Last week the Fast-track Transformational Teacher Training team in the Western Region held a Training of Trainers  workshop to prepare the trainers for their delivery of the third Intensive Training Workshop (ITW3). For this training there are two groups of trainers, one of which will deliver to the student teachers and the other to the practising teachers, head teachers and Ghana Education Service officers.

One key area of this training is how teachers distinguish children’s varying levels of achievement when using the Pupil Achievement Record (PAR). Although this will only be delivered to the practising teachers in the training, as this area will be taught to the students teachers by the teachers in the classroom, all trainers participated in this key piece of training so that they all have a solid understanding of all areas of the programme.

Before the trainers can effectively help teachers to understand how to assess children’s achievement levels, they too must go through the process of assessing children’s achievement levels themselves. They were provided with this opportunity during the Training of Trainers  workshop through a simulated activity, which was great fun as well as a valuable learning experience. Our trusty Western Region Sabre drivers, Salifu and Ekow, and one of the teacher trainers from Amenano,  Ruth, acted as children while Bibi, another Amenano teacher trainer, acted as their teachers during a table top activity. The ‘children’, facilitated by their teacher, carried out an activity that demonstrated their understanding of the concept of size. Each ‘child’ showed varying levels of understanding and it was up to the trainers observing the demonstration to figure out which child was developing the skill, which had achieved and which had moved beyond and showed a deeper understanding.

This simulation activity was also carried out in the centres where the trainers had to observe to what level the children (this time played by Felix and Kaizer from our Sabre Team) were able to interact with each other, an important psycho-social skill that is monitored by the Pupil Achievement Record.

As well as being fun, the activity generated a lot of useful discussion about how to assess children using the Pupil Achievement Record. Learning in an active and practical way has given each of the trainers a firm understanding of all the concepts they will be delivering to the teachers, and we are confident that the teachers will have an equally good time at ITW3 in May.

Here are some photos of the trainers enjoying role playing and observing different activities during the workshop.