 2010 I signed up for a stair-climbing challenge to raise money for fighting against lung cancer. My father had died of the same disease, so this was a meaningful cause for me. Then, in 2019,the organization offered an even more challenging climb option: the vertical (垂直的) mile. So I would have three hours to climb up and down twenty-eight floors fifteen times, plus three more.
I trained hard. When the challenge started. I felt confident. But soon my legs started feeling heavy. What was worse, I began experiencing leg cramps (抽筋). My progress slowed dramatically and I quickly fell behind. When came down after finishing lap 14, it was past the time limit, so my big win had escaped once again.
Soon after the climb, I struggled to experience the sense of self-satisfaction. And I had, after all, set a goal for myself to prove what I was made of, what I had inside me. And what I had inside me was, “Nice try, but you didn’t make it.” So, a year later, at age 62 and after numerous workouts, I was back. Like last year, I was well ahead after an hour and I again started feeling some discomfort in my legs. I heard myself cry out loud, “Oh, no not again!” I finally stopped and sat down on the stairs, feeling quite depressed and wondering if my dream was over. A few climbers stopped to offer help. I was touched, but embarrassed to accept. Except for one climber. An angel climber, really.
Jessica, who I happened to know, was a salesman’s friend when I bought new running shoes at his store. And without that connection, she might have climbed past me as I sat on those steps, my legs shaking. But all those things did happen, and Jessica stopped to help.
注意：
1.续写词数应为150左右。
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
When she saw I was cramping, she offered me some sports drinks containing electrolytes (电解质).
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The cramps in my legs finally started to go away.
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Allen came here today only because of Grandfather, who refused to use anything but bat (蝙蝠) waste to feed his crops.
Grandfather had always come here by himself before. But recently he was too weak to do the whole job. Grandfather could gather the waste and bring it out in the basket, but he needed Allen to pull it home in the wooden cart (手拉车).
On arrival, Grandfather took a shovel (铁铲), a flashlight and the basket from the cart. “Would you come inside with me?” he asked Allen. Allen hadn’t been in the cave for nearly two months. Not since the Terrible Day of the Bats. “It won’t happen again, Allen,” Grandfather promised. “That time it was my mistake to wait until nearly dusk (黄昏) to go inside. I know that the bats fly out of the cave at sunset.” That was exactly what happened on the Terrible Day of the Bats. As Allen was standing at the entrance, a large group of bats suddenly flew from it. Allen was frightened. “Bats hurt no one,” Grandfather said. “Besides, you shock them as much as they do you.”
But nothing could make Allen forget the horror he had felt enclosed (被包围) in that black cloud of bats. “I can’t go in there,” he answered. “OK,” Grandfather said. As he started to go into the cave, he called over his shoulder, “I’ll be out in no time.” Allen looked quickly at the shovel and flashlight inside the cart—his shovel and flashlight. He used them back in the days when he always helped Grandfather. Now they only reminded him of his fear.
Allen walked down to the river, sitting and watching the fishermen in their small boats. Suddenly, Allen realized that Grandfather’s “no time” had turned into a long time. Had he somehow missed Grandfather? Had Grandfather pulled the cart home by himself? Allen hurried up the hill toward the cave. The cart was there. Grandfather was still inside. Something must have gone wrong, Allen thought. He had to go in, but he didn’t dare.
注意：1．续写词数应为150左右；
2．请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
“I must take action right now,” Allen said to himself.
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“Where is Grandfather in the cave,” Allen wondered.
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