Free English Class! Topic: Back to School! 👩‍🏫🏫📚 (Lesson Only)

Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson about school. I

love talking about school. As most of you know, my real job

as we might say in English is that I am a high school

teacher. Um it's summer right now so I don't need to go to

work but during the school year, I am a high school

teacher and I love talking about school. I think it's

because when I was young, when I was a student, I loved being

in school. I have always loved learning and I think naturally

uh people who love learning sometimes choose to become

teachers. So, as a teacher, I'm always excited to do a lesson

about school. In particular, this lesson is about back to

school. Back to school will be happening in a few weeks here

in Ontario, Canada. It's kind of the middle of summer

vacation but I've noticed already that the back-to-school

sales have started. So, students usually need to buy a

few things before they go back to school So today I thought I

would do a lesson on back to school. So school let me make

this a little bit bigger for you. School I actually modified

this slide for this lesson because school may look like

one or the other when you look at the pictures over here.

School last year for the most part for us was online. But

also we had in person learning. So if you look to the far side

of this slide you'll see there's a boy looking at his

computer. He would be doing called online learning or

remote learning and these students are doing in-person

learning. So school is of course the place where kids go

um in Canada kids from the age of about four or five up to age

seventeen or eighteen attend school on a daily basis. So

school is the place where children go in order to learn

things. This is what's called back to school time. Back to

school usually happens right after a holiday that we call in

Ontario, Canada and in many other parts of the world, I

think it's similar. Back to school is the day when kids go

back on the bus or they walk to school and they start school

again. So, the phrase back to school is used a lot right now.

We would call this the back-to-school season or it's

back-to-school time or you might even say something like,

well, it's almost back to school, isn't it? So, we use

the phrase in a lot of To talk about usually the end of August

and right uh the first few days of September we would call that

the back to school time. It is of course right now summer

holidays or what we also call summer vacation. So if there

are any students watching this they probably don't want to

talk about back to school. Back to school is not a fun time for

some students. I'm sure some students look forward to it.

But some do not look forward to it but it is right now uh

summer holidays or summer vacation. In Ontario, Canada,

students get 2 months off from school and teachers do too,

which is kind of a bonus. Um and we would refer to that as

summer holidays or summer vacation. A good time to hang

out with friends, maybe just read a book. Older students

usually get part-time jobs so they'll get a summer job during

the summer vacation or summer holidays. My two oldest kids

both have summer jobs right now. Um they both found places

to work for the summer so that they could earn some money. We

have of course other things that happen during back to

school time and we add the phrase back to school to it. So

right now people are going to start to do back to school

shopping. You know the word two in back to school. Sometimes we

actually put the number two back to school. Guess it looks

cooler. But right now I've noticed that we get flaw in the

mail. A flyer is like a paper that shows everything that is

on sale at a store and all of them say back to school. Back

to school shopping time. So we have times of the year when we

shop for certain things. This is certainly a time of the year

where there will be a lot of people doing back to school

shopping. And of course because of that we will have what's

called back to school sales. A back to school sale is a sale

during the month of August where thin that you normally

buy for school are cheaper than they normally would be. So

right now the back to school shopping has started. The

stores are sending out flyers where they're showing a lot of

back to school sales. You know pencils 50% off or pencil cases

25% off. There are a lot of back to school sales happening

right now. Because students need things like school

clothes. So in general sometimes kids buy clothes just

for school. It's not really any different than their normal

clothes but it might be different than the clothes they

play in outside. They might be clothes that they keep a little

cleaner because they are their school clothes. So, for our

kids, we would say something like, well, we need to go buy

some more school clothes for you because that pair of pants

has a hole in the knee or that shirt doesn't fit you anymore.

You need some new school clothes. Some schools though

have a school uniform This is quite common at probably I

would say about ten to 20% of the schools in Canada have

school uniforms. I know in certain countries school

uniforms are very very popular. Um for instance the school I

work at has school uniforms. But the school my kids go to my

younger kids doesn't have school uniforms. So again a

school uniform is um clothing that you usually buy from the

school or you buy from a store that the school chooses. So

that all the students look the same. Common school uniforms

would be like uh black pants with a white shirt and tie uh

and those types of things. So, if your school doesn't have

school uniforms, you might just need school clothes. Maybe you

need some school clothes because um as a kid, uh

sometimes kids outgrow them and then maybe you need to get some

new uh shirts and pants for your school uniform. And of

course, there are back-to-school sales because

people need school supplies. So, the or phrase we use to

refer to all the things you buy when you need to go to school,

we would call school supplies. Some schools supply certain

things to the students but other schools, most schools

require students to buy certain things before they go in

Canada, of course. So, the school would supply things like

glue or maybe colored paper if they're doing art or paint but

my kids and most Canadian kids have to buy certain school

supplies in order to go to school. They might need a

binder. We would call this a three-ring binder. This is

something that you can open and close and it can hold paper.

You might need to buy a notebook which is just a small

book that you can take notes in. When you're asked, when

you're a student at school, it's a good idea to take notes.

You might need to buy some pencils, pens, or a

highlighter. So, a pencil is of course something you can

sharpen and it's used for math or art class a pen is something

that's permanent. This is a BIC pen made by my friends over in

France. BIC pens are really cool. I like them. I shouldn't

tell you this but I actually like chewing on the cap of the

BIC pen. I shouldn't mention that, should I? Uh and then a

highlighter is something you can use to um basically make

words yellow so that you can see them easier. Um a

highlighter is a really good tool if you're learning

English. You can highlight new words. Don't do that in library

books though. Only use a highlighter in a book that you

own. You might need an eraser so that if you write something

in pencil, you can erase it later. You might need a pencil

case to store all of your stuff. So, once again, these

are all school supplies that kids in Canada and I think most

other countries would need to buy. They would need to go to a

back-to-school sale and if they needed, if they didn't have a

pencil case, they would need to buy one. The school would not

give these items to the kids. You might need a pencil

sharpener. Although most classrooms have a pencil

sharpener, sometimes students are required to have a small

one with them that they can keep in their pencil case. And

maybe they need a laptop, maybe they need a calculator, and

maybe they need a backpack, or what we sometimes just call a

book bag. So, let's quick review again. These are all

things that we would call school supplies and some of

these things students will need to buy before they go back to

school. A binder, maybe two binders, maybe four. They might

need a notebook. They might need a pencil, pen, and a

highlighter or kind of like a few of each. They would put

them with their eraser in their pencil case and they might need

a small pencil sharpener and they might need a laptop and a

calculator. This really depends on the school as well. I think

at my school, we have a class set of calculators um and then

they might need a backpack or a book bag for all of these

items. So, the first day of school is called the first day

of school but I wanted to put this slide in here. I mean, it

sounds pretty obvious, doesn't it? Um in our part of Canada,

the day after Labor Day, which is a holiday in September, we

have the first day of school. So, the first day of school

this year, I think, I actually didn't look this up. I

should've looked it up. First day of school, this year is

probably September seventh. That would be my guess. First

day of school, September seventh. Um but you also have

really little kids who haven't gone to school before sometimes

have their first day of school. So, they've never been to

school and and that's an exciting day for them. The

first day of school, whether you're like four or five and

you've never been or if you're like fourteen, um it's usually

a day where parents take a photo. We often take a photo on

the first day of school of our kids with their backpacks and

their new school clothes um and then uh we put that in a album.

The school day in Ontario, Canada. So, when you talk

about, you know, the work day is from about eight til five.

Some people work from seven till four thirty. Uh some

people, their work day is 730 til 530 but the school day is a

little shorter and the term we use to talk about the length of

the day out of school is school day. Uh students have to get

used to it in Ontario, Canada. The school day can range from

830 to three thirty. It might go from nine till three. For my

school, the school day is from 830 to 330 and classes start at

ten to nine and go to three oh five. So, the school day is

just a way of talking about the day at school. If you are older

and if you are at a high school, you might have a

semester system. The semester system is a system where you

take certain classes for about four or 5 months and then you

are done and then you take other classes. Our elementary

schools, our grade schools, kids under the age of thirteen,

do not have semesters. They usually take the same classes

all year long. So, they'll have math class every Monday,

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday for 40 minutes or something like

that. In our high schools, we have a semester system. So,

this fall, for the fall semester, for semester one, I'm

teaching two classes this year I'm teaching a computer class

and a business class and then semester two, I'm teaching my

three French classes again. So, a semester system is when you

break the year up a little bit. Um of course, the student is

the person who is learning. We don't use the word pupil

anymore. Um it's kind of an old term and we sometimes use the

word learner. Although, this is more common in other

English-speaking countries. In Canada, we would call the kids

who go to school students. I think years ago, you might call

them pupils and we usually don't use the word learner very

often like how many students do you have in your class? That

would be a common question. Not how many learners. Although it

is a common English word, that means the same as student. You

might have a student in your class who is a class clown. So,

a class clown is a student who is always smiling and laughing

and doing silly things. You can see this boy has decided to

take all his new pencils and insert them in his ears and in

his nose um and just be silly. Class clowns often tell jokes.

When you, as a teacher, when I write on the board, sometimes

class clowns uh say funny things and make everyone laugh

or they throw things. A class clown is someone I was gonna

say isn't serious about learning but I've actually had

class clowns who got the best grade in the class in the past.

Some students can be silly and also learn very well at the

same time. We don't use this term anymore. Um in Canada we

also call a student like this a keener. Um that's a Canadian

word I think though. But a teacher's pet is a student who

likes to sit at the front likes to answer the questions um and

all of those kinds of things. I think if you watch um Petite

Nicola in French, I think is the teacher's pet. He's the

small boy that knows all the answers. Sorry, that's a little

bit of French. I might have got the name wrong but a teacher's

pet, it's not a nice term. It's kind of an insult now. As a

teacher, I would not use the word teacher's pet but when

students bug each other, they might say, uh you're the

teacher's pet. You're always answering the questions. Then,

of course, you have the teacher. The teacher is the

person at the front of the room who does all of the teaching.

In Canada, we have one teacher per classroom but there also

might be someone called a teacher's aide who helps the

teacher um or there might be a teaching assistant. There might

be a student teacher who comes and helps the teacher for a few

months to learn how to teach. But the person who does most of

the work is the teacher. Sorry, I shouldn't have said that.

Teacher aides do a lot of work as well. The primary the person

who plans the lessons is the teacher. If you are at a

university or college, we would call that teacher a professor.

Now, some of you call me professor Bob and that would be

incorrect. Um I know in other languages like French means

teacher but in English, there is a distinction. So, I am a

teacher. Brent in the chat from American English with this guy

is a teacher. If Brent or I went and got our PHD and if we

went and taught at a university, we would then be

professor Bob and professor Brett. That's a nice ring to

it, doesn't it, Brett? By the way, I have no desire to do

that at this point in my life. I like what I'm doing now. The

place where you teach is called a classroom. I'm gonna speed up

maybe a bit here. I think some of these are quite familiar to

you. So, a classroom is a place where you teach. By the way,

one of the original classrooms was a tree. So, hundreds of

years ago, trees used to be classrooms. Um because if you

learned outside, it was a nice shady place to learn. So,

sometimes when I'm making a lesson under a tree, it makes

me smile because I feel like I'm an old-fashioned teacher

from 500 years ago teaching under a tree. If you are at a

university, you could go to a classroom, you might also call

it a lecture hall. So, when I was in university, some of my

classes were in small classrooms and some were in

lecture halls which were bigger rooms where more people could

sit and learn. You of course will have a desk. This we would

call a student's desk. There's also a teacher's desk at the

front of the room which is bigger. Um and there's all

different kinds of desks. Uh in Canadian classrooms. Um my

students don't like these kinds of desks where the seat is like

connected to the desk. Because some students by grade twelve

are quite tall. They're very big and it's hard to fit in a

desk when you're six foot two and in grade twelve. There be

probably a whiteboard or a chalkboard in the room. We have

more whiteboards than chalkboards now. Chalkboards

have kind of slowly been removed from classrooms over

the last 20 years and have been replaced with whiteboards. A

whiteboard is a little cleaner. You don't get chalk on your

hands when you use a whiteboard. But you might see a

whiteboard or blackboard in the room. By the way, even if the

blackboard is green, we still call it a blackboard. So, I

still have a classroom where I do have a blackboard at the

back and it's actually green but it's still called a

blackboard or chalkboard. You can just call it chalkboard

too. Uh and then of course you have whiteboard markers. So on

the far side of this image you can see whiteboard markers.

They are actually the exact same kind I use in my room.

Expo. And then you see that there is chalk. I like to use

different colors especially when I'm teaching French. It's

nice to write sentences in one color and then kind of uh teach

things about the sentence using another color. Very very handy

to use different colors. Uh to teach grammatical or grammar

concept when I'm teaching French. And then here's another

eraser. So just like the first eraser which is used to erase

pencil. This eraser can be used to erase uh whiteboard markers

or chalkboards. Or blackboards. And then there will probably be

a bulletin board in the room where students can hang their

work or where the teacher can hang some posters. And usually

um in my room I have students create different um they do

Different assignments where they create something visual

and then we will put that on the bulletin board for everyone

else to see. We do in the earlier classes we do things

like comic strips in French and then we put them on the

bulletin board. And we use of course either a push pin which

is the red thing here. We would call that a pushpin or

thumbtacks. I generally use push pins. I find they're

easier to take back out. Uh thumbtacks go in really nicely

but it's sometimes hard to get the thumbtack back out again.

And then there will of course be a projector and a screen.

The projector in this picture is on the ceiling and the

screen is way over there on the far wall. We also have in our

classrooms something called a smart board where you can write

on the smart board and it shows up on the computer through the

projector. A little bit hard to explain. I don't use my smart

board a lot because I do all of my annotations on my laptop

which I put onto the projector screen. I'll let see where

we're at. Last thing for this section, bookshelf. There might

be a bookcase or bookshelf in your classroom. Um so for me, I

have bookshelves that are full of French books because I teach

French. Um there's a few computer books on there but

they're really old. When you buy a textbook for a computer

class, uh within a few years, it's obsolete. The information

changes way too quickly. So, you might have a bookshelf or a

bookcase in your classroom. Oh, yes. Just finished talking

about what is in a classroom and we are now going to talk

about just a few odds and ends about school. So, one of those

would be textbooks. Some classes require that you have a

textbook. Most schools in Canada, when you are in school,

like if you're in grade one up to grade twelve, so in

elementary school, grade school, or high school, schools

provide the textbooks, okay? So you do not have to buy your

textbook. So when you go to math class in grade nine, on

the first day of school, the teacher will give you a

textbook. Will you go to university or college in

Canada, you have to buy your textbooks. So again, a textbook

is a book that has all of the information you need to learn

or most of it for that class. So, when you take a French

class with me, I give you a French textbook and it's like

grade nine French textbook. Actually, it's called Express

Nubian um for grade nine um but the textbook contains most of

what you will learn that semester in printed form and

again, in elementary schools and high schools in Canada the

teacher will give you a textbook. So um if you're in

university though it can be quite pricey. I know even 25

years ago when I was in university um it was like 400

or $500 a semester to buy textbooks. It was expensive.

Now during class the teacher will teach a lesson. So for me

a lesson is all of the things I have planned for one class.

There might be small lessons within the bigger lesson but

basically I make a lesson plan and then I teach the lesson

plan that day. So students will take um certain lessons from

me. An assignment is when I ask a student to do a certain type

of work and then give it to me when they're done. Okay? So a

lesson can have assignments in it. But sometimes my lesson I

don't require the students to give me anything. I'll say you

know Write in French, write what you did yesterday in five

sentences and then I'll have them read it out loud and I

don't take the paper from them and grade it. It's just a

little lesson to practice but an assignment would be if I

said, you know, write five paragraphs about something you

like doing and give it to me and then as a teacher, I will

grade it or I will correct it. In Canada, we say, I would, I

will mark it and then give it back. So, aren't always graded

but assignments are usually things that I would collect and

grade. Now, you can do assignments that aren't graded

but generally, if I say, you know, this assignment is due

tomorrow or here's an assignment, please finish this.

Um let's see here. Lockers. So, generally, our grade schools

and elementary schools don't have lockers. Students usually

just hang their book bag on a hook but in high school, you

usually have a locker and you usually have a combination lock

on your locker and you would put your books in your locker

and only take the books out that you need for the class you

are going to. The lockers are usually all in a hallway. So a

school is a fairly well they used to be fairly boring

buildings. So you know ten or 20 years ago a school was just

hallways and classrooms. And some bathrooms or washrooms.

Now um we have hallways and classrooms and we're starting

to add other spots to our school. Like our school has a

nice um meeting area that we call an atrium. Um of course we

have a gymnasium as well. But lockers if you get a locker it

will be in the hallway your locker will have a number on it

so on the first day of school you would have to find your

locker when I was in school I had to share a locker my school

didn't have enough lockers so everyone in the ninth grade had

to share a locker with someone else I ended up sharing it with

a good friend of mine so it wasn't a problem but it

certainly was crowded by the lockers so young kids will go

out for recess so during the day they will have breaks and

they are called recess so in Canada if you are in anywhere

from kindergarten grade one up to grade eight. You will have

recess during the day. Elementary schools have recess.

We don't call it recess um in high school though. We simply

call it lunch time. So my school in particular uh it's a

high school. Uh there are two classes in the morning and then

we have lunch time and then there are two classes in the

afternoon. There's a small break between the first two

classes. But for high school students we don't call it

recess. They don't go out for recess. Sometimes The grade

nine students on the first day of school, they might ask when

is recess and then I just say, oh, here we just have lunch

time. There's no recess. I try to answer that as nicely as

possible. You can just call it lunch. But we do certainly use

the word lunch time most often. Like, um oh, I have a meeting

at lunch time or can you come and work uh write your quiz at

lunch time? The one you missed last week? Lunchtime. I usually

just eat at lunch time. That's my favorite thing to do at

lunch time. Um kids will play on the playground. So

elementary schools and grade schools will have playgrounds

and they'll have lots of playground toys and things for

students to do. So at recess they will usually go outside

and play on the playground. Now I know from lessons in the past

people have asked do Canadian kids go outside for recess and

play on the playground in the middle of the winter. Yes. It

it if it's above minus 20° Celsius then kids will go

outside and play. If it's below minus fifteen, minus twenty and

windy, we will have indoor recess instead of outdoor

recess. But that's at grade schools. At high school, the

kids just do whatever they want at lunch time. Um so there's

three things that you might do in a classroom and each one is

slightly bigger than the other. A quiz is usually something

that's really simple. It's a test that takes about five to

ten minutes. It might only have five or ten questions on it. I

might say to my student, you have a small quiz tomorrow, you

need to know these twenty vocabulary words. Um a test is

definitely bigger. A test uh might take anywhere from 30

minutes to over an hour. Our classes are 70 minutes long.

They're an hour and 10 minutes long. So students might write a

test that takes half the class. It might take the whole class.

There might even be one or two students still writing their

test when we get to the end of class. And then at the end of

our semesters, we have what are called exams. We actually also

have them sometimes in the middle. You can have a midterm

exam. So, halfway through the school year or halfway through

the semester, you might have a midterm exam and of course, an

exam is a very large test that takes about two to 3 hours to

complete um and it's the short form for examination. So, an

examination, that's just too hard to say, isn't it? Exams a

lot easier. Students have exams at the end of their semester

and at the end of their school year. So, in Ontario, Canada,

students from grade seven or eight up have exams. Usually,

younger children don't have exams. And then of course, some

kids go to school on a school bus. A school bus in Canada

looks just like this. It is a big yellow bus. All of our

school buses are yellow. They have lots of lights on them.

When they stop to pick up kids, the red lights flash. The

little stops sign goes out and if you pass a school bus with

it's lights flashing and the stop sign out the police will

give you a an enormous ticket. I'm not sure how much it is but

hundreds of dollars um if you pass a school bus. It is do not

ever pass a school bus if the stop sign is out and the lights

are flashing. It's very dangerous for you. Dangerous

for the kids. Um and uh if you do it and get caught it's uh

it's a pretty big fine. You don't wanna do it. Uh by the

way, a little Fun fact, my grandfather was a farmer but he

also drove school bus. I was not aware of that until a few

years ago. There was a picture of my grandfather's farm taken

from an airplane and there was a school bus parked beside the

house and I was like, what's that? And they said, oh

grandpa, used to milk the cows and then he would do drive the

school bus and then he would come home and do all his farm

work and then he would go and do the run at the end of the

day. Lots of fun.