Before the start of the new school term in January the Fast-Track Transformational Teacher Training (FTTT) team in the Western Region were busily preparing for the first training workshop of 2016. A three-day Training of Trainers (ToT) workshop was held with the training team, made up of Holy Child lecturers and teachers from Amenano Model Kindergarten who have already completed their two years on the FTTT programme. This workshop introduced the training team to the content that they would be delivering to the teachers and gave them plenty of opportunity to practice their delivery.

The two day Top Up Training (TUT) began the day before the new school term started and there was excellent attendance from all teachers, head teachers and Ghana Education Service officers. The workshop was held at Gethesamane School, one of the schools participating on the FTTT programme, and provided plenty of space for all workshop activities.

We were thrilled to have the Shama Director of Education, Charles Ngumah, attend one day of the training, where he delivered a motivational speech to the participants and praised all of their hard work.

The TUT workshop introduced the participants to the new themes they will using in their classrooms for the next four weeks, Animals for KG1 and My School for KG2, as well as how to fill in the Pupil Achievement Record, which tracks the progress of individual children, and the mathematical skills needed in kindergarten.

At the end of the workshop the teachers had the opportunity to prepare all of the Teaching and Learning Materials that they will need to deliver week 1 of the new theme as well as some new mathematics resources to support their teaching.

The teachers were very excited to get back to their classrooms to begin implementing all of the new material that was delivered to them and the FTTT team are looking forward to visiting their classrooms over the next few weeks to see how they are getting on.