Over 200 upper grade teachers from primary schools across the island have benefited from a series of mathematics teachers’ workshop hosted by the Seprod Gup through its Butterkist brand.

The workshops were conducted in the parishes of St Catherine (Region 6), Manchester (Region 5), St Andrew (Region 1) and Portland (Region 2). The series was held in conjunction with the Ministry of Education through its Core Curriculum Unit for mathematics, which assisted in selecting the schools that should benefit from the workshops and also provided expert math specialists to conduct the sessions.

For the 2014 workshop series, the chosen topic was fractions, as the Core Curriculum Unit sought to ensure that teachers having a difficulty in dealing with the topic would be more equipped to convey the concept to their students. The workshop series offered several new strategies and exciting options to teach fractions to students in grades 4, 5 and 6.

The Butterkist Math Workshop Series, which was officially launched earlier this year by Education Minister Ronald Thwaites, coincides with the plans by the ministry to deploy 100 math specialists to primary schools for the 2014/15 academic year.

According to Minister Thwaites, this initiative forms part of the ongoing strategy by the ministry, which is geared towards improving the performance in mathematics at all levels of the education system.

Sales and marketing manager for the Seprod Group of Companies, Marcia Kitson-Walters noted that the workshop series is designed in conjunction with the Butterkist’s sponsorship of the 21st staging of the National Primary Schools’ Math Competition.

“The math competition focuses on the students, and the workshops target the teachers. We need all the stakeholders to be stimulated and engaged if we are to have a vibrant and successful primary education system. And the Seprod Group, through the Butterkist brand, is pleased to play a key role in this process,” said Kitson-Walters.

The teachers who attended the workshop series were thrilled. “It was awesome and engaging,” noted Wendy Forbes, a math resource teacher at Mount Pleasant Primary in Portland. She added that the workshop reinforced some of the concepts she already knew, but also allowed her to embrace new methods which she plans to take back to the classroom. “The creative methodologies which were used to enhance the teaching of fractions will definitely come in very handy in my classes.”

Garfield Bailey, grade six teacher at Stony Hill Primary and Junior High, said the workshop served as both an eye-opener and a refresher for him. “The strategies explored were engaging, creative and student-friendly, and I am positive my children will be interested in them”, he said. Bailey indicated that he hopes that Butterkist and other sponsors will work together to host more of these types of workshops on every topic in the primary curriculum.

Butterkist intends to make tapings of the workshops available on DVD so that the Ministry of Education may facilitate the exposure of teachers who did not attend the workshops to the new material covered.