Do your kids like plastic toys? Well, I guess it’s time for them to play with wooden toys.
I have always liked kids’ wooden toys since I was five. I always ran along on the back of a hobby horse pretending to be a cowboy from the West when I was a little boy. Now I’m a dad and I still like buying these timeless natural wooden toys. They will never be out of style. My daughter has a child’s rocking horse, and my two sons hav
e wooden trains and cars. The great thing about this type of toys is that they will last generations if they are treated kindly. Even if they break, most of the time they can be repaired using spare parts bought from wooden-toy makers, and if the part is not too complicated(复杂的), you yourself can make the part from a piece of wood.
What if they do break and can’t be repaired? Well, at least they can be d
ealt with without having any bad effects on the environment. They can be turned into wood chippings and used for pathways in the country or play areas for kids. Even if the wooden toy is buried as rubbish, which is very rare these days, it will not harm the soil or the environment.
I like all types of wooden toys. There is such a wide variety of wooden toys today and the choice is getting bigger day by day. As an alternative(替代品) to plastic toys, wooden toys can’t be beaten. I’m sure in the near future wood will no doubt become the number one material for making toys, as plastic becomes more and more expensive because of rising oil prices and the environmental issues concerning plastic. Plastic toys might harm kids’ health, too.
67. According to the author, wooden toys which can’t be repaired will _______.
A. be taken back by the makers B. need a lot of money to deal with
C. not harm the environment D. be collected by collectors
68. From the last paragraph, we can learn that _______.
A. plastic will be used up sooner o
r later
B. plastic toys will not be allowed to be sold very soon
C. wooden toys will become more popular in the future
D. wooden toys will become more and more expensive
69. Which of the following is NOT the reason why plastic toys will be less popular in the future?
A. That plastic has bad effects on the environment.
B. That plastic toys might harm the health of children.
C. That plastic toys offer children few choices.
D. That oil prices are getting higher than before.
70. We can infer that this passage is written to _______.
A. tell us the disadvantages of plastic toys
B. advise parents to buy wooden toys instead of plastic ones
C. tell us how much the author and his children like wooden toys
D. advise toy makers to make wooden toys rather than plastic ones
Sports shoes that work out whether their owner has done enough exercise to warrant time in front of the television have been devised in the UK.
The shoes- named Square Eyes- contain an electronic pressure sensor and a tiny computer chip to record how many steps the wearer has taken in a day. A wireless transmitter passes the information to a receiver connected to a television, and this decides how much evening viewing time the wearer deserves, based on the day’s efforts.
The design was inspired by a desire to fight against the rapidly ballooning waistlines among British teenagers, says Gillian Swan, who developed Square Eyes as a final year design project at Brunel University in London, UK. “We looked at current issues and childhood overweight really stood out,” she says. “And I wanted to tackle that with my design.”
Once a child has used up their daily allowance gained through exercise, the television automatically switches off. And further time in front of the TV can only be earned through more steps.
Swan calculated how exercise should translate to television time using the recommended daily amounts of both. Health experts suggest that a child take 12,000 steps each day and watch no more than two hours of television. So, every 100 steps recorded by the Square Eyes shoes equals precisely one minute of TV time.
Existing pedometers(计步器) normally clip onto a belt or slip into a pocket and keep count of steps by measuring sudden movement. Swan says these can be easily tricked into recording steps through shaking. But her shoe has been built to be harder for lazy teenagers to cheat. “It is possible, but it would be a lot of effort,” she says. “That was one of my main design considerations.”According to Swan, the purpose of her design project is to _____.
| A．keep a record of the steps of the wearer. |
| B．deal with overweight among teenagers. |
| C．enable children to resist the temptation of TV. |
| D．prevent children from being tricked by TV programs. |
Which of the following is true of Square Eyes shoes?
| A．They regulate a child’s evening TV viewing time. |
| B．They determine a child’s daily pocket money. |
| C．They have raised the hot issue of overweight. |
| D．They contain information of the receiver. |
What is stressed by health experts in their suggestion?
| A．The exact number of steps to be taken. |
| B．The precise number of hours spent on TV. |
| C．The proper amount of daily exercise and TV time. |
| D．The way of changing steps into TV watching time. |
Compared with other similar products, the new design ___.
| A．make it difficult for lazy teenagers to cheat. |
| B．counts the wearer’s steps through shaking. |
| C．records the sudden movement of the wearer. |
| D．sends teenagers’ health data to the receiver. |
Which of the following would be the best title for the text?
| A．Smart Shoes Decide on Television Time |
| B．Smart Shoes Guarantee More Exercise |
| C．Smart Shoes Measure Time of Exercise |
| D．Smart Shoes Stop Childhood Overweight |
When Andrea Peterson landed her first teaching job, she faced the daunting task of creating a music program with almost no money for equipment or supplies in a climate where standards-based learning was the focus and music just provided a break for students and teachers.
For her drive and creativity in overcoming those challenges, she's been name national teacher of the year.
Principal Waynes Kettler said he's worked with many outstanding teachers in his 22 years as an educator, but Peterson is "just that one step above anybody I've ever worked with before."
Kettler and others at Monte Cristo Elementary School talk about the ways she has introduced the learning from other classrooms into her music program and her creativity in working around things such as the lack of money for new music.
When students were reading S.E. Hinton's novel The Outsiders in their regular classroom, Peterson helped them write a 30-minute play with scenes from the book. Then they chose three Broadway tunes that focused on race, equality and social justice, the themes of the book. Peterson composed two other sons herself after classroom discussions about the play and the book.
The honor means a lot to residents of Granie Falls. It's inspiring to know that people from small towns can even win national honors.
As national teacher of the year, Peterson will spend the next year outside classroom, as a national and international spokeswoman for education.
Not surprisingly, she is a big believer in the value of arts education. She said it's essential for schools to offer classes such as art or music and physical education because for some kids one of those subjects is the only thing that motivates them to come back to school day after day.
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The underlined word "daunting" in Paragraph 1 most probably means.
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| 2． |
When Peterson began her teaching career,.
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| 3． |
What is the most important reason that Peterson won the award?
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| 4． |
Which of the following is an example of Peterson's way of teaching music?
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| 5． |
In Peterson's opinion,.
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It can be inferred from the text that.
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If you look for a book as a present for a child, you will be spoiled for choice even in a year when there is no new Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling’s wizard is not alone: the past decade has been a harvest for good children’s books, which has set off a large quantity of films and in turn led to increased sales of classics such as The Lord of the Rings.
Yet despite that, reading is increasingly unpopular among children. According to statistics, in 1997 23% said they didn’t like reading at all. In 2003, 35% did. And around 6% of children leave primary school each year unable to read properly.
Maybe the decline is caused by the increasing availability of computer games. Maybe the books boom has affected only the top of the educational pile. Either way, Chancellor Gordon Brown plans to change things for the bottom of the class. In his pre-budget report, he announced the national project of Reading Recovery to help the children struggling most.
Reading Recovery is aimed at six-year-olds, who receive four months of individual daily half- hour classes with a specially trained teacher. An evaluation earlier this year reported that children on the scheme made 20 months’ progress in just one year, whereas similarly weak readers without special help made just five months’ progress, and so ended the year even further below the level expected for their age.
International research tends to find that when British children leave primary school they read well, but read less – often for fun than those elsewhere. Reading for fun matters because children who are keen on reading can expect lifelong pleasure and loving books is an excellent indicator of future educational success. According to the OECD, being a regular and enthusiastic reader is of great advantage.Which of the following is true of Paragraph 1?
| A．Many children’s books have been adapted from films. |
| B．Many high-quality children’s books have been published. |
| C．The sales of classics have led to the popularity of films. |
| D．The sales of presents for children have increased. |
Statistics suggested that ___.
| A．the number of top students increased with the use of computers. |
| B．a decreasing number of children showed interest in reading. |
| C．a minority of primary school children read properly. |
| D．a large percentage of children read regularly. |
What do we know about Reading Recovery?
| A．An education of it will be made sometime this year. |
| B．Weak readers on the project were the most hardworking. |
| C．It aims to train special teachers to help children with reading. |
| D．Children on the project showed noticeable progress in reading. |
Reading for fun is important because book-loving children ____.
| A．takes greater advantage of the project. |
| B．shows the potential to enjoy a long life. |
| C．is likely to succeed in their education. |
| D．would make excellent future researchers. |
The aim of this text would probably be ____.
| A．to overcome primary school pupils’ reading difficulty. |
| B．to encourage the publication of more children’s books. |
| C．to remind children of the importance of reading for fun. |
| D．to introduce a way to improve early childhood reading. |
A month after Hurricane Katrina, I returned home in New Orleans. There lay my house, reduced to waist-high ruins, smelly and dirty.
Before the trip, I'd had my car fixed. When the office employee of the garage was writing up the bill, she noticed my Louisiana license plate. "You from New Orleans?" she asked. I said I was. "No charge," she said, and firmly shook her head when I reached for my wallet. The next day I went for a haircut, and the same thing happened.
As my wife was studying in Florida, we decided to move there and tried to find a rental house that we could afford while also paying off a mortgage(抵押贷款) on our ruined house. We looked at many places, but none was satisfactory. We'd begun to accept that we'd have to live in extremely reduced circumstances for a while, when I got a very curious e-mail from a James Kennedy in California. He'd read some pieces I'd written about our sufferings for Slate, the online magazine, and wanted to give us ("no conditions attached") a new house across the lake from New Orleans.
It sounded too good to be true, but I replied, thanking him for his exceptional generosity, that we had no plans to go back. Then a poet at the University of Florida offered to let his house to me while he went to England on his one-year paid leave. The rent was rather reasonable. I mentioned the poet's offer to James Kennedy, and the next day he sent a check covering our entire rent for eight months.
Throughout this painful experience, the kindness of strangers has done much to bring back my faith in humanity. It's almost worth losing your worldly possessions to be reminded that people are really nice when given half a chance.
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The garage employee's attitude toward the author was that of.
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What do we know about James Kennedy?
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It can be inferred from the text that.
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| 4． |
The author learned from his experience that.
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Which would be the best title for the text?
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Anyone who cares about what schools and colleges teach and how their students learn will be interested in the memoir（回忆录）of Ralph W. Tyler, who is one of the most famous men in American education.
Born in Chicago in 1902, brought up and schooled in Nebraska, the 19-year-old college graduate Ralph Tyler became hooked on teaching while teaching as a science teacher in South Dakota and changed his major from medicine to education.
Graduate work at the University of Chicago found him connected with honorable educators Charles Judd and W. W. Charters, whose ideas of teaching and testing had an effect on his later work. In 1927, he became a teacher of Ohio State University where he further developed a new method of testing.
Tyler became well-known nationality in 1938, when he carried his work with the Eight-Year Study from Ohio State University to the University of Chicago at the invitation of Robert Hutchins.
Tyler was the first director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a position he held for fourteen years. There, he firmly believed that researchers should be free to seek an independent（独立的）spirit in their work.
Although Tyler officially retired in 1967, he never actually retired. He served on a long list of educational organizations in the United States and abroad. Even in his 80s he traveled across the country to advise teachers and management people on how to set objectives（目标）that develop the best teaching and learning within their schools. Who are most probably interested in Ralph W. Tyler’s memoir?
| A．Top managers. | B．Language learners. |
| C．Serious educators. | D．Science organizations. |
The words “hooked oh teaching” underlined in Paragraph 2 probably mean ________.
| A．attracted to teaching | B．tired of teaching |
| C．satisfied with teaching | D．unhappy about teaching |
Where did Tyler work as the leader of a research center for over 10 years?
| A．The University of Chicago. | B．Stanford University. |
| C．Ohio State University. | D．Nebraska University. |