Harry Potter and (he Sorcerer's Stone (An adaptation)

The door swung open. A tall. black-haired witch (女巫)stood there. wearing a very serious face. Hary prayed to himself that he (not make) her cross in his future school life.

"The first years, Professor McGonagall, "said Hagrid, the gamekeeper of Hogwarts.

"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here."

She pulled the door wider. The ceiling of the entrance hall was too high (make) out, and a magnificent marble staircase (lead) to the upper floors.

Following Professor McGonagall across the stone floor, Harry could hear the drone of hundreds of voices from a doorway to the right-the rest of the school (be) here already—but Professor McGonagall showed the first years into a small, empty chamber off the hall. They crowded in, standing rather close together, peering about nervously.

"Welcome to Hogwarts, "said Professor McGonagall." The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you (take) your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your Houses. The Sorting is important ceremony because, while you are here, your House will be like your family within Hogwats. You will have classes with the rest of your House, sleep in your House dormitory, and spend free time in your House common room.

"The four Houses are called Gryfindor, Huflepuf, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each House has its own noble history and each (produce) outstanding witches.

"The Sorting Ceremony will take place a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you (wait). "

"I shall return when we are ready for you, "said Professor McGonagall. "Please wait quietly. "

She left the chamber. Harry swallowed.

Dear Son,

High school is an important stage of your life—it is a new beginning, but if you're going to look forward to figuring out where you're going, why not look back to know where you've been?

If you look back to your first day at your middle school, perhaps you will recall that you were a little However, four years later when I was at your graduation ceremony, I saw a teenager confident in facing the next step in education. You must wonder why. I think it was not because you succeeded in everything you did, but because you were not afraid to .

Most parents are to give some advice at this point. And the most common advice is for you to be yourself. It's true enough but I think you should also understand what that . You can't be yourself if you don't learn who are. Unless you are perfect, it does not mean you don't make any . In a certain sense, you should not be yourself. You should try to become better.

From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly so that you will come to know the of justice; I hope sometimes you will be so that you don't take friends for granted; I hope you'll be so that you know the importance of listening to others; I hope you will have just enough pain to learn the feeling of sympathy; and I wish you bad luck so that you will be conscious of the role of in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.

Whether I wish these things or not, they're to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.

Love,

Dad

It was 2 a. m. and Andrea Ghez had just received a phone call from the Nobel Committee, congratulating her on winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics for her contributions to the discovery of the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

"I just couldn't believe that I had actually gotten that phone call, "Ghez said.

Ghez was not one of those kids who knew exactly what she wanted to do. "There were moments when I wanted to come out of school and become a ballet dancer because I loved to dance. "Ghez recalled. However, Ghez was lucky to have a female science teacher, Miss Keane. It was this high school teacher who helped prove that women also belong in this field.

Judy Keane was the only female science teacher Ghez had for a long time.

At some point Ghez decided to go to the Massachuses Institute of Technology(MIT) and she was told they didn't admit girls. She felt so upset that she went to talk to Miss Keane, who gave her a great response.

"Well, if you want to apply, apply. What's the worst thing they can say? No?"

MIT said "yes" eventually.

Ghez has become one of the only four women to win the Nobel Prize in physics, with Marie Curie being among them. She remembers what Miss Keane said. "There's a lot of hard work in there and you can't kid yourself about that. But if you want to apply yourself and do some interesting stuff, this is an area to consider. "

"I've always felt quite passionate about encouraging young girls into the sciences, "Ghez said.

"And I think just being a role model and being visible is such an important way that we can encourage the next generation to go forward." Ghez's mission will always be to inspire future scientists, just like Miss Keane did for her.

Directions： Read the following passage and complete it by using the sentences in the box. Each sentence can only be used once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.

If you are one of those students who just excel in math classes, you should highly consider joining your school's math clubs and competitions. You'll experience some amazing things that many of your peers will not.

Some of my most favorite memories of the days back in high school were through a math club and competitions. I remember spending most Friday afternoons during high school with my team, practicing for two hours every week. And even after the practice some students stayed around seeking solutions to the questions they had missed. I remember being so excited to stay at the hotel with my friends. We couldn't sleep at night because of the nervousness of competing the next morning.

Don't get us wrong though. We would take breaks going to the school vending machine to buy snacks, running around in the hallway, kicking the soccer ball even when we weren't supposed to. I remember the morning of the competition, we had a snowball fight, and I got my glasses knocked off my face. It took ten kids five minutes to finally find them.

By joining math clubs, you will gain confidence, learn from your mistakes, and know what it feels like to be pressured.

At least all these experiences and memories have led me to where and who I am today.

The School Uniform Matters

Individualism is a primary part of society in many countries. However, this value is coming under fire when it comes to the issue of school uniforms. Should students be allowed to make individual decisions about clothing, or should all of them be required to wear a uniform? Actually, school uniforms are the better choice for at least three reasons.

First, wearing school uniforms would help students save much time and trouble. They would no longer have to decide what to wear every morning, trying on one outfit after another sometimes, feeling stressed for fear of being laughed at just because of the wrong clothes.

Second, uniforms keep reminding students that school is a special place for learning. Also, they can create a feeling of unity. Just imagine a group of students attend a meeting in uniforms. More importantly, according to a recent survey in a large school district in Florida, incidents of school violence dropped by 50 percent after school uniforms were introduced.

Finally, students' standards of living differ greatly from family to family. Some are well-off while others may just be the opposite. Wearing school uniforms would make all the students look the same regardless of their financial status, making all of them feel equal.

Opponents of school uniforms say that students who wear school uniforms cannot express their individuality. However, society must decide if individual expression through clothing is more valuable than improved educational performance. It is important to remember that school uniforms would be worn only during school hours. Students can express their individuality in the way that they dress outside of the classroom.

In conclusion, there are many well-documented benefits of school uniforms for students.

Summary:

Students should wear school uniforms mainly for three reasons. First, ……

Second, ……

Third, ……

Meanwhile, it won't influence students' expression of individuality at all.

高中的生活充满着未知的挑战，但又令人憧憬。请以My High School Expectations为题写一段你的感想。

Even 4-month-old infants expect adults to comfort crying babies. This suggests we may be born with a foundation of morality.

In 2007, Kiley Hamlin and her colleagues at Yale university found that 6-month-old and 10-month-old babies prefer people who help others, while show a1to those who don't.

To find out whether they expect such behavior, Renee Baillargeon at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her colleagues played videos to babies aged 4 months and 12 months. These2an unfamiliar woman folding laundry, with a pushchair at the back of the room. In some of the videos, a baby was heard crying and the pushchair began to3, suggesting it contained an infant in distress. In one video, the woman went to rock the pushchair and4the baby crying. In another, she just continued to fold laundry,5the baby.

It is well known that when infants are surprised by something that doesn't follow their expectations, they spend longer looking at it. The team found that the infants6significantly longer at the video in which the woman ignored the baby, suggesting they expected her to7it.

The babies were also shown8in which laughing sounds, not crying, seemed to be coming from the pushchair. When watching these, the babies didn't look longer, unlike in the9videos.

In another series of10, 8-month-old infants were given the choice of touching a screen to play either the" comfort a crying baby scene" or the "ignore a crying baby scene". The 18 infants taking part chose to view the ignore scene more than twice as often as the comfort one, suggesting they found it very11.

The results tell us that the original moral cognition of humans includes12about other people's welfare, says Baillargeon. She thinks the babies would have responded the same way if there had been a man13a woman in the video. "I believe infants would expect any human adult who is alone with a crying baby to try to comfort the baby-but we have not tested it yet."

Hamlin, who is now at the University of British Columbia in Canada, is14. If babies don't come into the world with such expectations, then perhaps they arrive15to figure them out very quickly, she says.