阅读理解

Find Which Direction Is South

    Do you have a good sense of direction? If not, please take with you a compass. But if you forget to take a compass, you can still find your way. 

    It's never a wise idea to believe that the family member who was good at the job of map-reading knows where the family is. You can tell by the troubled look on their faces that nothing on the ground seems to match the map. Never mind. The sun is shining and it's still morning. If you don't know the exact time, you can still find out where south is, but you'll need to be patient. 

    ①Find a straight stick and put it in the ground in a place where you can mark its shadow(a dark shape on a surface that is made when something stands between a light and the surface). 

    ②Try to position the stick as vertically(垂直)as you can. You can check this by making a simple plumb line(铅锤线). You haven't got one? OK, use a thread(线) from your clothes with a button(纽扣) tied at the end to act as a weight.

    ③Mark the end of the shadow cast(投射) by the stick.

    ④Wait about half an hour and mark the end of the shadow again.

    ⑤Keep doing this until you have made several marks. 

    ⑥The mark nearest the stick will represent the shortest shadow, which is cast at midday, when the sun is highest in the sky and pointing to the exact south. 

    ⑦Pick a point in the distance along the line between the shortest shadow and the stick.

    ⑧That point is south of where you are. 

    ⑨Now you can turn the map, like you did before, and find which way you should be travelling. 

B

    Many children spend a lot of time watching or playing with electronic media –from televisions to video games, computers and other devices（设备）.

    So, it is natural that parents should wonder about the time children spend looking at a TV or computer screen. Americans say “screen time” when they talk about any time children spend in front of an electronic device.

    Perhaps parents can stop worrying so much about screen time, at least for older boys and girls. In October 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) listed several suggestions for parents and child care workers. Here are some of the suggestions.

●Avoid digital media use in children younger than 18 to 24 months.

●For children aged 18-24 months, avoid letting the child watch media alone. And avoid using media as a way to comfort your child.

●For children two to five years of age, allow one-hour screen time on “high-quality（质量）programming” a day and watch it with your child.

●For children aged 6 and older, don't spend too much time using media. Also, make sure that screen time does not take the place of healthy sleep, exercising, doing homework and other activities.

●Make sure to have media-free time together as a family, such as dinner or driving. Also make some areas of the home media-free. Turn off you child's electronic devices an hour before bedtime.

    In most parts of the world, many students help their schools make less pollution．They join environment clubs．In an environment club, people work together to make our environment clean．

    Here are some things students often do．

    No-garbage lunches．How many lunch bags do you throw away after lunch? Environment clubs ask students to bring their lunches in bags that can be used again．Every week they will choose the classes that make the least garbage and report them to the whole school．

    No-car day．On a no-car day, nobody comes to school in a car including the students and the teachers．Cars give pollution to us, so remember:

    Walk, jump, bike, or run!

    Use your legs! It's lots of fun!

    Turn off the water! Do you know that some toilets can waste twenty to forty cubic meters of water an hour? In a year, that would fill in a small river. In the environment clubs, students mend those broken toilets．

    We love our environment．Let's work together to make it better．

    Many people today like reading stories about UFO.Many people in different countries are studying the UFO.

    There are some different saying for UFO.Among those sayings,the most popular one for UFO is that UFOs are strange creatures(生物) to the earth from other stars.We can call them aliens.

    UFO scientists and many people believed this saying.Some people said that they saw a few UFOs landing on the earth.They seemed to be objects rather like big plates.Some people said that they saw some strange visitors coming out of the UFOs.

    Some people make mistakes when they say they have seen UFOs high in the sky.Perhaps they see a weather balloon or an uncommon plane or the light they see in the sky comes from the ground.Sometimes they see the light from the moon.

    But these are a lot of others we can't understand.It may take many years to find a clear answer and then people will give UFO another name.

    We all know that many inventions have changed our life a lot. They play important roles in our daily life. Here are some interesting inventions.