INTRODUCTION TO THIS LESSON-NOTE-NURSERY-ONE-THIRD-TERM-ENGLISH-LANGUAGE-WEEK-1
I wrote this Lesson-Note-Nursery-One-Third-Term-English-Language-Week-1 based on the Nigerian National Early Childhood Education Curriculum. Particularly, I used the Pre-primary Teaching Schemes that the Education Resource Centre, Abuja developed.
However, this scheme is the same as those of the other 36 states’ education resource
development center. Nonetheless, I only crosschecked this topic in that of Lagos, Kano and FCT only. Regardless, this lesson note is suitable for use in any Nigerian school that adopts the National Curriculum.
THE COMPLETE LESSON OBJECTIVES
As with the rest of our notes, the primary focus of this lesson note is to present an
enriched content for the topic. This lesson notes, also like the rest, provides guide for teachers on how to deliver the content to attain the topic objectives. In this regard, I adopt the modern teaching style in English as NERDC specified in the Teachers’ Guide for the 9-Year Basic Education Curriculum for English Language.
Unlike most lesson notes you may find around which focuses majorly on cognition, I brought out and set objectives to cover other domains of education – affective and
psychomotor.
Lesson-Note-Nursery-One-Third-Term-English-language
Class: Nursery One
Term: Third
Week: 1
Subject: English Language: Speech and Structure
Topic: Match same letter Aa – Zz
Simple Greetings and Commands
1. OBJECTIVES
At the end of this lesson, the pupils should have attained the following:
Cognitive:
Pupils should be able to:
- identify same letter from Aa to Zz
- construct simple greetings and simple commands
- State the meaning of actions, commands and request
- say the meaning of greeting
- Say sit, stand, come, go, clap, start, stop, point at, laugh and smile in local dialect.
Psychomotor:
Pupils should be able to:
- Draw lines to join capital letters A – Z to the corresponding a – z
- Demonstrate cultural way of greeting in Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba culture
- Carry out given simple commands
Affective:
- State the reasons why they should greet
- Imbibe the culture of greeting
- Show obedience by following commands
PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE
The pupils had in the previous term learnt the following related topics:
- Identification of letters from Aa to Zz
- Tracing of letters of the alphabets
- Making vertical lines, horizontal lines and curves
- Greeting at home
- Taking simple instructions
INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS
- Alphabet models – plastic, metallic or cardboard cut-out
- Chalk/Maker (of different colours) and black/white board
- At least two alphabet charts of different colors
- Charts showing how to greet in different cultures
- Charts showing different actions
- Education Resource Centre. (2014). FCT Nursery Teaching Scheme. Abuja:
Education Resource Centre - Kano Education Resource Department. (2016). Pre-Primary Schemes of work.
Kano: Kano Education Resource Department. - Lagos State Ministry of Education. (2016). Early Childhood Care Education
Scheme (Mathematics). Lagos: Lagos State Ministry of Education.
PRESENTATION
The teacher delivers the lesson as in the following steps:
I. Introduction
Identification of the pupils’ previous knowledge
Teacher’s Role:
- The teacher asks the class to recite the alphabets, then he/she write some letters of the alphabets on board while the pupil identify them by their pronunciation. In conclusion of the revision on letters, the teacher asks whether each letter has two ways that we write each. Finally, s/he writes some capital and some letters for the pupils to identify.
- After identifying the pupils’ previous knowledge on letters, the teacher asks the pupils whether or not they greeted their parents as they woke up in the morning – and how they did that.
- The teacher should also ask the pupils if their parent asked them to do anything in the morning before coming to school and how their parent issued the instruction.
Pupil’s Role:
- The pupils shall recite the alphabets as they have learnt from the previous term.
- After the recitation of the alphabet, the pupils should respond if they greeted their parents in the morning and they should tell the teacher how they greeted their parents.
- Any pupil who carried out a simple order at home shall tell the rest of the class which member of their family issued the order, and what the order was.
Revision
After identifying the pupils’ previous knowledge, the teacher quickly revises the previous knowledge with the pupils. The teacher explains the following:
- We can get lots of interesting stories from storybooks – refer to First term week 2 -3 on Letter Work.
- We learn stories from storybooks by reading. Reading means to learn the story that is in a book.
- To be able to read stories from books, we must learn words. And to learn words, we must first learn letters.
- Letters are what we join to form words in storybooks – books that contain stories.
- There are twenty-six letters that we join to form words in storybooks – refer to last lesson in second term.
- Each of the twenty-six letters has two ways of writing them – one way is called capital letter and the other is small letter. The teacher gives many examples – could be in the form of interaction.
After this revision, the teacher may now continue with the rest of the lesson.
II. How to Teach Young Learner Matching of the same Letters of the Alphabets
Part 1: Explanation
- The teacher reiterates that there are twenty-six letters that we join to form words in storybooks in English Language. And also that there are two ways of writing each letter – one is capital letter and another is small letters.
- Then picking a letter at a time, the teacher writes or displays the capital letter (model) and then the corresponding small letter. The teacher – showing or pointing at each – reads in the style of “capital letter A” and “small letter a”.
NOTES
- I advise the teacher to use the format of small letter A that is commonly used in their textbooks.
- Take time to differentiate between small letter L and letter I. I also advise you to make this difference in writing. Refer to our lesson notes on Pre-Writing skills for guidance.
- Remember that some children have dyslexia. Dyslexia is a common learning disorder that make people unable to see the difference between some letter shapes. For example, it is common to see children writing b instead of d; and q instead of p. Special needs, requires special care. Do not fault the child and/or shout at him/her. We will make a post to that effect soon. For the meantime, you should ask people for how to handle such case.
- The teacher repeats step (2) above for letters B and b through Z and z.
- Once the teacher has explained capital and small letters Aa – Zz, s/he arranges them on the board. Thereafter, s/he leads the pupils to read “capital letter A, small letter a; capital letter B and small letter b; capital C and small letter c; etc.”
NOTE:
- Kindly note that the teacher does not necessarily has to teach the entire capital and small letters Aa to Zz in a day.
- Move at the pace of each child. Since English and Mathematics occur every day in most schools’ timetable; you can spread this lesson across the days.
- You should do the general reading after the majority (75%) of the pupils are able to identify capital and small letters within the range for the general reading.
Part 2: Activity
After the several readings, and after the pupils are able to read Aa – Zz; the teacher leads the pupils through the following activities:
- From the instructional materials for this class, the teacher displays or writes capital letters and their corresponding small letters. Then s/he points at each letter and asks the pupils – a volunteering pupil – to name it. After a pupil names the letter, the teacher asks another pupil to point at the corresponding small letter. The teacher does this serially from A to Z; then in reverse from Z to A; and finally, randomly.
- Alternatively, or/and in addition, the teacher may name a letter, asks a pupil to point at the capital letter and another pupil to point at the small letter. The teacher may also do this serially, in reverse and randomly.
- Succeeding the oral matching above, the teacher writes the both capital and small letters on the board – vertically i.e. capital letters at the left and capital letters at the right. Or horizontally i.e. capital letters up and small letters down. Then s/he picks the first capital letter and with the pupils, identifies the corresponding small letter. Then the teacher draws a line to join both as I show in the picture below

- The teacher does this for a few letters and then invites volunteering pupils to come up to the board and join a given capital letter to the small letter.
Tips
- The teacher may first write the capital and small letters in sequential order at first. Then later, mix the letters up. I also recommend the teacher uses different colour markers/chalks to draw the matching lines – kids love colours.
- The teacher can deliberately mismatch letters and let the pupil make their observation.
NOTE:
Since most private schools split Letter Work and the Simple Commands into subsidiaries of the Nursery English Language, I shall end this lesson on the Letter Work for this week here. We shall publish a separate Lesson note on the Simple Command topic for this week.
Consequently, we shall now continue to the evaluation and conclusion phase of this lesson on letter work.
Evaluation
Before the teacher concludes the lesson, s/he evaluates the pupils on the lesson objectives for the week’s Letter Work Topic. The teacher does this both orally and through shading and matching activities.
Oral: Identifying letters Aa – Zz
The teacher calls each child and asks him/her the following questions:
- How is this letter pronounced – also the same as what is the name of this letter – or what letter is this? While asking, the teacher points at the letter:

NOTE: The pupils should answer in the format: Capital letter A or small letter a
- b is small letter B and d is small letter for D. What is the difference between b and d?
Correct Answer: b faces right and d faces left.
Shading and Matching Exercises
(get our Nursery One Workbook)
Conclusion
The teacher concludes the lesson by recording pupils’ performance and if necessary, providing feedback to the parents for needed home assistance
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