This year got off to a busy start for our teams with the second Training of Trainers workshop as part of our Transformational Teacher Training project in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The workshop brought together 22 trainers from four districts in preparation for the second Intensive Training workshop.

Throughout the training delivery, group work, discussions, demonstrations and questioning, were used to engage the trainers.

The workshop included a focus on literacy and how teachers can develop children’s early literacy skills and strategies to support such development. Some key strategies discussed included the use of ‘show and tell’ and auditory discrimination games to help develop the oral language, and build the vocabulary and confidence of learners. The auditory discrimination games particularly will help learners to discriminate between sounds in their environment to aid pre-reading and pre-writing activities in the classroom.

Strategies to support children’s development of mathematical skills and deepen their understanding of numerical concepts and development of flexible thinking skills were also covered.

For assessment, trainers were guided on how to assess learners using observation and tools such as portfolios*. Trainers have also been equipped with information on how teachers and head teachers can assess their own performance in implementing the play-based approach using the Teacher Monitoring Checklist and Head Teacher Monitoring Tool respectively.

One trainer expressed her understanding of portfolio* assessment as follows:

‘’Portfolios are a fantastic way to visually measure children’s progress… it is not just about collecting children’s work to make the classroom beautiful, but from time to time, you bring out their work and together with the child discuss the progress s/he is making…this can encourage the child to make more progress and also give you the teacher guidance on where to focus on developing the child’’ Patricia Nyampong, KG Coordinator, Akwapim North District.

The Training of Trainer workshop ended with participants practising the delivery of the training content in groups with feedback from Sabre’s training team. Assessment was one area that trainers had challenges presenting so the Sabre training team will continue to provide guidance and support to the trainers during the Intensive Training Workshop two.

This project is funded with UK aid from the British people and Echidna Giving.