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Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 74 of the Listening Time Podcast.
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So in today's episode, we're going to talk about elementary school.
We'll talk a little bit about elementary school in the United States in general and I'll talk to you a little bit about my experience in elementary school.
In case you don't know, elementary school refers to grades one through six, usually in the us system.
So when you're six years old, you start to go to elementary school in first grade until you're about 11 or 12 years old when you're in sixth grade.
So this is elementary school and that's what we'll be talking about today.
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Okay, so we're going to talk about elementary school in the United States in general and my experience in elementary school.
Of course, I'm going to be talking about the public system in the US, the public school system, because I went to public schools when I was growing up.
So I can't talk much about private schools in the US because I never went to one.
So I'll talk a little bit about the public school system and just know that I went to elementary school a long time ago.
So it's probably a lot different now, but I'm sure some of the fundamentals are still the same and I'm sure that it will still be interesting for you to hear about my experience in elementary school.
So before elementary school, a lot of people go to preschool when they're about four years old.
This is the very, very first level of any type of school.
So before preschool, there isn't much you can do.
You're very young and you're probably not ready to be in a learning environment at that age yet.
But when you're four years old, sometimes you go to preschool, but you don't have to.
It depends on your parents.
I went to preschool and it was my first experience being alone, without my mom and dad, in another environment.
And to be honest, I was not ready for it.
I was miserable in preschool.
I was very, very shy and I didn't talk to anyone.
And I just hung out with my teacher whenever we had a recess break or something like that.
In English, when we say the word recess, we're talking about a break that you have during school, where the class stops and then you can go outside and eat a snack and maybe play a little bit.
But it's pretty short.
It's usually like 20 minutes or something like that.
So I remember in preschool, during my recess, I just hung out with my teacher the whole time because I was very shy and I didn't want to hang out with the other kids.
And it was a very hard time for me.
But that was preschool.
And then the next year I went to kindergarten.
So kindergarten is the level of school that many people go to when they're five years old.
And this is the level right before first grade, which is elementary school.
So in kindergarten you often go to the same school, the same physical building, as other kids who are in elementary school.
But kindergartners, the people who are in kindergarten, they're separated from the other kids.
So I remember when I was in kindergarten, I
We were in one small building that was part of the bigger elementary school building.
And we had our own space and none of the other kids could come into our space.
So we were separated as kindergartners.
And this is where we first learned a lot of the skills that we need for elementary school.
I think that a lot of kids already knew how to read during this time.
A lot of kids still can't read, of course.
Everyone starts at different times.
But a lot of kids knew how to read and knew how to do some basic things that we learn in school.
And so that was our first real experience having real school.
Preschool is very, very light and there isn't that much work to do and we have nap time and things like that.
In English, a nap just refers to sleeping in the middle of the day.
So we had nap time in preschool.
So you can see that it wasn't a real school environment like elementary school.
But kindergarten is very close to that environment.
You start to learn more, do a little more work.
You start to have to be a little more responsible.
But it's still not quite the same as first grade and real elementary school yet.
Then the next year, when you're about six years old, you can start first grade.
And this is the true introduction to elementary school.
So we think of elementary school as first grade through sixth grade usually.
That could be different in some schools, but in general a lot of elementary schools go from first grade to sixth grade.
So in elementary school, people usually just have one teacher each year.
So we don't have a teacher for each different subject that we learn.
We only have one teacher for all the different subjects each year.
So that means that elementary school teachers have to be able to teach all of these different subjects.
Math, English, reading, history, science, etc.
And so it can be a hard job, because you're not just an expert in one subject, you actually have to teach all of these different subjects.
Of course, it might not be that hard because it's a lower level, but still it definitely requires a lot of preparation and dedication to teach at this level, because you have to teach a lot of different things.
So we have one teacher for each school year.
However, some schools, when you're in sixth grade, They give you a few different classes with different teachers to prepare you for middle school, because starting in seventh grade, you go to middle school and then high school after that.
And in middle school and high school everyone has multiple teachers and you have to go to different classrooms and each subject is its own class.
And so some elementary schools wanna prepare the students for this type of environment.
And in my elementary school, we also did this.
So when I was in sixth grade, I had to go to three different classes with three different teachers who taught me different subjects.
And this was kind of like my introduction to that system.
So talking a little bit more about the structure of elementary school.
As I already mentioned, we have these short breaks in our study period.
And we call these breaks recess.
And of course, everyone looks forward to recess.
And we also have lunch breaks, which are longer than recess.
Because during the lunch break, we actually eat.
And so we have to have enough time to do that.
And then we also have lunch recess afterwards.
So after we eat, we can actually go outside and play.
And so lunchtime can be a lot longer than recess sometimes.
I can't remember exactly how long it was, but I think it was something like 50 minutes or something like that.
So it was significantly longer than recess.
And these were the fun periods during the day because you got the chance to hang out with your friends and play and eat and things like that.
And usually the school day in total is around six hours maybe.
For me, when I was in elementary school, it was about six hours.
But I know in some schools it could be more than that or it could be less than that.
But for me, I think six hours was my limit.
I'm glad that I didn't have to spend more time in school, because at that age it's very hard to just be sitting in the same spot for so many hours.
So I'm glad that it wasn't more.
And during the school day, like I mentioned, we learn a lot of different subjects.
We have the same teacher, but we switch between different subjects throughout the day.
So maybe we learn one subject for the first hour.
And then we stop that and then move on to the next subject and then the next one.
And so we do a lot of different subjects each day, but with the same teacher, as I mentioned.
And there are also things that we call assemblies in elementary school.
And we have these in middle school and high school as well.
An assembly is when the whole school gets together, usually in some big auditorium.
And we have some event and we do something special.
We have a lot of assemblies during elementary school.
And they're for different reasons.
They could be for different occasions.
But these assemblies interrupt our normal classes.
And we usually liked this because it meant that we could take a break from studying and we could do something else together.
And there are usually a lot of fun things that you do during assemblies.
It's even funner in high school, but in elementary school, assemblies could also be fun.
Like I said, they're for different occasions, different holidays, maybe things like that.
And there are also field trips in elementary school.
Field trips are these special trips that we take once in a while, where we leave the school campus and we go to some other place.
In order to learn about something or to just have fun.
So for example, I remember taking a field trip to SeaWorld.
SeaWorld is this park with a lot of aquatic animals like whales and dolphins and sea lions and things like that.
And of course, it's educational, but also just for fun, because it's very fun to go to a place like SeaWorld rather than just staying in your class all day.
So it's fun, but obviously during these field trips they usually want us to learn about different things.
And one other thing that's important to note is that many people in the US, when they're in elementary school and in middle school and high school, take the school bus to get to school.
This is different from the normal bus that you might take to get around the city.
A school bus is specifically for one school.
It's usually yellow and all of the kids that are on that bus.
They're the same people that are on that bus every day.
So you see the same exact people, because people need to take the school bus every day to go to school and come back home.
And each bus has a different number.
And it goes to different places, different neighborhoods.
So this is why the same people are on the same bus every day, because each bus goes to specific neighborhoods around the school.
And so I remember taking the school bus for many years when I was a kid.
And I didn't really like this, but I didn't have a choice, and so that was how I got to school and got home after school.
So let me talk specifically about some of the subjects that I learned in school.
Of course, we learned arithmetic in elementary school.
Arithmetic just refers to addition subtraction multiplication division, those basic operations that we have in math.
And I remember that we had to learn all of the multiplication tables and things like that.
We had to memorize that six times seven is 42.
And I remember memorizing all of these operations and all of the answers to these basic operations.
And we had a lot of quizzes and tests about this.
And they were timed.
So you had to do them as fast as possible.
And I remember that.
And actually it worked really well for me because nowadays I can still do those basic operations really easily in my head.
Right.
If someone asks me 12 times seven.
Right.
I'm able to do that in my head very quickly.
And for most of these, I just have them memorized.
So that actually helped me a lot.
But for other kids it might not have been as helpful and it might have been pretty stressful actually.
But I liked this when I was younger.
And we also spent some time learning spelling.
And this is interesting because in English, spelling is very hard for children.
As you probably know, in English, words aren't spelled the way that they sound.
So this means that you don't automatically know how to spell new words.
You have to learn the word first and then memorize the spelling. and then you can spell it.
So we had a lot of spelling tests in elementary school and I was always a very good speller, so this wasn't a problem for me, but some of the other kids were really bad at these spelling tests.
So you can see that spelling and writing in English can be harder than in other languages because of our sound system.
And we spent a lot of time on reading comprehension.
I remember reading a lot of short stories and then we had to answer questions about these stories.
And I never liked this and I don't think anybody likes this.
And, to be honest, I don't really think that this is that beneficial, because it doesn't really test our intelligence or really train us to become better readers, in my opinion.
I think that some people just get distracted when they're reading, and when they arrive at the questions they can't remember what they read anymore.
And they just have to go back and look at the text again.
And this isn't that fun.
And I don't think it's that useful.
And I don't think it really helps us improve a lot in this area.
But it's what we always do in school.
So I'm sure that the people that make us do it have some good reason to make us do these reading comprehension exercises.
And one other subject that I remember learning was history.
And in particular, when I was in school, we learned history about our state, about California.
And we learned a lot of history about the Native Americans, actually.
We learned about the different tribes in our area, but also in other parts of the U.S.
And we actually spent a lot of time learning about the Native Americans.
And it was pretty interesting for me.
I remember liking that topic that we learned about.
And I also remember learning ancient history.
I remember learning about ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
And I also thought that this was really fascinating as well.
So those were some of my favorite subjects to learn about in school.
And let me just mention some interesting things that we did, some highlights that I can remember from my time in elementary school.
One thing that I'll always remember is dissecting a squid.
So the squid is this animal in the water that has these arms and tentacles, kind of like an octopus, but not exactly.
This is something that a lot of people eat as well.
So I remember dissecting this squid and cutting its body open and examining the biology of this squid.
It was kind of gross, and so that's why I'll always remember this from elementary school.
And I also remember that we had this special subject that we learned about for a short time period, that was, stock markets.
So we actually learned about the stock market and we had the homework to choose one stock and we could even ask our parents to buy one share of that stock.
And then we learned how to track that stock in the newspaper every day.
So I remember that I bought one share of Disney and I remember checking it in the newspaper every day.
And this was kind of part of our homework.
And so that was kind of interesting as well.
And I remember that we had this event called Catillion.
This was a big dance that we had in sixth grade where we had to learn all of these formal dances.
And then we had this event where everybody dressed up and the boys danced with the girls, and it was very formal and everyone had to practice being polite, being a gentleman, for example.
And it was a really fun event.
It was the first dance event that we had in school.
And one other interesting thing that we did that I really, really liked was sixth grade camp.
This is when the whole sixth grade class goes on this trip for about five days to camp in some nature area.
But usually it's not camping in tents or things like that.
You actually stay in cabins and there are a lot of events and really fun activities like rock climbing and archery.
Archery is where you shoot arrows arrows from a bow.
So we had archery, we had rock climbing, we had hiking, we had a lot of cool activities and i loved sixth grade camp and it's a memory that i'll always have with me.
So that was another interesting thing that we did.
All right, why don't we stop there for today?
I hope this episode was interesting for you.
I hope you learned a little bit about the elementary school system in the US.
If the Listening Time podcast has become pretty easy for you, if it's pretty easy for you to understand me here, then make sure to sign up to become a Listening Time family member and you'll receive my advanced podcast episodes.
You'll receive two advanced episodes every month where I speak at normal speed.
So you have the chance to practice with real fast English.
So the link is in the episode description below this episode.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And of course, you also have the transcript available in the episode description.
So click on that if you need it.
And remember to give this podcast a five-star rating if you like it and share it with anyone else who might find it useful.
All right, thank you for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
