Last week, we talked about the conflict(冲突) between sleepy teenagers and early morning classes. Many people commented(评论) on our website.

For example, Damla Ece in Turkey wrote: I agree with the idea of starting lessons later so teenagers can feel better in the morning. But sleeping more than seven hours can be wasting time for students.

    Tran in Vietnam disagreed: I think teenagers, on average, need eight to ten hours of sleep every day. It's useless to try to force them to concentrate while they can't concentrate.

    Afshin Heydari from Iran wrote: schools should start early to avoid heavy traffic later in the morning.

    And Suze from Jordan wrote: When I was a teenager, I enjoyed taking my courses as early as possible. That way I could find a long time in the day to do my own activities.

    But Azra from Kyrgyzstan said: the reason why schools start early here is a lack of classrooms.

    And Joruji in Japan wrote: When I was a teenager, I used to get up before six to go to school, which was far from home, and I don't remember having problems. I think nowadays the Internet, TV games and cell phones make teens go to sleep later.

    Thirty-year-old Kika in Spain said: In my opinion, young people are very lazy.

    But Dennis Jin disagreed: For high school students in China, we must reach the classroom at 6:20 in the morning and be back home usually at 10:00 in the evening. Then we'll have some extra schoolwork to do. Can you imagine how long we could sleep every day?

    Teenagers are not the only ones who suffer. Kathy in Canada wrote: My daughter likes complaining about everything in the morning, and I know that this is from lack of sleep. I wish schools should change their start time to 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning.

    And Naima Star in Libya wrote: Getting up so early in the morning and leaving the warm bed is so difficult, especially in the cold weather. It reminds me of that old song: "It's nice to get up in the morning, but it's nicer to stay in bed."

    Adults are happy to tell their children that crusts (面包皮) will give them curly hair, carrots will help them see in the dark, and spinach will make them strong. Even though adults know it's not totally true, they think it's good for their children's health, a study had found.

    In a study about 31 per cent of adults said they once told their children the curly hair tale, and 36 per cent said they'd been told the same thing by their mother or father. Among the over-50s, almost half said they'd been promised curly hair if they ate their crusts. A quarter of the 2,000 adults questioned in the study told their children carrots would help them see in the dark. This could be true to some extent because of the high levels of vitamin A and beta-carotene in root vegetables.

    Another favorite among parents is that milk will make one strong. A third surveyed said their parents told them this, and about 29 per cent said they told their children the same thing. But while there is plenty of evidence to suggest milk is good for people's health, there are also a lot of scientific papers saying it isn't.

    Thanks to Popeye, spinach is also fed to children, along with the idea that it will make them strong. While there is also some truth in this one, scientists now believe it is not the iron, but the inorganic nitrates (无机硝酸盐) that improve physical power.

    One in seven of the surveyed admitted telling their little ones that runner beans will make them run faster, which is nothing more than wordplay and has no basis in science. Almost one in five adults were subjected to the same tale in childhood.

    Just over one in 10 parents told their children green food would turn them into a superhero, and a quarter admitted hiding vegetables in meals.

    Lyndsay Jones, spokesman for Persil Washing Up Liquid, said, "It's clear that the most persuasive stories about food are passed on from generation to generation. Our research shows that the ideas continue, and we tell our kids the same things our parents told us, even if they're not always entirely true."

    Crusts may not make your hair curly, but there's plenty of research that says crusts contain more of the goodness than the rest of a loaf. Hopefully, as a result of our Cook with Kids promise, more parents will be encouraged to spend time with their children in the kitchen and teach them the truth about food.

    Farah was sitting in the kitchen going over the party list with her mother. The exams were over and Farah wanted to invite her friends for a party.

    “Farah, aren't you going to invite Hafsa?” her mother asked. Hafsa had been her best friend since childhood.

    “Mother, you know I am now a part of Purple Girls Club and we have some rules about people we can be friends with,” Farah answered.

    “Really? And what are the rules?” her mother asked.

    “Well, only very pretty girls can be part of our group. And Hafsa is so, you know, dark.”

    “I cannot believe it.” her mother said angrily.

    As Farah left the kitchen, her father called her from the living room.

    Farah went to her father and paled when she saw the exam report in his hands.

    “Farah, what has happened to your grades? You have failed in Mathematics.” her father said.

    Farah had no answer. The truth was that the activities of Purple Girls Club left her with very little time for studies.

    “Farah, it says that you can take part in supplementary exams(补考). If your grades don't improve then, I'll cancel your trip to Spain.”

    Farah went to her room and called Gina, the leader of Purple Girls Club.

    “Gina, can you help me to complete my notes before the exams?”

    Gina laughed, “Exams? Who cares about exams?”

    One by one, she called her friends in the club but no one seemed to care or wanted to help. Farah knew Hafsa would help her. Farah also knew Hafsa had been hurt by her, but Hafsa said, “If you need any help, just let me know. We can study together till your exams.”

    Next Monday, as two friends entered the school together. Gina called out

    “Farah, you know our rules. You cannot be friends with those who do not belong to our club.”

    “Gina I have a new rule about friendship,” Farah replied.

    I remember the day when I first learned to ride a bike. It was a frightening, yet fun experience. My granddad was the one who taught me, and he helped me when I got hurt. The first time I got on a bike, I had no idea what I was doing, and just about everything went wrong. My granddad told me to just put my feet on the pedals and start, pedaling(骑自行车). He also told me he would hold onto the back of the bike the whole time, yet he didn't.

    As soon as I started trying to balance myself, he let go. I happened to look back just then.  I was scared to death that I was going to fall and hurt myself. When I was scared, my mind went blank from pedaling, and I just wanted off. I forgot how to use the brakes(车闸) and fell right off the bike. My granddad kept encouraging me to get up and try again, and after about 15 minutes, I finally stopped crying, got up and tried again.

    As soon as I started pedaling again, my pants got caught in the chain, and I fell flat on my face and hit my nose. Since that happened, my granddad decided to call it a day and try again the next morning. The next morning I woke up bright and early, and was very eager to try to ride my bike. My nose felt better, so I wasn't that afraid of falling anymore.

    Though I knew there were a lot of difficulties on the way to mastering the skills in riding a bike, l believed I could do well with my granddad's help. After all, riding a bike was what I wanted to do eagerly.

    The smallest kids on Earth are much smaller than you or your baby brother or sister. They're even smaller than the hairs on your head. We call them “NanoPutians”(纳米小人). Also known as NanoKids, the NanoPutians aren't real people. They are actually tiny molecules (分子) made to look a little bit like people.

    James Tour invented the NanoPutians as a way to teach kids about nanoscience, which refers to the study of things that are smaller than about 100 or 200 nanometers. “The exact size is less important than the possible applications of working with such tiny things,” Tour says, “Nanoscience is the study and development of the small so that it will affect the large.”

One of the goals of the research is to control individual atoms. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and other types of atoms are the building blocks of the universe. They make up planets, rocks, people, trees, CDs — all the stuff out there. “Most things that people build come together in a top-down way”, Tour says. If you want to make a table, for instance, you cut down a big tree, make wooden boards, and hammer them together. Nature, on the other hand, builds things from the bottom up. When atoms join together they make molecules. Each molecule has a certain shape, and a molecule's structure determines what it can do. Molecules can make them come together to make a cell — or a tree.

    Tour and his co-workers turned these molecular structures into cartoon figures and made an animated(动画的) science video about the little people, set it to music and started showing it to kids in school while talking about how exciting research on small things can be.

    “Learning about the NanoKids has opened up a world of possibility for real kids who ordinarily would rather not study biology, chemistry or physics.” Tour says. When you look closely enough, the really small can be really cool.

Teaching Poetry

    No poem should ever be discussed or "analyzed", until it has been read aloud by someone, teacher or student. Better still, perhaps, is the practice of reading it twice, once at the beginning of the discussion and once at the end, so the sound of the poem is the last thing one hears of it.

    All discussions of poetry are, in fact, preparations for reading it aloud, and the reading of the poem is, finally, the most telling "interpretation" of it, suggesting tone, rhythm, and meaning all at once. Hearing a poet read the work in his or her own voice, on records or on film, is obviously a special reward. But even those aids to teaching can not replace the student and teacher reading it or, best of all, reciting it.

    I have come to think, in fact, that time spent reading a poem aloud is much more important than "analysing" it, if there isn't time for both. I think one of our goals as teachers of English is to have students love poetry. Poetry is "a criticism of life", and "a heightening of lief". It is "an approach to the truth of feeling", and it "can save your life". It also deserves a place in the teaching of language and literature more central than it presently occupies.

    I am not saying that every English teacher must teach poetry. Those who don't like it should not be forced to communicate this to anyone else. But those who do teach poetry must keep in mind a few things about its essential nature, about its sound as well as its sense, and they must make room in the classroom for hearing poetry as well as thinking about it.