More teachers are starting off the school year with letters to parents and students to introduce themselves
and set a tone (基调) for the year. The letters are a good way to start positive communication with parents,
several teachers told Education World.
"I think it"s professional," said Dorothy Peselli, an English teacher at Sparta High School in Sparta, New
Jersay, Peselli, who gives out the letters the first day of school, told Education World. "It gives parents an
image of you as a professional. If you start communication off in a positive manner, you will have the parents
on your side when you need them."
In her letter to parents, Peselli encourages them to call or e-mail her with specific concerns about their
children. "I want to work as a team to make sure that your child becomes an independent lifelong learner,"
Peselli wrote to parents last September. She also telephones the parents of all her students at the beginning
of the year.
Peselli includes with the letter a classroom handbook (手册) listing plans and rules. And she requires
that both parents and students read and sign statements (included in the letter) when they read the handbook.
The student letter also lists needed supplies and gives encouragement. "Please come to class ready to work
and learn. This will be an exciting year for all of us," it says.
Last year, Peselli taught at a different high school and parents there were "shocked", but appreciative,
that she had so much contact with them. "I received roses and a thank-you note from one boy and his
mother," Peselli said. She wished her own children"s teachers would take the time to write notes as well.
"I never got a letter home from any of my daughter"s high school teachers." she said,"It would be nice to
know the background of some of the people who are teaching my daughter."
B. the handbook is used to list supplies and give encouragement
C. Peselli believe it important for teachers to exchange information with parents
D. Peselli mainly introduces her background and teaching experiences in the letters
B. the requirement
C. the school
D. the letter
B. Peselli means to surprise parents by writing students
C. Peselli seemed to be popular among boy students
D. all Peselli"s children are studying in high schools
B. give advice on how to teach students
C. encourage teachers to keep in touch with parents
D. show us how Dorothy Peselli makes teaching plans
Believe it or not, optical illusion (错觉) can cut highway crashes.
Japan is a case in point. It has reduced automobile crashes on some roads by nearly 75 percent
using a simple optical illusion. But stripes, called chevrons (人字形), painted on the roads make drivers
think that they are driving faster than they really are, and thus drivers slow down. Now the American
Automobile Association Foundation for Traffic Safety in Washington D.C. is planning to repeat
Japan"s success. Starting next year, the foundation will paint chevrons and other patterns of stripes
on selected roads around the country to test how well the patterns reduce highway crashes.
Excessive (too great) speed plays a major role in as much as one fifth of all fatal traffic accidents,
according to the foundation. To help reduce those accidents, the foundation will conduct its tests in
areas where speed-related hazards (danger) are the greatest curves, exit slopes, traffic circles, and bridges.
Some studies suggest that straight, horizontal bars painted across roads can initially cut the average speed
of drivers in half. However, traffic often returns to full speed within months as drivers become used to
seeing the painted bars.
Chevrons, scientists say, not only give drivers the impression that they are driving faster than they
really are but also make a lane appear to be narrower. The result is a longer lasting reduction in highway
speed and the number of traffic accidents.
B. a new pattern for painting highways
C. a new way of training drivers
D. a new type of optical illusion
B. they are driving in the wrong lane
C. they should slow down their speed
D. they are coming near to the speed limit
B. can cut road accidents in half
C. will look more attractive
D. will have a longer effect on drivers
B. change the road signs across the country
C. replace straight, horizontal bars with chevrons
D. repeat the Japanese road patterns
more food and money for villagers. The study in Benin found that solar-powered pumps are effective in
supplying water, especially during the long dry season.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the part of the world with the least food security. The United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization estimates that more than one billion of the world"s people faced hunger last year.
Around two hundred sixty-five million of them live south of the Sahara Desert. Lack of rainfall is one of
their main causes of food shortages.
Jennifer Burney from Stanford University in California led the study. The research team helped build
three solar-powered irrigation systems in northern Benin.The solar-powered irrigation systems produced
an average of nearly two metric tons of vegetables per month.They sold the surplus (过剩的) produce at
local markets. The earnings greatly increased their ability to buy food during the dry season which can last
six to nine months. People in the two villages with the systems were able to eat three to five more serving
of vegetables per day. But making the surplus available at markets also had a wider effect.The study
compared the villages with two others where women farmed with traditional methods like carrying water
in buckets. The amount of vegetables eaten in those villages also increased, though not as much.
The researchers note that only four percent of the cropland in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated. Using
solar power to pump water has higher costs at first. But the study says it can be more economical in the
long term than using fuels like gasoline, diesel or kerosene. And solar power is environmentally friendly.
B. there is little farmland in the area
C.people there lack experience in farming
D.people know nothing about irrigation techniques
B. They cost much less than traditional irrigation systems.
C. They have no bad effects on the environment.
D. They use less fuel than traditional irrigation systems.
B. the demand for fuels like gasoline will greatly decrease in Africa
C. people in sub-Saharan Africa don"t take agriculture seriously
D. it"s worthwhile to use the new irrigation systems on the whole
B. they could eat more vegetables than usual every day
C. they could supply local markets with vegetables
D. they could provide people in other villages with food
97% of the world"s water too salty to be drunk or used in agriculture, the worldwide supply of water needs
careful management, especially in agriculture.
Although the idea of a water shortage seems strange to someone fortunate enough to live in a high rainfall
country, many of the world"s agricultural industries experience constant water shortages. Although dams
can be built to store water for agricultural use in dry areas and dry seasons, the costs of water redistribution
(重新分配) are very high. Not only is there the cost of the engineering itself, but there is also an environmental
cost to be considered. Where valleys are flooded to create dams, houses are lost and wildlife homes destroyed.
Besides, water may flow easily through pipes to fields, but it cannot be transported from one side of the world
to the other. Each country must therefore rely on the management of its own water to supply its farming
requirements.
This is particularly troubling for countries with agricultural industries in areas dependent on irrigation. In
Texas, farmers" overuse of irrigation water has resulted in a 25% reduction of the water stores. In the Central
Valley area of southwestern USA, a huge water engineering project provided water for farming in dry valleys,
but much of the water use has been poorly managed.
Saudi Arabia"s attempts to grow wheat in desert areas have seen the pumping of huge quantities of
irrigation water from underground reserves. Because there is no rainfall in these areas, such reserves can only
decrease, and it is believed that fifty years of pumping will see them run dry.
B. people in high rainfall countries feel lucky
C. water can be easily carried through pipes across the world
D. the costs of water redistribution should be considered .
B. Most industries in the world suffer from water shortages.
C. The water stores in Texas have been reduced by 75%.
D. Good management of water use resulted from the project in the Central Valley.
B. water redistribution and wildlife protection
C. water use management and agriculture
D. water shortages and environmental protection
B. Ways to reduce the costs of building dams.
C. Measures to deal with worldwide water shortages.
D. Steps to improving water use management
little more than an hour, aircraft cross the world inside a day, while computers operate at lightning speed.
Indeed, this love of speed seems never-ending. Every year motor-cars are produced which go even faster
and each new computer boasts (吹嘘) of saving precious seconds in handling tasks.
All this saves time, but at a price. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an
airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag; our bodies feel that they
have been left behind in another time zone. Again, spending too long at computer results in painful wrists
and fingers. Mobile phones also have their dangers, according to some scientists; too much use may
transmit
harmful radiation into our brains, a consequence we do not like to think about.
However, what do we do with the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so
accustomed to constant activity that we find it difficult to sit and do nothing, or even just one thing at a time.
Perhaps the days are long gone when we might listen quietly to a story on the radio, letting imagination take
us into another world.
There was a time when some people"s lives were devoted simply to the cultivation of the land or the care
of cattle. No multi-tasking there; their lives went on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is
much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks
our ancestors faced: they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to fashion tools from
wood and stone. Modern machinery has freed people from that primitive existence.
B. time is limited
C. the prices are increasingly high
D. our love of speed seems never-ending
B. Imaginary life.
C. Times of inventions.
D. Time for constant activity.
B. Optimistic.
C. Objective.
D. Negative.
B. Modern technology and its influence.
C. Imaginations and inventions.
D. Machinery and human beings.
used steam engine. He had no way of telling people exactly how powerful it was, for at that time there were
no units for measuring power.
Watt decided to find out how much work one strong horse could do in one minute. He called that init one
horsepower. With this unit he could measure the work his steam engine could do.
He discovered that a horse could lift a 3,300-pound weight 10 feet into the air in one minute. His engine
could lift a 3,300 pound weight 100 feet in one minute.
Because his engine did ten times as much work as the horse, Watt called it a ten-horsepower engine.
B. engine
C. steam engine
D. bus
B. to show how useful his steam engine was
C. to tell people exactly how powerful his steam engine was
D. to measure the weight of his steam engine
B. what one strong horse can do in one minute
C. what one horse can do in a day
D. what work one horse can do as much as possible
B. Watt decided to make the world"s first widely used horse engine.
C. He wanted to find a way to tell people exactly how powerful his engine was.
D. He wanted to measure the work his engine could do.
B. Watt"s steam engine
C. A ten-horsepower engine
D. The beginning of horsepower
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