A turkey named Courage gave thanks to President Obama for saving his life on the day before Thanksgiving. Honouring a 62-year-old tradition, the President pardoned(赦免)the bird on Thanksgiving eve.
The tradition of a turkey pardon at Thanksgiving began with President Truman in 1947. Courage comes from Ellsworth, Iowa. The name Courage was chosen by voters (投票人)who took part in a survey posted on the White House website. The lucky turkey walked on the lawn of the Rose Garden and posed for the cameras at the presidential podium(讲台).
The dinner that has become known as the First Thanksgiving was actually a harvest festival celebrated in December of 1621. That’s when English settlers in Plymouth, Massachusetts, gave thanks for the progress they had made after a hard winter in their new country. As America grew, Thanksgiving customs also spread and got bigger. George Washington declared that the first national Thanksgiving would be on November 26, 1789. In the decades to follow, however, people celebrated Thanksgiving locally, with no official date. President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November 1863 a national day of Thanksgiving. It stayed that way until 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved it one week earlier. He wanted to lengthen the shopping period before Christmas to encourage gift-buyers and to help businesses. So Congress（议会） ruled that, after 1941, Thanksgiving would be an official federal holiday falling on the fourth Thursday of November.
This year we celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday, November. Millions of Americans got together to give thanks with friends and family. The lucky turkey, Courage, was one of them. After his pardon, Courage would be sent to Disneyland Resort in California, where he would be the grand assemble of Disney’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
【小题1】That the turkey Courage was pardoned was decided by ________.

There was a farmer．He had four sons 1 ________ The farmer was very worried about his sons，but he didn’t know what to do．

   The man grew old and fell ill．When he was dying he told all his sons that he hid lots of money on his farm．After the farmer died，his sons began to look for the money．They spent a few days digging（挖掘）the farm，but could find nothing．A neighbour said to them，“Since you dug the ground，why not plant some seeds（种了）in it?”

    The four sons planted the seeds in the ground．After a few weeks the seeds camp up，and n a few weeks more the seeds grew into plants．A few weeks later，the plants started to bear grains（谷物）．Later the four sons harvested them and sold them at the market．2 ________At last，they knew what their father meant by his words．

根据短文内容，完成下列任务：

任务一：将下面两个句子放在文中合适的位置

  1．________     2．________

  A．They made a lot of money．

  B．They were very lazy and did not do anything．

任务二：猜测词义。

3．The underlined word“hid”means ________ in Chinese．

A．种植                      B．隐藏                       C．制造                      D．保护

4．The underlined word ‘‘harvested” means ________ in Chinese．

A．收割                          B．采摘                       C．捆绑                      D．卖掉

任务三：写出下列句子的同义句：

5．They spent a few days digging the farm．

It ________ them a few days  ________ the farm．

任务四：将文中划线句子翻译成汉语

6．________

Have you ever seen a horse with toes (脚趾)? Millions of years ago, horses had many toes.They had four toes on each front foot.They had three toes on each back foot.The horses were smaller than cats.

These small horses lived in the forest.Their many toes helped the horses run over the soft wet ground.

It was very hot in the forest.But the weather changed.It became cold.Many trees couldn’t live in cold weather.The trees died and fell.Forest became open field.The sun made the ground dry and hard (坚硬).Horses began to change too.They began to get bigger.This took a long time.On the dry hard land, horses needed only their middle toes for running.At last their middle toes became hard.

1.Long ago, the horse had four toes on each of its __________.

A．back feet          B．front feet          C．right feet          D．left feet

2.The cats were __________ the horses at that time.

A．as big as          B．smaller than        C．bigger than        D．as small as

3.When the weather changed, __________.

A．many trees grew well in cold weather        B．animals began to change too

C．cats were older than the horses            D．horses were the same as they are