Last Tuesday the Western Region Fast-track Transformational Teacher Training (FTTT) programme held their first Best Practice Forum. The forum provides an opportunity for teachers from all of the kindergarten schools we are working with in the Western Region to come together to share the fantastic and innovative ways they have been implementing the programme.

The day was led by our Training and Relationships Manager, Godwin, who led the presentations with an infectious positivity.

Using Holy Child Kindergarten Centre of Excellence (Sabre’s 6^th school building) as a venue offered a bright, light and spacious setting. Teachers displayed their examples of Teaching and Learning Materials, behaviour management ideas and ways to preserve and store classroom resources (to name a few) around the room for everyone to look at.

A selection of teachers made presentations to the room, with each of them explaining what they had brought with them, how they made it, how they use it and what impact it has in the classroom.

It was also inspiring to see that, as part of some teacher presentations, they had taken videos using their smart phones to show the items being used in the classroom.

Some stand out best practice examples were hand crafted fruit and veg, made from papier mâché’, painted and then used as part of the ‘Market Centre’, where children can role play buying and selling, made by Naomi Koomson from Adiembra MA school.

Olivia Barbara Obu, from Kweikuma MA school, upcyled an old shoe rack to make a book shelf to store books from her ‘Library Centre’, as she was finding having them on the reading mats was causing them to be damaged. No paint was available, so Olivia instead used some coloured paper she found to decorate the shelves!

Olivia also used empty plastic food containers to store small Teaching and Learning Materials so that they would not get damaged in between use, and to make her classroom set-up more efficient as the resources were neatly stored away.

After a mid-morning refreshment break the second half of the day included many more excellent examples of Teaching and Learning Materials and behaviour management techniques. The day ended with a question and answer session and an opportunity for teachers to share their best moments from the FTTT programme so far.

Veronica Narteh, from Nusra Islamic school said “Through the self-registration every child now can identify his or her name everywhere and anywhere.”

When asked if the Best Practice Forum was useful, Naomi Koomson from Adiembra MA school said “The Best Practice Forum is very useful … we will learn a lot… and we will implement the things we find most attractive, and our children will also get the chance to play with all those things”