First teacher training in Rubavu

On Saturday 8 October, Pearson and Drakkar conducted the very first teacher training for primary teachers. The training took place in the district Rubavu, where 10 schools were selected to participate in the workshops. 72 teachers were present and experienced an interactive day where they learned about games, teaching methods and exercises based on the Pearson books.

The training was meant to train and inspire teachers to improve their lessons for English, social studies (SST), science and mathematics.
After a nice warm up where all the teachers from different schools got to know each other, they were asked to divide themselves in two groups: one for English and SST and the other for maths and science.

English/social science workshop

The teachers were asked to share their challenges at the beginning of the day. Many issues came up, like ‘lack of materials’, lack of training, insufficient knowledge of english and ‘large number of pupils in the classrooms’.

One important aspect of the training was to assist teachers in making optimal use of the teaching materials such as text books and teachers guides. It became clear that most teachers were not completely aware of the benefits of a teachers’ guide as most of them weren’t using them! Luckily they had lots of opportunities to ask questions and get to understand how to use the guides.

Maths/science workshop

The trainers also explained how to make use of lesson plans to make their work easier. But it was just as important that the teachers got ideas on how to improvise when there the teaching materials are not sufficient, and how to motivate their pupils. The training focused on sharing and practicing interactive teaching methods, such as games, exercises and role plays. Materials such as rulers and charts were also handed out to each school.

In the English/social science workshop, teachers even joined in a dance performance of the ‘Mango Tree’ song for teaching English:

“Shake shake the mango tree
Shake shake the mango tree
One yellow, one green
One for you, one for me
Shake shake the mango tree!”

The training took place at G.S Amahoro in Gisenyi and was conducted by Rwandan authors of our books, Emmanuel Murenzi and John Byamukama. All in all, teachers were very satisfied at the end of the day. They loved learning about group work, how to teach English in a song or game and how to plan their lessons in a 'SMART' way. Many of them commented: 'please come again!'