Spring Festival

    In China Spring Festival is the most important festival. It comes on the first day of the first lunar month（阴历月）.

    Before Spring Festival comes, people go out to buy things, such as meat, chicken, fish, fruit, sweets and new clothes. They clean their houses and decorate them. The Chinese character fu is a must. It is usually stuck（贴） upside down, which means "fu comes".

    The celebrations （庆祝） begin on the eve of the lunar New Year. The family get together for a bi g dinner. If a person is far from home, he will always try to get home for this big dinner. After the dinner, the whole family will sit together, chatting （聊天） and watching TV.

    During the holidays （节日）, they go to visit relatives and friends and exchange New Year greetings. They sit around talking and eating candies, cakes and all kinds of delicious food. Every family prepares something special. Each child will get money as a New Year gift. People in the north of China often eat dumplings for breakfast. People in the south often eat niangao because niangao means "higher and higher one year after another".

    The celebrations last （持续） 15 days. It will come to an end when Lantern Festival finishes.

    Some people in the West like to stay at home during their weekends. They work in the garden, visit their friends, read books or watch television. Many families take their lunch to a park or some where far from the city. They like to eat under some trees or near a nice lake. If they live near the sea, they often go to the seaside. There they can fish, swim or enjoy the sunshine.

    Some people in the West like travelling. They think travelling and outdoor activities are interesting and exciting. They work hard to save money, but their main purpose is to travel.

    Most Western students often make use of their weekends to camp. There are thousands of interesting camp bases in Western countries. They can swim, go fishing, attend lectures, and take part in many other activities there. It can help them quest for the secrets of nature and teach them how to be self-reliant(自立的).

    Music and Art will enter the Entrance Exam for the high school in Jiangsu. Without music, life would be a mistake. Music is a big part of our lives. But in recent years, some US schools have cut music classes to control budgets (预算).

    For example, Chicago public schools hurt arts education when it fired (解雇) over 1,000 teachers. Among them, 10 percent of the teachers taught art or music, according to The Washington Times. In fact, this is not just a problem in the US. In other countries, such as China and the UK, music classes are not thought to be as important as ones like science, math and history. That's partly because music is not seen as a very important life skill, and it isn't tested. Many students are busy with schoolwork, so parents and students choose to focus on subjects that are tested more often.

    However, learning music is beneficial (有益的) in many ways.

    When playing music, you need different abilities to work together. It is not as simple as it looks, according to Kenneth Guilmartin of Music Together, an early childhood music development program. For example, when playing the piano, people see music notes and decode (解码) them in their brains. They also use their fingers to make sounds. You need to deal with all these things at the same time.

    Music has a special connection with science as well. You can see that many scientists are good at playing music: Einstein played the violin, and German physicist Max Planck was talented in playing the piano.

    Big data(数据) is lot of sets of information that are put together so they can be used by a computer program. The computer program looks for different kinds of answers or patterns in the data. Big data can have different kinds of information from many sources, such as information that comes from schools, social media sites(社交媒体网站), companies and governments. One set of data can have people's names and addresses. Another set can have what they like, where they go to school, and how much time they spend on the computer.

    Big data can be used in many ways. The government uses it to understand how many people travel on buses or trains. This information is then used to make bus or train systems better. Some schools use big data to understand which children may need more help in class. The teacher can then give certain students more help or support so those students can succeed in school. Companies use big data, too. It helps them understand who buys their products. For example, one company uses weather data to see when people eat the most ice cream.

    Big data can be used for good reasons. Some hospitals use big data to predict if a baby who is born too early will get sick. The hospital can then take extra steps to take care of that baby so he, she does not get sick. Big data can also be used for bad reasons. It can be used to predict which kinds of people are likely to break the law or hurt others, even if they have not done anything wrong.

    How can big data be used for good and bad things? It is because the computer programs used to look at big data and understand it are written by people. People think a certain way. Because they think a certain way, they build a model of those ideas. These ideas are then used to look at the data. Sometimes, these ideas are helpful for people or businesses. Other times, bad ideas can cause problems for certain groups of people.