Description

I wrote this Lesson-Note-Nursery-One-Third-Term-Mathematics-Week-3 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 centre. 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.

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, provide guide for teachers on how to deliver the content to attain the topic objectives. In this regard, I adopt the modern teaching style in Mathematics as NERDC specified

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. This is to ensure a balanced learning experience for the learners. For as Dr Emmanuel Atanda of the Faculty of Education, University of Ilorin wrote – in his Curriculum Development Study Guide for students in Postgraduate programme in Education – no student can be said to have learned anything if the three domains of educational objectives are not taken into consideration.

Leading Guide to Adapting this Lesson Note

I wrote this lesson note in outline of standard lesson plans. However, I advise teachers that want to use this notes for official purpose – i.e. to create their lesson plans which they will submit to their supervisors – to follow this guideline to writing standard lesson plan.

REMARK: If you find the terms, lesson plan and lesson notes confusing, quickly read this article on their differences.

My Note to Nursery One Mathematics Teacher

The teacher to deliver this lesson must understand that teaching numeracy at the early age entails much more than rote memorization and singing/demonstrating rhymes. Yes, these are effective tool for teaching the pupils how to remember what you have taught them. But much more, the question of numeracy – much as all of the topics at this level – serves as the foundation for the pupils’ progress in the subject in future academic engagements.

Why many adults have Mathematics anxiety

After having taught Mathematics at pre-primary, primary, secondary as well as tertiary level; I can categorically say that the majority of the numerous issues that students have in Mathematics is due to poor foundation.

A common point that most early years’ teachers miss in teaching numeration and notation is the aspect of the concept of numerical values. Any Mathematics Teacher in higher classes starting from Primary 4 upward will attest to the fact that majority of the learners finds Number Bases difficult due to their lack of understanding the concept of values of numbers. Even now, you can take the percentage of the primary level learners upward that truly understands the concept of value of numbers above 10. A simple question to test this is: Why do we write 10 and 1 and 0?

My Suggestion

Despite that many early years’ teachers are coming to understand this and consequently adjusting the focus of their classes, more are yet to. Consequently, you should not only measure the success of your class by how your Nursery One pupils are able to recite and perhaps identify and write numbers 1 – 500. You should also evaluate to see how many of them truly understands the concept of the values of the numbers. It is in this regard that I urge you to also focus on the affective objective of this lesson.