Some Most Common Senior Year Mistakes

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#}You'd better find out how to avoid these common mistakes. Finding a balance between having fun and studying for your courses is a great way to start preparing for college, since you will be called upon to do this during your college years.

    Here we've listed some top mistakes students make so that you can make sure you don't make them.

    Skipping Classes

    Skipping classes could mean missing valuable information for the coming tests.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} As is known to all, information you'll need for your major in your college program may be covered during a high school lecture you miss.

    Forgetting to Study

    When you feel less motivated to study, remind yourself that every good grade gets you closer to finding a college that offers a great program in the major you want. Keep your eyes on the prize!

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} To stay on top of your assignments, calculate how long you think something will take you, and then double it. That way you'll have ample time to get your work done.

    Daydreaming about Your Future Too Much

    Your mind now might be wandering, thinking around about degrees, majors, possible careers, study abroad and many other things. These are all exciting future possibilities, but don't forget the here and now.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    Failing to Use Available Resources

    Teachers know about fall the challenges you're facing.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}This help can be in the form of extra office hours, a review of topics covered, study guides, sample exams, or other tools to help you improve your grade. Take advantage of them.

A. Start preparing for college

B. Mismanaging Your Time

C. Your senior year of high school is a busy time

D. And don't forget to think ahead to university classes

E. Almost every high school senior makes some mistakes.

F. Spending too much time daydreaming could seriously limit those future plans You

G. And many of them are nice enough to offer extra help.

    About ten percent of spending on primary and secondary education in the United States comes from the federal government{#blank#}1{#/blank#} States have been required to show progress through yearly testing.

    But states say testing tells only part of the story about efforts by schools and students to improve. So the Obama administration has eased the limits in states in measuring performance.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} This new measurement tool is called the Colorado Growth Model. The ideas is to show academic growth, not just achievement on tests. It combines test scores, family income levels, school size, the ethnicity of the student and many other factors.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} The graph shows a school's average score on standardized tests as well as its academic growth.

    On average, students enter sixth grade at WEST Denver Prep performing below grade level{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    The new assessment(评价) method shows that, each year, the average West Denver Prep student learns more math than ninety-four percent of all the students in Colorado{#blank#}5{#/blank#}

    Josh Smith says perhaps the most important thing they should learn is to believe in themselves.

A. The results from schools across the state are shown online on a graph.

B. Reading and writing scores also show growth.

C. For ten years now, federal law has tied this spending to student performance.

D. Therefore, the government feels it a great pressure.

E. But three years later, most are outperforming other students across the state.

F. However, the limits don't work at all.

G. The western state of Colorado, for example, has a new assessment method.

    If you want to become a fluent English speaker you should take some advice. There are four skills in learning English. They are reading, listening, speaking, and writing. The most important thing you must remember is that if you want to improve your speaking and writing skills, you should first master the skills of reading and listening.

    Read as much as you can. But your reading must be active. It means that you must think about the meaning of the sentence, the meaning of the unfamiliar words, etc. There is no need for you to pay much attention to grammars or try to understand all the unfamiliar words you come across, but the fact that you see them for the first time and recognize them whenever you see them, for example, in other passages or books, is enough. It would be better to prepare yourself a notebook so you can write down the important words or sentences in it.

    As for listening, there are two choices: besides reading, you can listen every day for about 30 minutes. You can only pay attention to your reading and become skillful at your reading, then you can catch up on your listening. Since you have lots of inputs in your mind, you can easily guess what the speaker is going to say. This never means that you should not practice listening. For listening you can listen to cartoons or some movies that are specially made for children. Their languages are easy. Or if you are good at listening you can listen to VOA or BBC programs every day. Again the thing to remember is being active in listening and preferably taking some notes.

    If you follow these pieces of advice, your speaking and writing will improve quickly, and you can be a fluent English speaker one day.

    Nola (August 21, 1974 -November 22, 2015) was a northern white rhino(犀牛) who lived at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park near Escondido, California. At her death, she was one of only four remaining northern white rhinos in the world. The other three lived in Kenya. World Rhino Day, held on September 2, is to raise awareness(意识) of the less than 30,000 other rhinos left on Earth.

    “Rhinos need our help today, not tomorrow,” Nola's lead keeper Jane Kennedy said. “Last year we lost over 1,200 rhinos just in South Africa. If we continue to lose more than 1,000 rhinos a year, in 10 to 20 years all the rhinos on the planet will be gone.”

    “Unfortunately, most animals are in danger of dying out because of humans,” Kennedy says.“ Humans have either poached animals, or because there are over seven billion of us, we've taken up too much of the world's resources ”. Poachers illegally hunt rhinos for their horns. They sell the horns for thousands of dollars per pound, to be used for art, jewelry, and decorations. Experts believe that one rhino is poached every eight hours.

    In 1975, the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research started the Frozen Zoo, a program through which researchers have collected cell (细胞) samples from more than 8,000 different types of animals, including the northern white rhino. Scientists hope that by studying the rhino cells, they will get greater understanding of it, and will find ways to increase its numbers.

    Jane Kennedy describes World Rhino Day as “a celebration of rhinos along with an awareness campaign for everybody across the world to know that rhinos need our help.” At the San Diego Zoo, children and adults are welcome to visit and speak with zookeepers to learn about rhinos. But you don't have to live in San Diego to celebrate World Rhino Day. It is observed around the world, with zoos and wildlife parks holding special events and programs to teach people about rhinos, and enable them to see the animals up close. For more information, go to www.worldrhinoday.org.

    Sometimes it can be hard to recognize a true friend, one who is loyal (忠诚的) and one who is worth keeping by your side. The suggestions provided in this article will help to guide you in working out which friends are likely to be true.

    Be able to trust your friends. You should be able to trust true friends and they should return this trust. Your friends tell you secrets that no one else knows. Let you share secrets. Ask you for advice. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} However, if your friends hide things from you and act secretive, this could be a sign that they do not trust you, but it could also mean your friends keep to themselves or don't like to reveal too much about themselves.

    Consider comfort. How comfortable do your friends feel when they are around you? Watch them, are they being themselves or are they timid (胆怯的) around you? {#blank#}2{#/blank#} True friendships can take a while to develop, but if your friends are true, they should feel comfortable around you.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} This is not meant in a romantic way, but consider whether your friends are comfortable with the touch. If your friends are fine with hugging you, leaning on you, resting their heads on your shoulder and so forth, then you can judge they love you.

    Think about loyalty. True friends are always there for one another. If you are in need of a helping hand, your true friends should be there to offer it to you. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} You can trust friends with anything, knowing that they will be loyal and will not let your secrets out.

    Look at how you fight. Nearly all best friends fight; so if you and your friend have a little dispute (争论), don't sweat it! {#blank#}5{#/blank#} They will not tell each other's secrets and they still care about each other.

Some people today might be early risers because of DNA they take after Neanderthals tens of thousands of years ago, suggests new research.

When early humans migrated from Africa to Eurasia roughly 70, 000 years ago, some of them mated with Neanderthals, who had already adapted to the colder, darker climates of the north. The ripple(涟漪) effects of that inter mating still exist today：Modern humans of non-African ancestry(血统) have between 1 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA. Some of that DNA relates to sleep more specifically, the internal body clock known as the circadian rhythm.

For the new study, researchers compared DNA from today's humans and DNA from Neanderthal fossils(化石) .In both groups, they found some of the same genetic variants involved with the circadian rhythm. And they found that modern humans who carry these variants also reported being early risers.

For Neanderthals, being "morning people" might not have been the real benefit of carrying these genes. Instead, scientists suggest, Neanderthals' DNA gave them faster, more flexible internal body clocks, which allowed them to adjust more easily to annual changes in daylight. This connection makes sense in the context of human history. When early humans moved north out of Africa, they would have experienced variable daylight hours—shorter days in the winter and longer days in the summer-for the first time. The Neanderthals' circadian rhythm genes likely helped early humans' offspring(后代) adapt to this new environment.

Notably, the findings do not prove that Neanderthal genes are responsible for the sleep habits of all early risers. Lots of different factors beyond genetics can contribute, including social and environmental influences. The study also only included DNA from a database called the U.K. Biobank-so the findings may not necessarily apply to all modern humans. Next, the research team hopes to study other genetic databases to see if the same link holds true for people of other ancestries. If the findings do apply more broadly, they may one day be useful for improving sleep in the modern world, where circadian rhythms are disturbed by night shifts and glowing smartphones.