At School
Primary 3 · English
At School
Lesson 1 of 3
12 min
Let's begin
Keza sits down in her P3 classroom in Musanze. The teacher says three small words: Open your book.
Keza knows exactly what to do. Her hands move, and the book opens.
How did three little English words tell her hands what to do? Today you will learn the names of the things around you, and the words that ask somebody to do something with them.
Every thing in your classroom has an English name. These are the ones you will need almost every day:
Say these out loud, slowly:
a book a pencil a ruler a desk
an exercise book an eraser an orange
Now try saying a exercise book. Your mouth stumbles, doesn't it? That is why English changes a into an when the next word begins with the sound of a, e, i, o or u. The word an slides in easily.
So: a for most words, an before an a-e-i-o-u sound.
An instruction tells a person to do something. Let us take one apart very slowly:
Open your book.
That is the whole shape: action word + the thing. Once you can see the shape, you can build instructions all day long:
Notice one more thing. You do not say You open your book. An instruction speaks straight to the person in front of you, so it jumps in with the action word. It ends with a full stop (.)
open, close, sit, stand, look, listen, read, write, come, go, take, put, clean, give
Add the word please, and the same instruction becomes polite:
Please can stand at the front of the sentence, or wait at the end after a comma. Both are correct.
Put Do not in front of the action word. The short, friendly way to write it is Don't.
Tip
Stuck at the start of an instruction? Ask yourself one question: what is the body supposed to do?
Open… Close… Sit… Listen… Those are hands, legs and ears. That word goes first, and the thing follows it.
The action leads. The thing comes behind.
Do each one on your own first, then tap Show answer to check.
Write the instruction that asks a friend to shut the window.
Answer: Close the window. The action word Close comes first, then the thing.
Make this instruction polite: Give me a pencil.
Answer: Please give me a pencil. (Or: Give me a pencil, please.) Both are right.
Choose a or an: ___ ruler, ___ exercise book, ___ eraser, ___ desk.
Answer: a ruler, an exercise book, an eraser, a desk. The word an goes before the a-e-i-o-u sounds.
Mugisha is running between the desks. Tell him to stop, using Do not.
Answer: Do not run in the classroom. (Or: Don't run in the classroom.)
Which classroom thing do you draw a straight line with?
Answer: A ruler.
What you learned today
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