AKA Maputo faculty members receive training for their professional development

From 31 January, Junior School and Senior School teachers at the Aga Khan Academy Maputo have been receiving training for their professional development, which will continue till 2 February 2022.

For their first training session, the AKA Maputo’s Primary Years Programme (PYP) faculty members explored creative ways of teaching certain concepts to their students. Kung Fu Punctuation Practice was a teaching method that actively engaged the PYP teachers and provided some fun along the way. 

“We cannot wait to see this learning applied in the classrooms with our students,” said JS Principal Maike Silver.

SS teachers received first aid training from professionals in the medical field. During this session, the teachers learned how to perform CPR, use a defibrillator, perform the Heimlich maneuver, treat burns and allergies as well as deal with anaphylactic shock.  

“We are always learning at the Academy and this week was no different with teachers getting first aid training,” said SS English language and acquisition and humanities teacher Mark Wheatley. “A teacher’s job is first to keep the students safe and then to empower learning, and this first aid training is a way for us teachers to make sure students are always safe.”

Middle Years Programme (MYP) teachers will also have an online workshop on Teaching and Learning through the lens of Appraisal for Growth — Classroom Environment and Instruction. In this workshop, MYP teachers will look at the AKA Maputo’s teaching and learning policy and provide actual examples from the classroom that support it.

“The idea is to share and learn of multiple things that we can do to enhance our teaching and learning, keeping the focus on our students,” said MYP Coordinator Smita Gangola. “We will also focus on differentiation and, again, bring out and share what we do to ensure that different needs of students are met.”

Over the next two days, the Diploma Programme (DP) teachers will be exploring and designing DP assessment to ensure that students have a structured approach to learning in readiness for their final International Baccalaureate (IB) assessment tasks.

DP teachers will also participate in a workshop to deepen their understanding of reflection in the DP core and, in particular, in the extended essay (EE) — an independent, self-directed piece of research, finishing with a 4,000-word paper that is mandatory for all DP students. 

“Teachers will be preparing for the first formal reflection meeting with students, which is a crucial part of the EE and contributes to their overall grade,” said DP Coordinator Morag Makey. “This session is part of a workshop series to support EE supervisors to better understand their role so that they can support students during the crucial EE process."

Lastly, DP teachers will participate in a workshop that will be led by Theory of Knowledge (TOK) Coordinator Zvikomborero Katsande to strengthen their understanding of the TOK exhibition and to explore the prompts that students can use. "TOK is an important component of the IB DP that provides students with the opportunity to reflect on the nature of knowledge, and on how we know what we claim to know," Morag said. "This will allow teachers to help students make connections between their DP subjects and TOK. The workshop will be interactive, with teachers required to bring their own objects of significance to share with the group."