The quickest way to explain a lesson note is to write one. So this walks a single real week: Basic 4 Mathematics, the first week of term, place value up to 100,000. Every code and every curriculum line below is the real one. By the end the note is finished and ready to hand in, and you will have been through the six steps a lesson note is made of.

Three words first, because mixing them up is what makes the document confusing. The lesson note is the whole week's work, and it is what you hand in. A lesson is one day inside it, and the header counts them in a field written as 1 of 2. A period is a slot on the timetable, and one lesson can run as a single 60-minute block or across two 30-minute periods, so a week can hold more periods than lessons.

The first two get decided before you write anything, and most teachers decide them by accident.

1. Ask how many headers the week needs

For Basic 4 Mathematics, one. All five lessons share a single header block, and under it sits a grid with the days down the left and the three phases across, so the whole week takes one header and one signature. It may run onto a second sheet when you print it, which changes nothing.

When every lesson needs its own header

English is the exception. It runs six strands at once and all six are live every week, so each takes a day of its own: Oral Language on Monday, Reading on Tuesday, Grammar on Wednesday, Composition Writing on Thursday, and Friday carrying both Writing Conventions and Extensive Reading. Six strands into five days. Each of those lessons sits in a different part of the curriculum, so each one carries its own header, its own indicator and its own reference, and the week runs to five headers.

Sequencing is what decides this. Ghanaian Language also has six strands at Basic 4 and still takes one header a week, because it works through them in blocks: three weeks on Oral Reading, two on Reading, one on Writing, and so on to Extensive Reading in week 12.

2. Take the week's indicators from the curriculum

Our week sits in the Number strand, sub-strand Counting, Representation and Cardinality, under content standard B4.1.1.1, "Demonstrate an understanding of quantities and place value for multi-digit whole numerals up to 100,000."

That standard carries four indicators:

• B4.1.1.1.1 Model number quantities, place value for multi-digit using graph sheets or multi-base materials up to 100,000
• B4.1.1.1.2 Read and write numbers in figures and in words up to 100,000
• B4.1.1.1.3 Identify numbers in different positions around a given number in a number chart
• B4.1.1.1.4 Compare and order whole numbers up to 100,000 and represent comparisons using the symbols <, = and >

Why two, and not one per lesson

Week 1 takes the first two. Common advice says to plan one indicator per lesson, and that advice breaks in almost every subject. Basic 4 Mathematics holds 71 indicators for the year and Basic 4 English holds 131, so both run several a week. Basic 4 History holds 11, which is closer to one indicator every three weeks. Basic 4 Computing holds 27 and can spend six straight weeks inside a single content standard. The number your week carries falls out of the subject, and working it out once for the whole term beats guessing it every Sunday. The counting is laid out in how to write a scheme of work.

3. Fill the header once

When the week's lessons share a header, it is written once and governs all five days. Ours carries subject and class, week ending and class size, the strand and sub-strand, the content standard and both indicators, the performance indicator as a "learners can" sentence, the core competencies, the teaching and learning resources, and the reference down to the curriculum page.

Two fields are the ones most often left thin. The reference needs the page on it, as "Mathematics Curriculum Pg. 2", so the vetter can turn to it. And the Lesson field counts how many lessons the indicator runs across, written as 1 of 2, so it tracks the indicator's span and leaves the day to the row it sits on.

Filled in for our week, the header reads:

Every field, one at a time, with a completed week to compare against, lives on the NaCCA lesson plan template.

4. Write Monday

Now the part that stops people. Three phases, and the question of how much to put in each.

Starter

Keep it to a line or two. It wakes the class up and finds out what they already know. For our Monday: play a show-me game with numbers up to ten, teacher calls a number, learners hold up that many fingers. Then share the indicator for the day.

NaCCA writes it that short on purpose. Its own Teacher Resource Packs give the Starter one instruction. The Basic 7 Science sample opens its whole lesson with a single line: ask learners in groups to brainstorm the meaning of electronics by watching videos or pictures of electronic components, then take feedback.

Main

Where the indicator gets taught. For Monday: learners model number quantities up to 100,000 using graph sheets and multi-base materials, working from a stated key, where a cube is 100 units, a rod 1,000, a flat 10,000 and a block 100,000, then modelling 32,300 with the materials in front of them.

Write it as things learners do, one action to a line. NaCCA's samples run four to six numbered activities, each opening on a verb, and the grammatical subject is almost always the learner or a short instruction to you: ask learners to, guide learners in groups to, put learners into groups to.

Circulating term packs carry more than that, spelling the procedure out inside the cell the way our Monday does with the base-ten key, and those notes get signed week after week. Both shapes clear vetting. The Main that gets sent back is the one written as a script of what the teacher will say, with definitions copied out to be read aloud, because it tells the vetter what you will say and never what the learners will do.

Reflection

Back to short. Ask what was learnt today, recap the day's idea, and give them one thing that carries it home. For Monday: learners model a number quantity written on the board.

5. Write the rest of the week

Tuesday to Friday

Tuesday stays on indicator one and moves from blocks to graph paper, shading 12,500 square by square. Wednesday crosses to indicator two, reading figures aloud for learners to write in figures and in words. Thursday takes the expanded form, 14,031 as 10,000 + 4,000 + 30 + 1. Friday puts a number chart on the board with multiples of 500 between 10,000 and 50,000, and has learners identify numbers in different positions around a given number.

Where the assessment goes

It sits inside the Main, at the end, under its own label, and it does not need to be on every day. In our week it lands on Wednesday alone: a place-value wheel game where learners throw pebbles onto a number wheel, read which place-value ring each one lands in, and say what number that makes. The other four days close on their Reflection. Put the check where the learning has gone far enough to be worth checking.

NaCCA's packs write those tasks as commands. From the Basic 7 Science sample: distinguish between LED and diode; write down the colours of the resistor; describe how electronic components are arranged in a circuit and support the description with a diagram. Numbered, two to four of them, each one a thing the learner produces.

6. Read it back before you print

The week is written. This is the pass that decides whether it comes back.

Start with the codes

This is where our week has a problem. The header declares B4.1.1.1.1 and B4.1.1.1.2. Read Friday's activity back against the curriculum and it is almost word for word B4.1.1.1.3, identify numbers in different positions around a given number in a number chart, an indicator the header never mentions. The week teaches something it does not declare.

Nothing sends more notes back than a code that fails to resolve, and it hides well, because catching it means reading the activities against the curriculum instead of against the header. Either Friday changes, or the header does.

Then four more, quickly

• The competencies are the six. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Communication and Collaboration, Creativity and Innovation, Cultural Identity and Global Citizenship, Digital Literacy, Personal Development and Leadership. The pack this week comes from lists "Problem Solving skills; Critical Thinking; Justification of Ideas". That splits one competency, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, into two. And Justification of Ideas is a real NaCCA term from the wrong column: it is a subject specific practice for this strand, which the curriculum lists separately from the competencies. The six competencies covers how to cite them.
• The Reflection changes day to day. In the English week from the same pack, one set of three questions appears word for word on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Four days reflecting on nothing in particular tells the vetter the reflection was never written for those lessons.
• The reference carries a page number. An English week with five headers cites four or five different curriculum pages, one per strand, because each lesson sits somewhere else in the document.
• The sign-off block is on the page. Name, signature, date and a remarks line. The printed lesson note book has it built in and typed templates routinely drop it, which quietly removes the one part of the page the vetter has to write on.

For the rest of what a headteacher works down when the note reaches them, getting notes through vetting has the full list, including the GES directive that says your notes may be typed.

The finished week

Here is everything above on one page, with Friday's indicator added to the header so the codes match what the week actually teaches. This is the real format, rendered by the same component that prints a note in teache, so nothing here is a mock-up of the document.

That is the whole job

Six steps. How many headers the week needs, which indicators it carries, the header itself, Monday's three phases, the four days after it, and the read-back against the codes. Everything else is filling in.

Plenty of teachers start from a downloaded term pack, and that is a reasonable place to start. The pack this week came from is the work of people who know the format. It also contains a competency that does not exist, a reflection pasted across four days, and a Friday that teaches an indicator its own header never declares. Your name goes at the bottom of the page, so step six is yours either way.

teache builds the week from the seeded NaCCA curriculum, so the codes resolve against the indicators you picked, the competencies come from the six, and the sign-off block is already printed. Start with one week.