欢迎大家来到“英语共读”，本栏目旨在提升各位同学的阅读能力及朗读、听力水平，内容精选自《英语周报》头版时文阅读，由《英语周报》口语老师倾情朗读！
今日朗读
Teacher gifts free bikes to students
阅读难度：★★★☆☆（学校生活）
Words: about 310; Time: 5.5 minutes
语篇导读：为了让孩子们能够拥有一个快乐的童年，一位老师在网上发起活动，筹集了足够的钱，给学生们买了自行车。
When first-grade teacher Katie Blomquist realized that most of the students at her school couldn’t afford a bike, she set out to provide each child in the student body with their own.
Last week, after 7 months of planning and waiting, that dream came true as she was able to provide the 650 students of Pepperhill Elementary School in North Charleston, South Carolina with new bikes, helmets (头盔), and locks.
“When those parachutes (降落伞) went up and the kids started screaming (尖叫), I could not have felt happier. Kids were hugging each other, jumping up and down, screaming! It was more than I imagined,” she told The Huffington Post.
Last September, Blomquist started a campaign on GoFundMe called “Every Kid Deserves A Bike!”
“I see directly the difficult hands in life some children are dealt,” she wrote in her GoFundMe campaign. “Many do not have the chance to visit places outside their community (社区) or have a lot of different experiences over weekends and the summer; rather, many children play on their street with neighborhood kids or watch television.”
“I soon began to think how each student’s quality of life could improve if they had more freedom to ride around their neighborhoods,” she added.
Blomquist finally raised a little over $80,000. In addition to the bikes, helmets and locks, the money was also used to pay for the company who brought the bikes to the school and stored them overnight.
“A bike means so many things,” Blomquist told The Huffington Post. “It means a sense of freedom, exercise, but most importantly it’s about a basic childhood right ― a right to joy.”
Now, Blomquist has created a GoFundMe for her new charity (慈善团体), which is called “Going Places,” and has the task “to bring joy to deserving children from poor families by providing them with bikes, swimming lessons, summer camp opportunities, and more.”
From: www.huffingtonpost.com
Help:
deserve v. 值得：You deserve a rest after all that hard work.
【思考】 你的老师曾经做过哪些让你难忘或者感动的事情？
语音要点：
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