Natalie Hampton spent most of her 7th and 8th grade school years eating lunch alone. The new girl at an all-girls private school in Los Angeles. A group of “mean girls” excluded her from parties, called her names and even physically attacked her. They told her she was ugly and would never have any friends.

Once a kid who loved going to school, but Natalie now dreaded it. She stopped eating, she couldn’t sleep. The anxiety became so bad that she had to be hospitalized. Her mom calls it “the darkest period of our lives.”

Natalie’s mother sent her to another school for high school. Now a 16-year-old junior, she’s happy there, with a group of close friends and many after-school activities. But she’s never forgotten those two dark years, and she hates the idea of other kids going through what she did.

So Natalie came up with an idea that would allow students a judgment-free way to find lunch mates without the fear of being refused. She developed an app called “Sit With Us,” where students can sign up as “ambassadors” and post that there are open seats at their lunch table. (When signing up as ambassadors, the students make a promise that they’ll be kind and welcoming to whoever comes to sit with them). A student who doesn’t have a place to sit can look at the app and find an ambassador’s table and know they are invited to join it.

“Lunch might seem really small, but I think these are the small steps that make a school more inclusive,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like you’re asking that much, but, it starts to change the way students think about each other. It makes a huge difference in how they treat each other.”

【小题1】How did Natalie feel during her 7th and 8th grade school years?

A．Helpless and angry.	B．Relaxed and confident.
C．Lonely and frightened.	D．Calm and unconcerned.

【小题2】Which of the following can replace the underlined word “dreaded” in Paragraph 2?

A．was fond of

B．was scared of

C．was shocked at

D．was excited about

【小题3】What is the purpose of the “Sit With Us” app?

A．It makes lonely students popular at school.

B．It teaches students to fight against those “mean girls”.

C．It encourages students to have lunch with new classmates.

D．It helps students locate a welcoming group in the lunchroom.

【小题4】What is the text mainly about?

A．What students should do to find lunch mates.	B．How Natalie succeeded in becoming popular.
C．How the “Sit With Us” app came into being.	D．Why Natalie was unwelcome at school.