A lot of people say math is not their strong suit. One New Jersey parent wants to help change that. Laura Overdeck grew up with numbers. She always helped measure ingredients（食材）when her mother baked，and she learned about angles from her father. She went on to major in astrophysics（天体物理学）in college. Overdeck wanted her own children to be good at math，too.“And when our first child was about two，we just started giving her a math problem every night，”Overdeck said. The problem was usually a story，involving animals，cars or candies that let the kid count.“Our third child started，at age two，yelling that he wanted his own math problem because he saw his brother and sister doing it. And we thought，‘Wow，we have a household where math is the popular thing at bedtime，’”Overdeck said.

In February，Overdeck set up Bedtime Math，an Internet website where she posts daily puzzles for children. Overdeck is particularly keen to hook（吸引）children on numbers before they go to school. So why introduce little ones to math so early？

Sian Beilock，an expert on performance anxiety，says the more fun and familiar math is early on，the less likely children will feel nervous when they start to learn math in school.“My lab has shown recently that kids as early as first grade report feeling anxious about doing math，”Beilock said.

“You can hear totally educated adults say，‘You know I’m just not that good at math.’or‘I’m kind of afraid of math.’And that’s a totally acceptable thing for a well-educated person to say，but you never hear them say，‘Well，you know，I’m just not that good at reading.’，”Overdeck said. She wants children and their parents to become as fluent in numbers as they are in Harry Potter.

   Perhaps you have heard a lot about the Internet, but what is it, do you know? The Internet is a network. It uses the telephone to join millions of computers together around the world.

Maybe that doesn’t sound very interesting. But when you’re connected (连接) to the Internet, there are a lot of things you can do. You can send e-mails to your friends, and they can get them in a few seconds. You can communicate with your friends through social software such as QQ, WeChat, and Facebook. You can also do with all kinds of information on the World Wide Web (WWW) .

There are many different types of computers now. They all can be linked to the Internet. Most of them are small machines sitting on people’s desks at home, but there are still many others in schools, offices or large companies. These computers are owned by people or companies, but no one really owns the Internet itself.

There are lots of places for you to surf the Internet. For example, your school may have the Internet. You can explore the Internet to search for useful information or knowledge in your classroom. However, in order to prevent yourself from playing with computer games, you should use it in limited time. Libraries often have computers joined to the Internet. You are welcome to use it at any time.

Thanks to the Internet, the world is becoming smaller and smaller. It is possible for you to work at home with a computer in front, receiving and sending the information you need. You can buy or sell whatever you want through the Internet. But do you know 98% of the information on the Internet is in English? So what will English be like tomorrow?

   Robyn Lee， a 15-year-old teenage girl who studies at York Community High School， US says she has four friends. But she also has 15 to 20 other friends she considers part of her regular social circle.

“It's like a bad thing to have only one， friend ，”explained Robyn. “If you have one friend， it means only one person likes you. That’s not cool，” she said.

For many years， experts studying teen friendships have known that teenagers prefer to travel in groups. In studies conducted in 1963 and in 1995， researchers found teen friendship groups averaged six people. In 2005， when teens were asked about how many friends they kept in touch with regularly， the average answer was 20.

The change to bigger -group friendships has advantages， such as increasing more connections and improving teens' self-pride by giving them a place to belong.

However， the change also has some disadvantages，say psychologists. “The meaning of friendship is becoming much more complicated，” said Bernardo Carducci， a professor of psychology at Indiana University Southeast.

MaryRose Moss， a 17-year-old in Chicago， knows how she could get more friends. She created a Facebook page when she was 14 and within months ， she had her group of 500 friends.

Text messaging has opened the door to many new connections， she says. “I'm friends with some people that I wouldn't be as close to if it weren't for technology，” said Moss. “It's so easy to send a text to somebody even if you don't know him very well. ”

Some psychologists wonder whether social-networking technology is affecting some skills children once got from making friends in the old-fashioned way.

“In the past， you argued， discussed and reached an agreement， but if somebody disagrees with you now， you can ‘defriend’ him with the click of keys，” said Carducci.

Marianne Boe， a social studies teacher in Chicago ， sees signs of changing friendships in the hallways. Ten years ago， she could easily know groups of girls who stayed friends through all four years of high school. “Today， it's harder，” Boe said.

   I was a paperboy — well actually, the first papergirl in Seattle. When I was 12, I took my way into a job delivering (投递) The Seattle Times. I remember the boss looking this _______ girl over and telling me I had a week to _______ I could do it.

So after school, I would _______ over to the hut down the street, pick up my bundles, lift them onto the back of my _______ and ride my route. Sunday morning papers were too _______ for me to carry. I tried, and it took me three hours to _______ them as I had to keep coming back to reload. So, my mother volunteered to get up at 5:30 am and drive me around. She _______ herself to my employment.

What I learned as a _______ was to find out where each of my customers wanted their papers. I didn’t just throw them on their lawn (草评)._______ they wanted papers on their porch, or mailbox or inside the gate, that was where they got them. When a ________ went out of town, he would tell me and I would make sure that the papers didn’t ________ up to attract thieves. In return, I got big ________.

Somewhere the paperboys are ________ by modern services. We put our orders into online forms that then tell a service that ________ a guy in a truck to throw the papers onto the lawn.

The people that run and own newspapers have the ________ to deliver news to us in a large number of forms, and we should be able to get it any way we want. We should be able to ________ for the form we want it ________, including how it is distributed. I would ________ pay to have a papergirl or paperboy deliver the ________ on the right day in the right way, and I would tip for that privilege.

Let’s bring back the paperboy and with it ________ employment for our children.