Pablo Picasso was born in Spain in 1881. His father was a painter and art teacher who gave his son the first lesson in drawing. He won a prize— Science and Charity”for his first important painting when he was only fifteen. He studied in several cities in Spain. But there was no one to teach him all that he wanted to know. When he was nineteen, he visited Paris.

    Paris was then the center of the world for artists. Everything that was new and exciting in the world of paintings seemed to happen there. When he was twenty-three, Picasso moved there to live and lived in France for the rest of his life.

 When he was over ninety, this great painter still lived his life like a young man. He was still looking for new ideas and new ways to use his artistic materials.

    When he died in 1973, he was ninety-one years old.

    I was 10 the year my cousin Marley's parents gave her a painful Christmas surprise: they were getting a divorce(离婚). My aunt went to California, but my uncle decided to get her back. There was one matter: where to put his young daughter. Luckily, my mother loved Marley, giving her more attention than her family ever did.

    On that Christmas Eve, my cousin arrived on our doorstep carrying an old blue suitcase. Before she stepped inside, Marley said, “It doesn't matter. When my parents come back, we'll have a bigger Christmas than this.”

    Late on the night Marley arrived, my mom came into my room, her arms filled with packages.I knew they were my Christmas presents. “I know how you love surprises but we have to decide which ones to give to Marley.”

    My mother carefully opened the gifts. Wow! I saw ice skates, red leather gloves and a dollhouse. The last present was the music box we'd asked the lady at the local store to take down and play for us over and over again.

    “Which ones?” my mother asked. “She can have the ice skates,” I said reluctantly(勉强地). “That's good,” my mother said. She began to tape the packages up again. Then she stopped and asked, “Are you sure about these?” At that moment, I realized she expected more from me than I had already given. So I gave her the music box, too, and ___________. The next morning, Marley's eyes were resolute(坚定的). She expected nothing and wanted us to know she didn't care. But when she saw her name on the biggest box, she couldn't hide her excitement. I thought my happiness would be cut in half. Instead it was doubled.

    Over the last 40 years, Marley and I have grown apart(分离的). But the love we felt for each other that day still remains. Today Marley says, “They were the best presents I ever got.

    This was the first real task I received in my new school. It seemed simple: go on the Internet and find information about a man named George Washington. As I searched the name, I found that there were two famous people having the same name who looked completely different! One invented hundreds of uses for peanuts（花生）, while the other led some sort of army across America. I stared at the screen, wondering which one my teacher meant. I called my grandfather for a golden piece of advice: let the coin decide. I flipped(掷) a coin and Ah! Tails (背面)! My report would be about the great man who invented peanut butter, George Washington Carver.

    Weeks later, I stood in front of the classroom and proudly read my homework. But things started to get strange. I looked around the room, only to find my classmates with big smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes and my stone-faced teacher. I was completely lost. “What could be causing everyone to act this way?”

    Oh well, I dropped the paper and sat down at my desk, burning to find out what I had done wrong. As a classmate began his report, it all became clear, “My report is on George Washington, the man who started the American War of Independence.” The whole world became quiet! How could I know that my teacher meant that George Washington?

    Of course, my subject result was awful. Sad but fearless, I decided to turn this around. I talked to the headmaster Miss Lancelot, but she said firmly(坚决地): No re-dos; no new score. I felt that it was not fair, and I believed I should have a second chance. So I threw myself heartily into my work for the rest of the school year. Ten months later, I sat in the headmaster's office again, but this time a completely different conversation. I smiled and flashed back to the terrible moment at the beginning of the year when the headmaster told me I was good enough to skip(跳过) the 6th grade and started the 7th grade next term.

Helen Keller was both blind and deaf. 1 she had these disabilities, she became a skilled writer and speaker.

Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. When she was 19 months old, she became very 2 and the illness left her unable to see or hear.

When Keller was 6, she got a teacher named Anne Sullivan. Sullivan used Keller's sense of 3 to teach her. She handed Keller a doll. Then she traced(摹写) the letters of the word "doll" on Keller's hand. Keller 4 the connection between the letters and the object she was holding. Then she learned that things had names.

With Sullivan's help, Helen made progress 5 . Soon she could 6 sentences by feeling raised words. A few years later she learned Braille(盲文), a special system of writing for the blind that uses raised dots(凸起的原点). People read Braille with their fingers.

Even though learning to speak was a bigger challenge, Keller decided to face it bravely 7 giving up. Keller 8 to do it by touching the lips and throat of a person who was speaking. Then she could feel the way the lips and throat moved. At the same time, someone spelled out the words that were being spoken.

Keller was very 9 and learned quickly. She graduated(毕业) from Radcliffe College in 1904. Then she wrote magazine articles and books that told people about blindness. In 1913, Keller began giving speeches, mainly for the American Foundation for the Blind. Her efforts have a great 10 on the whole world with more and more disabled people being treated nicely and fairly.

Have you ever seen a bird fly into a building? Now, some students in Shenzhen are working to help the birds and learn more about this problem. 

In March, they made a team to study bird collisions(碰撞). "Every morning, we walk around buildings with big glass before 9:00 am. That is the high time for bird activities, " Feng Yongyin said. If they see a bird hit a building, they will take photos of the bird and the place around it. Then, they put the photos onto an app called Biotracks. Scientists can use them to do more research. 

The students'careful bird-watching also made the school think about moving the basketball court(场地). That's because it is a place with many plants and birds around. "Once we found a bird's nest(巢) on the ground and put it back. Then we set up a camera, " says 14-year-old Lan Zijia. Using the camera, they saw that many students might accidentally(意外地) throw their balls at the plants and go into the green ground to get their balls. It might hit the plants and birds'nests. "We told our school about this, and our school placed a line to protect the plants and birds, " Lan said. 

Since March, the team has done 416 bird-watching studies, found five bird collisions and saved one bird. 

①Do you remember the name of your kindergarten teacher? I do, Her name was Mrs. White. 

②I don't remember much about what we learned in her class, but my mother once told me that we used to write a lot. And I would bring back what I wrote and she would look at it and see there were so many mistakes. But no red corrections. And always a star. Sometimes even a Good! That worried my mother a lot, so one day she asked Mrs. White why she never corrected my mis- takes; in spellings of words or pointed out grammatical errors. 

③Mrs. White said, "The children are just beginning to get excited about using words, about forming sentences. I don't want to dampen that interest with red ink. Spelling and grammar can wait. . . "

④She is right! I did grow up learning to use words with loving confidence just like that. I look back now and think she must have been a rather extraordinary teacher— to restrain(限制) her red pen— to allow the joy, wonder and excitement of expression. 

⑤I used to misspell"beautiful" a lot. I never could quite remember that the"e" went before the"a". It annoyed my teacher in high school endlessly. Eventually the"e" and"a" settled into their right places. I am glad I didn't wait on them though. "Pretty" is easier to spell but it doesn't hold as much as you mean sometimes. 

⑥And thanks to Mrs. White I had no concerns about writing what I meant, even if I couldn't quite spell it out. After all, life isn't pretty. It's beautiful.