A Field Trip for Gold
Mr. Rodriguez's class was on a field trip at the Sutter Gold Mine(矿). Larry couldn't wait to find some gold. He even brought along some photos to use as a reference(参照). He didn't want to pick up any "fool's gold" by 1 .
Larry's class got into the lift that would take them down the mine. On the ride down, their guide, Ron, gave them 2 about the Gold Rush.
"Many prospectors came to this area," explained Ron. "A prospector is someone who searches for valuable metals like gold."
Margaret interrupted, "Everyone must have got rich."
"Actually," said Ron, "not everyone was 3 . Many left the mine filled with disappointment."
"If I don't find any gold today, I'll be ready annoyed(恼火),"Larry thought to himself.
The underground tour 4 about an hour. Then they reached an open place. Ron showed them how to use pans for gold.
"It's Okay to let some of the water pour out," said Ron. "If there's any gold in your pan, it will 5 to the bottom."
Larry tried to put his pan in the water. Then he shook around the water. "Nothing," he said with a sigh(叹气).
Larry repeated the process several times. Then he noticed something 6 at the bottom of his pan. Larry angled(倾斜) the pan so he could get a better look. Whatever it was, it was shining at the bottom. Larry 7 out the photos and compared them with what was in his pan. Then he went to show it to Ron.
"You have found gold!" Ron exclaimed with surprise. Everyone gathered around to see. It was just a small piece, but Larry felt like he had hit the jackpot.
Everyone 8 the hardship(艰难) of hunting for gold in the past. They had learned a lot from this field trip.
Sharing Mind Maps with Classmates
There are different kinds of mind maps. You can choose from them to complete the tasks clearly.
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A A flow map can help us to improve our skills. It shows the steps or events from the very beginning to end. The number of steps can be different for each task. Flow Map can be used to make up a story, show events in order, tell steps in solving problems or making things. |
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B This kind of map can help us to explain an idea as short as possible. It can be the knowledge about different forms of words. It can also give more information and make the results easy to understand. It can be helpful when we want to make a good word list, map our thoughts and plan activities. |
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C This type of maps is useful in comparing between ideas or topics. It is also helpful in showing the relationship in and between them. If we have many ideas, we can use this kind of map to put them into different groups. A lot of people studying history and science are likely to use these maps. |
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D The shape of the maps looks like a fish bone, so it is called the fishbone map. In the map, the head of the fish shows the problem, and each bone of the fish shows the possible causes of the problem. In this way, it can help us have a better picture to find out the cause and result of a problem. |
Tom needs to make a report on how to make delicious banana milkshake. He wants to show different steps clearly with a mind map.
Alice would like to compare Labor Education with Physical Education. She wants to find the relationship between them by using a mind map.
David works in a community service center. He wants to use a mind map to make a list of activities to help volunteers get more information.
Trying a New Way to Express
Elizabeth is a 14-year-old girl. She is in the seventh grade at Davis Drive Middle School in Cary, N. C． Students at school are required to do different science projects, such as building a model volcano. They get inspired from playing musical instruments to doing gymnastics. All they need to do is to transform their favorite activities into science projects.
Elizabeth enjoys doing science projects. She has designed a program based on the golden ratio (黄金分割) by herself. This ratio is often used to create pleasing parts in artworks. The ratio also appears in nature. Elizabeth's new program helps computers write data evenly across the storing system. This could help it live longer.
"As long as I can remember, I've been an artistic person, "Elizabeth says, "In the fourth grade, my art teacher taught us about the golden ratio. And at that point it was just, you know, something to use when we were painting." But last year, Elizabeth had to replace the memory in her own computer, thinking the golden ratio might work in technology, too. Elizabeth tested her golden-ratio technique (技法) by running programs on a computer.
But before this project, Elizabeth had no coding (编码) experience. To prepare for it, she spent months reading a textbook on how to code. She says, "It wasn't like an ‘ah-ha' moment. Writing program is such a boring process. But it was just cool to explore and see the computer actually just doing the things that I told it to do after those hours."
"Don't limit yourself," Elizabeth adds, "One of the biggest difficulties you face is changing your mindset (思维定式). I never thought that science or computer science would be my kind of thing, but after learning a bit about programming, I found that it was actually a new way to express myself. In the past I used words, then I tried painting, and now I'm using programming. "
Biodiversity refers to various kinds of living things on our planet. It includes not only the different species of animals and plants, but also the genetic diversity(多样性) within each species and the diversity of ecosystem in which they live. Biodiversity is necessary for all living things, including humans. However, it is dangerous because of human activities such as deforestation(毁林), pollution, and climate change.
One of the main reasons why biodiversity is important is that it provides us with many necessary ecosystem services. For example, forests help to control the Earth's climate by absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air. Wetlands help to separate out pollutants from water and offer living space for many kinds of birds and animals. Coral reefs protect coastlines from storms and provide home for thousands of living things in the ocean.
Biodiversity also plays a key role in providing us with food ,medicine, and other resources(资源). For example, many of the fruits and vegetables that we eat are from wild plants. Many of the medicines that we use to treat diseases come from plant and animal resources. And many of the materials that we use to build our homes and make our clothes come from natural resources.
However, besides its importance, biodiversity is under threat. According to the World Wildlife Fund, we are now in the process of the sixth mass extinction(灭绝) event in Earth's history. This extinction event is largely caused by human activities such as habitat destruction, pollution, and overfishing.
Protecting biodiversity is therefore completely necessary if we want to make sure that all living things can survive continually, including ourselves. This can be achieved through a combination of measures, including protection of natural environment, continuous use of natural resources, and reducing our carbon footprint(碳排放量).
In conclusion, biodiversity is important for the survival and well-being of all living things, including humans. It is important that we must take actions to protect it for ourselves and for our future generations.
Nowadays our life is getting more and more demanding. It seems that multitasking can help us get out of the trouble. It was first used to describe computer performance. However, the human brain, is not a computer. And human attention is a very limited resource. Can we actually multitask?
According to the spotlight theory of attention, when we focus on the leftmost or rightmost things, our attention must cover the intervening region(间隔区) because the spotlight of attention cannot be divided. Even though we're constantly receiving a huge amount of information from our senses, it's only possible for a small amount to make it through to conscious awareness(意识). Take the Bouncing Ball Experiment for an example. Let's watch carefully and pay particular attention to how many balls bounce(弹跳) in the circle. How many balls can you count? Seven, right? But did you also notice that little dinosaur? What about the changing shape of the circle? Or the smiley face on one of the balls? This experiment shows just how powerful our focused attention is.
Being able to delete irrelevant(无关的) detail is an amazingly useful tool, but it means we might miss things that are right under our noses. This is the effect known as inattention blindness. You can see this very clearly in the famous Invisible Gorilla experiment. When asked to concentrate exclusively on how often basketball players in white pass the ball, most people completely miss the gorilla walking across the screen and beating his chest.
We just don't have the ability to process everything at a time. This is a particular problem when we try to multitask. We can change attention from one task to another and back again. But when attention is overloaded, we miss things, and the result is nearly always that we perform tasks less well than we will do them one at a time. It's only truly possible to do two things at once if they require different sets of mental(头脑的) resources. For example, it's totally possible to read a book and listen to music at the same time.
This would suggest that driving while talking on the phone is not a problem, as long as it's a hands-free phone. But it's not that simple. Research has shown that while talking on the phone we have tendency(趋势) to create mental images, and this uses the same visual resources needed for driving. And if visual resources become too spread, it's possible for a driver to look directly at a danger but, just like with that little dinosaur, fail to see it.
So multitasking makes us at best, inefficient, and at worst, downright dangerous. If you're feeling like you should be doing 17 things at once, remember, that's just not the way your brain works.
Meeting the Needs of Elderly People
Smart phones are a part of our everyday life now, but not everyone can use them well, especially for the elderly people. Seeing this problem, George, a 16-year-old middle school student, with other volunteers came into the communities to help elderly people learn to use smart phones. But for all their goodwill, the service had some flaws(缺陷). It took much time and effort, and more importantly, elderly people always forgot what they'd learned and the volunteers had to do the same job over and over again.
George noticed the problems and came up with an idea of solving them with a guidebook. He then formed a volunteer group called Silver Hair with seven members. It took them about a month to finish writing a book called May I Show You How to Use Smart Phones.
The group members made a survey of more than 1, 000 elderly people and talked with many of them in nursing homes and found out what the elderly people cared most about with smart phones. "How to use WeChat" topped the list as the app covers many fields of life such as chatting, money transfers(转帐)and even ordering food in a restaurant. These made up one part of the book. The other parts include the basic jobs of phones, online shopping, using online maps and so on. To make the book more friendly to older readers, George also made the pages light yellow and the characters big.
"Many elderly people are resistant(抗拒的) to smart phones at first as they are confused by so many different apps with various functions, but they are familiar with books, which can make them more willing to learn," said George." And besides, they can look for the tips in the book any time they need, just like using a dictionary."
The Silver Hair members have already printed out 500 copies of the book and handed them all out to the communities. They'll soon start working on the second copy which includes more guidance such as hospital registration(挂号) and photo editing. They also hope for the support from the public so they can print more copies and help more elderly people.
提示词语：learn, experience, share, pass down
提示问题：●How is traditional Chinese culture inherited(传承)?
●What have you done for it?
Dear Chris,
I'm glad to know that you're interested in traditional Chinese culture.
……
Please feel free to ash for more information.
Yours,
Li Hua
Flow Map
Bubble Map
Bridge Map
Fishbone Map