My School (3)

   I've just left school and I would like to tell you a few words about it. My school is not very big. It is quite a modern three-storeyed building. More than four nundred pupils study there. It is a specialised school famous for its high-quality education and strict discipline.

   When the pupils come to school they leave their coats in the cloakroom on the ground floor. The gym, the canteen, the library and workshops are also on the ground floor. We have two workshops: one for girls, where they learn to cook, to sew and to knit, and another for boys. Our gym is large and well equipped. On the first floor there is a large assembly hall. We have our meetings there, and on some holidays parties are held there. The principal's office, the computer class and the lan¬guage laboratory are also on the first floor. Physics, chemistry and biology laboratories are on the second floor.

   The classrooms for junior pupils are on the first floor, and for the seniors, on the second floor. In every classroom there are two or three rows of desks with the teacher's table in front. There is a blackboard and a bookcase. There are some pictures and maps on the walls. The language laboratory is equipped with tape-recorders for listening to English texts on tapes, a TV set and a video-player to watch teaching programmes.

   I went to school six days a week. Classes began at half past eight in the morning, but I usually came to school ten minutes earlier. Each lesson lasted forty minutes. After three or four lessons we had a thirty-minute break. During this break we went to the canteen to have lunch. Every day we had six lessons, and they were over at three o'clock in the afternoon. We usually had a lot of homework and it took me several hours to do it. Sometimes I had to stay up to write a compo¬sition, to prepare a report, to translate a newspaper article from English to Russian or to learn a poem by heart.

   After classes I usually didn't go home right away. We had some out-of-class activities. Our social and cultural life was well organised. For example, we had an orchestra, a choir, an arts club and an International Friendship Club. I was a member of the drama club.

   At school we had classes in Russian, literature, mathematics, biology, geography, physics, chemistry, English, history, computer programming. We also had music, physical education, arts and crafts.

   My favourite subject was English. I liked to learn new words, to dramatise texts and dialogues. I liked it when we discussed something interesting to us, when we were taught to debate, when we had small-group discussions or set up a role-play. But I wasn't very good at chemistry. I always failed to learn formulas and terms properly. Maybe our chemistry teacher was too serious, too academic. She was not imaginative enough and her lessons were a little bit dull. There was not enough excitement for us to get interested in the subject.

   I liked my class. I always felt at home there. Everybody was so friendly and easy to get along with. I was on good terms with my classmates and we often spent our free time together.

   I've just left school and I would like to tell you a few words about it. My school is not very big. It is quite a modern three-storeyed building. More than four nundred pupils study there. It is a specialised school famous for its high-quality education and strict discipline.