Free English Class! Topic: Back to School! ?‍??? (Lesson Only) - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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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.