The teachers in the Western Region recently completed their final training workshop of the school year, Top Up Training 4. This one-day workshop introduced the teachers to the final themes that they will be using in their classrooms, Plants for KG1 and The Market for KG2. All classroom activities will be based around these themes for the final four weeks of the school term.

Monitoring of individual children in the classroom, with the use of the Pupil Achievement Record, continues to be a challenge for many of the teachers. The Top Up Training workshops, that usually take place in the middle of each term, provide the perfect platform to address such challenges in the classrooms. During Top Up Training 4 the teachers were given a recap on how to use the Pupil Achievement Record, which will be followed up on during classroom monitoring.

The student teachers have recently completed their year placements in the classrooms and have traveled back to Holy Child College of Education to sit their final exams. As a result, the teachers will now be running the programme without their support. A main part of this workshop discussed how the teachers would manage the class on their own, especially during Facilitated Play when there are many different activities happening simultaneously. All of the teachers left the training confident that they would be able to continue the implementation on their own and keep up the high standard that has been observed in the classrooms so far.

The final part of the day discussed the KG2 pupils’ transition into Primary School and how the teachers can support their students with this transition. To represent how the pupils must be feeling each of the teachers walked over the ‘wobbly bridge’. The teachers said that they felt nervous, excited and anxious as they attempted to walk over the bridge, many of the same feelings as the KG2 students will be feeling as they leave Kindergarten and move to Primary school. This was an excellent exercise to get the teachers thinking about ways that they can support the children as they make this transition.

Overall, this last workshop was very well attended and participation from all of the teachers was high. We look forward to monitoring the progress of the teachers over the last few weeks of this school term, before a very well deserved summer break!