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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.