Whether you have a piece of land or a few pots on a balcony, plant a family garden: You'll all live healthier! Gardening is an easy activity to share and you'll harvest benefits along with your fresh vegetables, colorful flowers, and aromatic herbs. Even better, you don't have to wait for your plants to bloom to see those benefits.

    When parents and kids work together to plant and care for a garden, they can all enjoy these benefits:

    Physical activity: Gardening and yard work are mild exercise, which we all need every day (for at least 30 minutes). While tending your family garden doesn't require the intense activity of running or playing singles tennis, it's still beneficial to your health. For one thing, research shows that once you start gardening, you usually continue for more than 30 minutes. And gardening combines delicate skill strengthening and stretching.

    Lower stress, better mood: Gardening is excellent stress relief for good reasons: enjoying fresh air and sunlight, performance of relaxing tasks, and even contact with harmless bacteria in the soil that helps release serotonin (血清素) in the brain.

    Outdoor time: Children prefer spending a lot of time indoors, which can negatively affect their behavior and health. A family garden gets them outside enjoying and experiencing the natural world.

    Some idiomatic phrases in English, often used in both spoken and written language, are very confusing! They don't even make sense when you first see them. However, using one of these phrases correctly when speaking or writing to an English speaker is very impressive and shows that you are comfortable with the language. Here are some wonderful and interesting British idioms. Use them wisely.

    When pigs fly!

This expression is one of my favorites and I use it all the time. It is used primarily when speaking, meaning that something is extremely unlikely or impossible. For example, "I will forgive him when pigs fly!" "When do you think you will get a gym membership, Lucy?" "When pigs fly!"

    A penny for your thoughts?

This question is used in a situation where someone appears thoughtful or is very quiet seeming lost in thought. But remember that you don't actually have to pay them a penny if they do tell you what is going on! For example, "You've been a bit quiet this evening, Pete. A penny for your thoughts?"

    It's the bee's knees

The phrase dates back to the 1920s, and refers to an extraordinary person, thing, idea, and so on. For example, "Try this chocolate. It's the bee's knees."

    To feel a bit under the weather

    I use this expression in many different situations but most use it to refer to feeling ill, or unwell. You would not use this phrase if you were feeling extremely unwell. It is only for those times when you are feeling a little ill or suffering from something slightly like a cold or a cough. However, this can also be used to refer to feeling emotionally low.

    Stress is a word we hear a lot these days. People have stressful jobs; they feel stressed while studying for exams; even family life can be stressful. Stress can cause headaches and lack of sleep arid research has shown that it is one of the main causes of heart disease. None of us can completely avoid stress. Everyone experiences it.

    In ancient times, stress served a different purpose. It kept us alive. When a caveman was walking along and was suddenly faced with a lion, the stress he experienced would make him run away faster than he could usually run. Stress is the state our bodies experience when we need to react to difficult or dangerous situations. While stress saved us back then, and it is still very helpful in difficult situations, we need a break from stress every now and again.

    Luckily, there are ways to relax and deal with stress and it seems that music might be our number one cure. A recent worldwide study showed that listening to music is what most people do to relax and reduce stress. The study was based on interviews with 1,000 people in 30 countries and 56% said that listening to music was the best way to relax. Watching TV, at 53%, was the next most popular way of reducing stress followed by taking a shower or bath at 49%. It is not really surprising that listening to music is such a popular way of relaxing. It is cheap and widely available on radio, TV and the Internet.

    Of course, musical tastes differ from person to person. Sam might love listening to loud heavy metal music to relax after a hard day's work, but his neighbour - a fan of Mozart - might find hearing his music extremely stressful. “Sam needs an iPod”, you- might be thinking and you are probably right. Mobile music players can provide music privately whenever and wherever it is needed; we could even call them the stress fighters of the 21st century. So the next time you fed stressed, take a deep breath, put on your earphones and ... relax.

    Here is some general information about Edison Elementary School. For more information, you can visit our website which is printed on the cover.

    Attendance：

    Please contact the office at 480－472－5282 if your child is going to be absent.

    Renaissance Reading：

    The Accelerated Reader (AR) Program is a computerized reading enrichment program that combines great children's literature with computer skills. As an individualized reading program, it is designed to motivate students to read more and to read good literature. Students of different abilities can use this program. It is not a competitive program but one that improves any student's reading ability.

    Here is how it works. Students select books in their reading range from our Accelerated Reader Selection and read it at their own pace. Once the student has completed the book, he/she is ready to take an AR quiz. Each quiz consists of 5, 10, or 20 multiple choice comprehensive questions about the book.

    After taking the quiz, the computer shows the student how many questions he/she answered correctly, shows the correct answers for missed questions, and praises the students' efforts with an on­screen personalized message. Passing the quiz assures the teacher and the parent that the child actually read and understood the book. Each student tests independently—reading the quiz questions himself/herself.

    The computer keeps track of reading points, books, and average test scores, as well as other data. A student may test on a book only once and should, therefore, have thoroughly read and understood the contents before taking the quiz. Each student is responsible for reading the screen to be sure the quiz, by title and author, is the correct one he/she wishes to take.

    Students are recognized for their accomplishments with praise from the teachers and special recognition at the classroom level when individual and/or classroom goals are met.

    PTO：We have an active Parent Teacher Organization. They have monthly meetings, check the calendar for the meeting times and places.

    Have you ever considered all the English expressions that include words about clothes? Let's have a look.

    People wear pants to cover the lower part of their bodies. We sometimes say that people who are nervous have ants in their pants. Sometimes, people may get caught with their pants down. They are found doing something they should not be doing. And, in every family, one person takes control. Sometimes a wife tells her husband what to do. Then we say she wears the pants in the family.

    Pants usually have pockets to hold things. Money that is likely to be spent quickly can burn a hole in your pocket. Sometimes you need a belt to hold up your pants. If you have less money than usual, you may have to tighten your belt.

    I always praise people who can save their money and not spend too much. I really take my hat off to them. Yet, when it comes to my own money, I spend it at the drop of a hat, which means I instantly spend it.

    Boots are a heavy or strong kind of shoes. People who are too big for their boots think they are more important than they really are. I dislike such people.

    My father is an important person. He runs a big company. He wears a suit and tie, and a shirt with sleeves that cover his arms. Some people who do not know him well think he is too serious and never shows his feelings openly. But I know that my father wears his heart on his sleeve.

When I teach research methods, a major focus is peer review. As a process, peer review evaluates academic papers for their quality, integrity and impact on a field, largely shaping what scientists accept as "knowledge"- By instinct, any academic follows up a new idea with the question, "Was that peer reviewed?"

Although I believe in the importance of peer review and I help do peer reviews for several academic journals-I know how vulnerable the process can be. 

I had my first encounter with peer review during my first year as a Ph. D student. One day, my adviser handed me an essay and told me to have my -written review back to him in a week. But at the time, I certainly was not a "peer"--I was too new in my field. Manipulated data （不实的数据） or substandard methods could easily have gone undetected. Knowledge is not self-evident. Only experts would be able to notice them, and even then, experts do not always agree on what they notice. 

Let's say in my life I only see white swans. Maybe I write an essay, concluding that all swans are white. And a "peer" says, "Wait a minute, I've seen black swans. "I would have to refine my knowledge. 

The peer plays a key role evaluating observations with the overall goal of advancing knowledge. For example, if the above story were reversed, and peer reviewers who all believed that all swans were white came across the first study observing a black swan, the study would receive a lot of attention. 

So why was a first-year graduate student getting to stand in for an expert? Why would my review count the same as an expert's review? One answer: The process relies almost entirely on unpaid labor. 

Despite the fact that peers are professionals, peer review is not a profession. As a result, the same over-worked scholars often receive masses of the peer review requests. Besides the labor inequity, a small pool of experts can lead to a narrowed process of what is publishable or what counts as knowledge, directly threatening diversity of perspectives and scholars. Without a large enough reviewer pool, the process can easily fall victim to biases, arising from a small community recognizing each other's work and compromising conflicts of interest. 

Despite these challenges. I still tell my students that peer review offers the best method for evaluating studies aird advancing knowledge. As a process, peer review theoretically works. The question is whether the issues with peer review can be addressed by professionalizing the field.