Turn your classrooms into creative environments – Teachers told

A lecturer at the Department of Basic Education, Dr. Joyce Esi Tawiah, has underscored the need for teachers to turn their classrooms into innovative environments to bring out the best in their students.

According to her, teachers should do away with the one-way method of teaching where students are forced to swallow the hook, line, and sinker approach of teaching which defeats the implementation of the new standard curriculum introduced by the Ghana Education Service.

“…students come to school with fount of knowledge, but when they (come to school) because of the one-way nature of teaching, we take this knowledge from them and we try to give them ours. If we make teaching and learning interactive, students will learn from teachers, teachers will learn from students” she said.

Dr. Tawiah was speaking at a training workshop for teachers in Adopted Low Performing Schools in the Central Region on the topic, “The Current Curriculum and its Effective Implementation”

The workshop was aimed at building the capacities of the teachers with the right knowledge to implement the Standard Based Curriculum.

The workshop was organised by the Centre for Teacher Professional Development and the Department of Business and Social Science Education of the University of Cape Coast.

Dr. Joyce Esi Tawiah urged teachers to embrace creative pedagogy to promote a creative teaching methodology and creative learning environment, as well as to inculcate in learners the passion for lifelong learning.

To implement creative pedagogy in the classroom, she explained the importance of Project-Based instruction to teachers to ensure their students were problem solvers.

“In their quest to solving problems, learners investigate, explore, research, and engage in small collaborative groups. This type of learning helps learners gain the skills and the motivation needed to succeed in the complex world” Dr. Tawiah added.

She mentioned Think-Pair-Share, Brainstorming/Game storming, Board Rotation, as well as Roll and Read, Write and Explain as some of the strategies for enacting Creative Pedagogy.

The Director of the Centre for Teacher Professional Development, Dr. Bernard Sekyi Acquah, in his welcome address, said the Departments in the College of Education Studies had adopted low-performing schools in the Cape Coast Metropolis to ensure students take their studies seriously to perform honorably in the Basic Education Certificate Examination.

According to him, a base was conducted by the College and the finding was that teachers in the Adopted Low Performing Schools were facing difficulties in implementing the Standard Based Curriculum.

Hence, the workshop was part of the measures taken by the College to deal with the challenges facing teachers.

The workshop was also attended by School Improvement Support Officers, Chief Monitors, as well as Headteachers.

The beneficiary schools were Effutu Mampong Basic School, St. Cyprian Anglican Basic School at Effutu, and Philip Quaicoo Boys Basic School in Cape Coast.

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