Good learners can inspire students or anybody to learn well. Here are some characteristics of good learners.

    Good learners are curious. They wonder about all sorts of things, often about knowledge beyond their areas of expertise(专长){#blank#}1{#/blank#} Finding out about something they didn't know satisfies them for the moment, but their curiosity is addictive.

    Good learners don't give up easily. A few things may come easily to learners but most knowledge arrives after effort{#blank#}2{#/blank#} They try to search out new information. They read, analyze, and evaluate the information they've found. Then they study more and work at what they don't understand.

    Good learners know that a lot of learning isn't fun. The journey to understanding generally isn't all that exciting{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Others need a tiresome attention to detail, and still others need periods of intense mental focus. Your backs hurt, your arms and legs get tired, and your coffee gets cold.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} There's always more to know. Good learners are never satisfied with how much they know about anything. They are pulled around by questions—the ones they still can't answer, or the ones without very good answers. Those questions follow them like day follows night with the answers bringing daylight.

    Good learners share what they've learned. Good learners are teachers committed to sharing with others what they've learned{#blank#}5{#/blank#}Good learners can also explain what they know in ways that make sense to others. They are connected to the knowledge passed on to them and committed to leaving what they've learned with others.

A. Good learners stay positive.

B. They write about it, and talk about it.

C. They love the discovery part of learning.

D. Good learners never run out of questions.

E. Some knowledge can broaden our views.

F. Good learners are willing to put in the time.

G. Some learning tasks require boring repetition.

    The Oklalhoma teen's eyes were covered by two blindfolds（眼罩）. She didn't know she would meet her father, James, after 12-year separation.

    “I had actually discussed with her the night before at a restaurant and talked over the details of where we would go and how we would pull them of,” said Amanda, Rory Beth's mother.

    A video shows Amanda led her blindfolded daughter out of their car and guided her across the parking lot of Broken Arrow Lanes in Broken Arrow.

    Little did she know, her father was on the sidewalk holding a birthday cake that read, “Happy Birthday Rory Beth, Love Dad.” When the teen slowly pulled down her blindfolds, she was extremely surprised. Both the father and daughter stood silently looking at each other until James finally walked over and hugged her. James only broke their embrace to look at his daughter and hold her face. “There were definitely lots of tears from James, myself, and boys, and even a few bystanders,” said Amanda.

    James was a truck driver who spent a lot of time on the road, so Amanda ended the marriage with him when Rory Beth was a baby. “It was hard to figure out how to make it work,” Amanda said. Amanda felt Rory Beth was now old enough to understand and to ask any questions she may have, so the reunion happened.

    The birthday surprise was on June 4, and the father and daughter had seen each other again since, even celebrating Father's Day together. Amanda said her daughter and James were both delighted to be together.

    “She's already calling him 'daddy' and tells him that she loves him.” Amanda said.

    The last time I visited my eighty­three­year­old mother­in­law, I asked how she was feeling. It's a valid question. She has, after all, had two knee replacements and a liver transplant. She moves slowly to avoid another fall.

    But she hasn't stopped moving. She and my father­in­law attended their first Jimmy Buffet concert this summer. Here's the thing about my in­laws: They never say no to an invitation or a new adventure. If they can make it work, they're willing to try just about anything. When we need them to come to stay with the kids, we have to get on their calendars far in advance.

When asked how she was feeling, my motherinlaw responded, "Well, everything hurts every day. But you know what I've discovered? It doesn't hurt to smile. So that's what I've decided to do... smile at everyone I see. I may not be able to do all the things I used to do, but I can at least brighten someone's day."

    It is such simple wisdom. Moving the focus from what we don't have and from what we've lost to what we can offer others is the difference between living in the dark and radiating light. They inspire us daily.

    The key to a life worth living, I think, is to change our views. You don't have to make great changes. Sometimes change looks similar to everyday kindness. Sometimes change begins with holding the door for a mother with an armful of groceries.

    In theory, the butterfly effect says that the smallest breeze(微风) from a butterfly's wing can change the path of a hurricane halfway. Imagine, then, the possibilities that exist within a single smile.

    About ten men in every hundred suffer from color blindness in some way. Women are luckier; only about one in two hundred is affected in this matter. Perhaps, after all, it is safer to be driven by a woman!

    There are different forms of color blindness. In some cases a man may not be able to see deep red. He may think that red, orange and yellow are all shadows of green. Sometimes a person cannot tell the difference between blue and green. In rare cases an unlucky man may see everything in shades of green — a strange world indeed.

    Color blindness in human beings is a strange thing to explain. In a single eye there are millions of very small things called "cones". These help us to see in a bright light and to tell difference between colors. There are also millions of "rods", but these are used for seeing when it is near dark. They show us shape but no color.

    Some insects have favorite colors. Mosquitoes prefer blue to yellow. A red light will not attract insects, but a blue lamp will. In a similar way human beings also have favorite colors. Yet we are lucky. With the aid of the cones in our eyes we can see many beautiful colors by day, and with the aid of the rods we can see shapes at night. One day we may even learn more about the invisible colors around us.

    If we want to find out what kind of technology people used in the past, we normally have to rely on archaeologists to find ruined buildings and parts of tools or instruments or machines. Archaeologists then try to reconstruct, sometimes with the help of computer technology, what these ancient buildings and objects must have looked like, and how they might have been made. Sometimes historians are lucky and find an ancient document with a written description of these ancient buildings and objects.

    We can understand, then, why Chinese historians were so excited when they found cave paintings which show ancient science. They found these paintings in the world-renowned Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang City, in Northwest China's Gansu Province. There are 500 man-made caves and they have survived for at least 1,600 years. Almost all of these caves have paintings on their ceilings or walls and they date from the 4th to 14th centuries. Wang Jinyu is an expert on these cave paintings (also called frescoes) and he says: "We discovered frescoes containing scientific and technological content in almost all of the caves which have frescoes." What is remarkable about these cave paintings according to the Xinhua News Agency is that they provide evidence of "scientific and technological inventions by ancient Chinese in maths, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geography, agronomy, architecture, textiles, traffic and transportation, arms and military equipment and medical sciences".

    Among the discoveries experts have made are cave paintings showing ancient techniques of pottery making and wine production and paintings showing ancient weaving machines and then toothbrushes! The paintings also give some evidence of the lifestyle at the time with, for example, pictures of people boiling milk over 1,000 years ago. Experts believe that there is more evidence to be found, but even now the caves are a wonderful natural museum. If the walls and ceilings of the caves were all put together they would form a tapestry 20 kilometers long and 2 meters high!

    It won't be possible to travel back in time-that only happens in films-but visiting these caves would be the nearest experience you could get to travelling back in time.

When bicycle-sharing company oBike pulled out of Singapore abruptly last year, it left the city with unattended bicycles everywhere. Myanmar businessman Mike Than Tun Win saw the perfect opportunity to turn trash (垃圾) into treasure. "What if these bicycles could be distributed to poor students in villages so they can cycle to school? " he thought.

Mr Than, 33, grew up in Mandalay, where he used to walk to school as a student. While traveling through rural (乡村的) areas in Myanmar over the last few years he saw things had not changed. Long lines of children in rural villages continue to walk 30 minutes to an hour just to get to school. "I thought if we could just reduce the time they take, they could spend more time studying, gain more knowledge and increase their chances of getting out of poverty (贫困), " he said.

With that, he started a movement called Lesswalk with the intention of buying bicycles from bike-sharing firms oBike and ofo—which have stopped operations in Singapore — and shipping them to Yangon. He would renew the bicycles before distributing them to teenagers and families living in rural villages in Myanmar, beginning with villages in Mandalay and Sagaing areas.

Over the last three months, the businessman has bought 10, 000 bicycles in Singapore and Malaysia. He paid for 5, 000 of the bicycles out of his own pocket, with other sponsors paying for the rest.

Mr Than plans to modify (修改) the bicycles so that they can better suit the needs of the children in villages. Most of the time they ride around with their little brothers and sisters. "I'm planning to add an extra seat at the back so that they can go to school together," he said. He also plans to remove the digital locks and give each a new one that works better in villages.

Including the cost of shipping, modification and distribution, Mr Than thinks each bicycle might cost him around US $35 to US $40. "I might have to spend more money, but it is better that these bicycles are going to help some people rather than going to waste," he said.