Have you ever ridden a Ferris wheel lately? Can you imagine the flying feeling as you are pulled up to the top and then moved down to the bottom quickly again?

    Today a Ferris wheel is usually 40 to 60 feet tall. That seems very high when you are on the top looking down. But the first Ferris wheel was 264 feet high- taller than a twenty-story building! Can you imagine the view from the top of that?

    The first Ferris wheel was built for the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. The people who planned the fair were looking for an attraction that would bring people to Chicago. George Ferris handed a drawing of a giant wheel that people could ride on. At first everyone laughed at his strange idea. But Mr Ferris did not give up, and finally the idea was accepted. The ride opened in June of 1893.

    Today's Ferris wheels have 12 to 16 seats, which each carry 2 or 3 people. But that first one had 36 enclosed cars, each holding 60 passengers. When filled, it carried 2,160 people. During that summer in Chicago, about 1.5 million people rode the Ferris wheel.

After the fair, the ride was moved to a nearby amusement park built especially to show off the wheel. In 1904, it was moved again一to St. Louis for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. After the fair there, the wheel stood unused. In 1906, it was finally sold to a company for scrap metal(废金属).

    Luckily a Chicago bridge builder, W.E. Sullivan, figured out how to make a smaller Ferris wheel that could easily be taken apart and put together. In 1906, he started the company that still makes many of the Ferris wheels used today.

    But, whenever you ride one, remember that it all began with George Ferris's strange idea!

Alan is an English boy. He1inBeijing with his parents. His father2 at a TV station. He is in our class now. He'sfourteen. His father 3anew car, but he never4hisfather's car. He goes to 5 by bus or by bike. Alan gets up early every day,so he is 6 late for school. He is a good student. We alllike him.

Alan likes playing football. He wants to join the school7Club.Alan can8English and French. And he 9 knows a little Chinese. He often helps 10withEnglish. After class, we often11in English. He often tells us 12 his country. It's the Mid-Autumn Festivaltoday. Afterschool I 13 Alan to go to my home. My parents make 14dumplingsfor him. He likes them very much. He says they're delicious15myparents ask him to come again.

A video of a girl dancing at a pork shop gets popular on the Internet. In the video, her mother is busy cutting up pork while the girl is dancing.

The girl is Wu Gangyun. She lives in Naduo Village of Yanshan County (县) in Yunnan. Wu's father is a train driver and her mother has a pork shop. Wu loves dancing and she dreams to be a dancer. She starts to learn to dance at the age of six. She just teaches herself by watching online videos. Every day after school, Wu goes to her mother's shop practice dancing.

Seeing their daughter's love of dance, Wu's parents want her to go to dance classes. But they can't pay for them. Luckily, Zhang Ping and Guan Yu, two teachers from a dance school, see Wu's video. They have a program (项目)—"Colorful Cloud Program" to help children in villages change (改变) their lives. They think Wu is good at dancing and they want to teach her. Wu learns a lot from the teachers. In 2019, she gave a show on CCTV.

I live in a small town near Xing'an in Guilin. You can't see it on the map of China, because it is too small. The air here is fresh(清新的). There are not many tall buildings in our town. The tallest building is in our school. There are four hundred students and twenty-five teachers in our school. In the front of the school, there is a playground. I often play basketball with my classmates on it. There is a little garden behind our school. And we can grow (种植) beautiful flowers and plant trees there. Next to the garden, there is an orange orchard(果园). You can hear birds singing everywhere. There is a river not far from our school. In summer, we usually go swimming with our teachers in it. We study Chinese, English, math and other subjects at school. The teachers are very nice. We love our school.

Good morning! I {#blank#}1{#/blank#}Lily. Welcome to my farm. Some {#blank#}2{#/blank#}ducks are over there. They are swimming in the pond(池塘).What are those? They are {#blank#}3{#/blank#}. They are black and white. They look {#blank#}4{#/blank#}.There are also some pigs. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}many pigs do I have? Let me {#blank#}6{#/blank#}.One, two, three ... five! They are playing happily in the mud(泥巴).

Do you see any plants on the farm? There are some apple {#blank#}7{#/blank#}.I can have big and red apples in autumn(秋天).These are tomato {#blank#}8{#/blank#}and those are potato plants. There are also some carrot plants. What {#blank#}9{#/blank#}can you see on the farm? The red and blue{#blank#}10{#/blank#} is for farmers. I sometimes help the farmers on weekends. It's {#blank#}11{#/blank#}for me to do some farming work. Do you want to join me?