Passage 1

In a traditional classroom, much, if not most, of the class time is spent with the teacher presenting contents—telling, showing, explaining and lecturing. Whether it’s a first-grade teacher reading to students, a high school government teacher lecturing on the Articles of Confederation, or a math teacher demonstrating how to solve an equation, class time is when the teacher delivers information and the students receive it.

Ideally, lessons involve a mixture of delivery and discussion, supplemented by activities that engage students to support their comprehension. But in reality, just getting the content across can take most of the class period, especially when lessons are interrupted by student questions, discipline problems, and distractions like fire drills, assemblies, and other disruptions.

There are lots of good reasons for this model and its durability in education. It is an efficient way to assure that all students have access to the same course content, and it provides a way for teachers to transmit their expertise in a subject, and enthusiasm for it, to their students. Most teachers love being the “sage on the stage”, and many are very good at it.

Nevertheless, many teachers also feel frustrated by the limitations of this model, especially when lecture and presentation take up the lion’s share of the class period, leaving little time for the good stuff of teaching—getting into students, helping them make meaning out of information, drawing out their evolving understanding, encouraging and sparkling their excitement and comprehension. In today’s environment of high-stakes testing, with multiple standards—and now with the Common Core, new standards—there never seems to be enough time for all the things teachers wish they could do with their students: project- based activities, individual or group learning challenges, deep discussions and inquiry activities. So it’s not surprising that, when teachers are asked what they believe is the greatest value of flipping instruction, the answer is almost always, “It gives me more time to work directly with students during class.” Teachers at Michigan’s Clintondale High School claim that, since they have flipped their classrooms, the amount of time they spend with students has increased by a factor of four. That is substantial gain—and it makes a real difference in students believing that the teacher is there for them when help is needed.

Passage 2

First there were hammers banging. Then paint brushes. Then carpet. Soon we had a new room above the garage. And my grandmother moved in.

It was the late 1960s, I was 10 and had no idea that we were going against the grain,that the trend back then was for families to splinter, senior citizens to take better and longer care of themselves, kids to move away younger and younger.

All I knew was that our family had three generations under one roof, which made a difference in who sat where in the car, what desserts mysteriously disappeared overnight and how long you waited outside the bathroom door.

This past week, a new census report raised a lot of eyebrows. In the past decade, there has been a resuming of the family deck: a 30 percent rise in the U.S. households with at least three generations of family members. People are moving back in.

Generations are consolidating. So I guess we were ahead of our time. Forget about a babysitter. Of course, today this has more to do with money than anything else. Senior citizens have a harder time paying their bills and their children have a harder time shelling out monthly checks for retirement or nursing homes. Kids can’t find jobs, even college grads. What it means, ultimately, is more people under one roof, with a broader span of years between them. Braces and dentures. Grey hair and dyed hair. This is lamented as a regrettable consequence of a feeble economy.

But I’m not sure it’s a bad thing. I learned a lot from having our grandmother in the house. For one thing, it beat hiring a babysitter we didn’t like. And there was someone else to take us to school or drive us to places when our folks were working. There was another family member at the school plays and another person to cry to if we were hurting. I got to watch how my mother related to her mother, and I saw that mine wasn’t the only generation that found the one before it confounding and, at times, infuriating. I also heard more family history than I did with just one older generation under the roof. There was no shortage of conversation. Dinners were louder and animated.In short, we were, bigger. My grandmother spoke about immigrant’s neighborhood, sitting on fire escapes and drinking egg creams, and talked about listening to the radio during the Pearl Harbor attacks. They talked about relatives I’d never met and never would meet, my bloodline, my family tree.

It wasn’t all “The Waltons”. But I knew who I was and where I came from more once my grandmother called our home her home.

There’s a wonderful film called “Avalon” that follows an immigrant’s family in the 20th century. At the beginning of the film, it is Thanksgiving, and a small city home is jammed with uncles, aunts, grandparents, kids. At the end of the film, years later, it is Thanksgiving again, and a family of four sits in a suburban kitchen eating with the TV on. Which are you? Yes, it was cramped, sometimes annoying, and it was no fun waiting for a shower or hearing my grandmother snoring. But years later, when she finally moved out, and we jointed the more conventional trend of “shrinking household”. I can tell you this. It got quieter. It was less funny. We were still a family, but we were…smaller. So the economy may be driving us more under one roof, and we may whine that our independence is withering. But for centuries, kids, parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents have been sharing space, and when it stopped, we began complaining about the collapse of family values. Maybe the economy, of all things, is offering us a small fix.

语言素材：

Summarizing:

While reading, make notes or underline the main idea of the text. After reading, write a short summary in your own words. This can help you better understand the text.

A Country Music Song Changed Her Life Forever

When Sarah was a teenager, she used to fight over almost everything with her family. But five years ago, while she was studying abroad in England, she heard a song full of feelings about returning home on the radio. It made Sarah think about her family and friends back in the U.S. She came to realize how much she actually missed all of them. Ever since then, she has been a fan of American country music.Country music is a traditional kind of music from the southern states of America.Nashville, Tennessee is the home of country music.Many songs these days are just about modern life in the U.S., such as the importance of money and success, but not about belonging to a group. However, country music brings us back to the “good old days” when people were kind to each other and trusted one another. It reminds us that the best things in life are free-laughter, friends, family, and the beauty of nature and the countryside. Sarah hasn’t been to Nashville yet, but it is her dream to go there one day. She has already read a lot about the place and done some research on it. She knows that there is a Country Music Hall of Fame Museum in Nashville. There are also always a lot of great country music concerts with famous musicians and singers, like Garth Brooks. Sarah has already listened to most of his songs. “Garth is one of the most successful musicians in American history. He has sold more than 120 million records. I hope to see him sing live one day!”