School Vocabulary in Arabic: Classroom Objects and Places

01Name the places

Here fasl means classroom. It can mean other things, including a school term or a chapter, in other contexts. A school contains classrooms, while a library is a place for books.

These forms show tanween for study. At a pause, madrasatun becomes madrasa, faslun becomes fasl and maktabatun becomes maktaba.

02Put three learning tools together

Use kitab for a book and daftar for a notebook. A qalam is a pen in our examples. Keep the object and meaning together instead of memorising three English labels without their Arabic forms.

03Distinguish the desk from the library

Maktab means desk here; it can also mean office. Compare it with maktaba, library. The final taa marbuta is part of a different word, so it changes more than the object’s grammatical gender.

A desk is maktabun, while a library is maktabatun. Read to the end before choosing. Kursiyyun has a doubled y, shown by shaddah.

04Add the board and bag

Sabbura is a classroom board. Keep the doubled b in its pronunciation. Haqiba means bag; a school bag can be called حَقِيبَةٌ مَدْرَسِيَّةٌ (haqibatun madrasiyyatun).

Sabbura and haqiba are feminine nouns, so this is hadhihi when pointing to one of them.

05Say where a notebook is

The notebook is the thing being located; ala almaktabi tells us where it is. The desk has the genitive ending i after ala, on.

Choose one real object, name it, then add its location. You can replace the notebook with the book: الْكِتَابُ عَلَى الْمَكْتَبِ.

Next, read the short classroom paragraph to meet familiar words in a connected text. The classroom instructions guide adds actions such as read and write.