English Language Fellow Jennifer Phillips held a series of three workshops for primary school teachers at the Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Uganda. The workshops focused on ways to foster critical thinking skills in the classroom, and also discussed how teachers can develop professional learning communities amongst themselves.
Throughout the workshops, participants were able to grow as a group and reflect on and share ways to improve their teaching practice. The content focused specifically on developing an understanding of Bloom’s Taxonomy and being able to apply that in the classroom, as well as ways to increase student curiosity and reduce teacher talk time.
Teachers then signed up to give short presentations on how they had used these new strategies in their classrooms and how they incorporated critical thinking activities into their lessons. They reported feeling more confident in the classroom and also more motivated and empowered to start their own professional learning communities at their respective schools.