Reading Sierra Leone

On May 10th, eight Reading Sierra Leone books were officially launched--hooray! You see here one of the eight.

To quote from the inside back cover, "Reading Sierra Leone is a collaborative initiative of PEN Sierra Leone and CODE, a Canadian NGO supporting development through education. The goal of Reading Sierra Leone is to produce locally written and illustrated books that engage children and invite them, through reading and writing, to think, to learn and to improve their lives."

The books are aimed at lower, middle, and upper primary reading levels and are part of a program providing huge numbers of books, as well as teacher training in reading instruction, to primary schools in Sierra Leone, beginning with schools in the eastern part of the country.

You can look through, and learn how to purchase, all the Reading Sierra Leone as well as the Reading Liberia books in this catalog. 

Sales will help finance a second round of locally-produced books under Reading Sierra Leone. Let's make this happen! (P.S.: We're told Reading Liberia is in its third round!)

Collaborating with Five Writing Lessons

The Sentinel English Language Institute's Five Writing Lesson program has so much in common with The Institute for Sierra Leone Languages (TISSL) that the two organizations are looking into how we might collaborate and maximize our efforts. Today I visited a Limba adult literacy class conducted by TISSL's Limba coordinator, Mr. Gibrilla Kamara. It was held in a Quonset-hut building of a municipal school. Here we show a photo taken of the class (which meets five times a week) at 6 pm, and another photo taken two hours later when the lighting was provided by class members who brought LED flashlights or mobile phones. This class is one of three Limba literacy classes offered by TISSL in the Freetown area. TISSL's aim is to develop readers (who also write), while SELI's aim is to develop writers (who also read).

Can't stop reading!

We gave out issue no. 3.1 of the Young Voices newsletter when we visited Young Writers clubs this week. These photos are from Lady Patricia Kabba Memorial Junior Secondary School in Goderich. We couldn't get anyone to stop reading and get on with their own writing until they'd finished the whole paper! 

Get your own copy here, and let us know how you like it. The Young Writers authors would like your feedback. Appropriate reading materials are SO needed in Sierra Leone! There is no doubt that education is in a dire state in Sierra Leone as you can see in this article, but when reading materials are appropriate and when reading materials are available, students everywhere in the world will do their best to read.

Reading Sierra Leone

Lε Wi Ɔl Lan ("Let's all learn!") aims to improve learning outcomes for girls and boys in Sierra Leone. One of the strategies is to train at least 40 teacher trainers and 160 teachers in teaching reading and writing by the end of the second year. Trained teachers will receive regular professional support. Lε Wi Ɔl Lan hopes to improve the reading and writing performance for students in class one to junior secondary school. A complementary project, Reading Sierra Leone, provides students and teachers access to a variety of high quality reading materials. During the first year, CODE Canada brought in more than 200,000 reading materials for the project while conducting workshops in partnership with PEN SL to train writers and illustrators to tell inspiring local stories. Eight books from these local stories have now been published (pssssst: the SELI director wrote one of them!) The launching will take place soon! Here's where you can get your catalog of the Liberian and Sierra Leonean titles.

Lε Wi Ɔl Lan is coordinated by the International Rescue Committee. CODE Canada leads the teacher-training components of the project, and CODE is also the lead for Reading Sierra Leone.

Young Voices 3.1

The four-page March 2013 issue of Young Voices newsletter is out!  Read here what members of Young Writers clubs in rural schools on the Freetown peninsula and in the Koinadugu District in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone have to say about things that have happened to them.

Seli River Writing Project

The photo on the left is from the SELI Young Writers workshop that meets at SELI twice a week. It has turned out to be a mix of junior and senior secondary students. Mr. Allieu Sheriff, a workshop facilitator from Services Junior Secondary, Wilberforce is doing content conferencing with students here. You also see a student doing self editing at Goderich Comprehensive Secondary School in Funima.

Would you like to know more about the aims we are working toward in the Seli River Writing Project? Many of them are brought out in this article in the February 2013 issue of TESOL International's SRIS Newsletter.

Tutors Needed in Sierra Leone Languages

On International Mother Language Day 2013 (February 21st), a meeting was held at SELI of tutors interested in teaching potential mother tongue authors to write in their own mother languages.  Here are the details:

The Sentinel English Language Institute (SELI) is resuming its Five Writing Lessons programme, in which five writing lessons are offered free of charge in each Sierra Leonean language. The students in this programme are educated adults who wish they could write stories or poems in their mother tongues but do not know the correct spelling.

SELI is seeking tutors for the Five Writing Lessons programme in all Sierra Leonean languages. If you feel that you are qualified to teach native speaking adults to write in your language and would like to participate in the Five Writing Lessons programme, please call SELI at 076 547540 or email jackie@seli.co . The students will already speak the language well; they just need to learn how to write it.

Five Writing Lessons supports mother tongue literature, whose importance is celebrated throughout the world every February 21st on International Mother Language Day. As a tutor in the Five Writing Lessons program, you will be doing a great service to your culture by enabling authors to write in your language. An honorarium will be paid to the successful tutors upon completion of the initial student interview and the five lessons.

Again, contact the Five Writing Lessons programme at 076 547540 or jackie@seli.co .

Conferencing at Sengbe Pieh

We have hopes that soon we will start seeing final drafts from the Young Writers club at Sengbe Pieh Memorial Secondary School in Hamilton, on the Freetown peninsula.

Many of the members of this club, such as the group doing content conferencing here, are senior secondary students. This ups the ante! We are setting higher standards for seniors in the Seli River Writing Project, as is appropriate for their abilities and academic needs.

Stay posted!

It's Getting There That's Hard!

The Seli River Writing Project operates Young Writers clubs only in rural areas now. Getting to schools in rural areas in Sierra Leone can be not only expensive, but alarming.

Here's a section of the road from Kabala to Dankawalie, that SELI managed to slide through at the end of October trying to get to, and back from, the writing club at Dankawalie Secondary School.  We were also trying to get to the community to talk with them about DSS's exciting new school library and what everyone's role will be.

Of course, we're not the only ones who use this road. Vehicles full of traders and their produce regularly get stuck trying to get to or from the weekly market in Dankawalie, either in sections like this, on makeshift "bridges," or up and down very uneven steep hills, or over and through large rock outcroppings. People get sick in villages along the road and need to be brought for care to Kabala. If you want to build something in the village, some of your building materials will need to be brought from Kabala. This is an agricultural area, and everyone would like to send crops to urban areas to sell--this is the only road going there. Children walk this road regularly, trying to get to schools. The many people who want to trade in Kono to the southeast, have to travel west along this road to Kabala and take another circuitous route around to Kono. How we all wish something could be done about THIS ROAD!

Make Your Voice Heard!

This student at the Ahmadiyya Muslim Agricultural Secondary School (AMASS) in Yogomaia, Kabala is reading her first draft aloud for feedback from her peers.

Her classmates listen carefully, pens poised as this boy's is to write comments or questions about the content in her piece.  Following this discussion, and armed with the questions that each student writes down for her, she will write an improved second or third draft.

SELI has encouraged the schools where there are Young Writers junior secondary clubs, to give girls the added support they need to attend. We were so glad to see girls made up 1/3 of the students in the meeting we attended at AMASS last week.  Families depend on teenage girls to take care of younger siblings and prepare food, so it is particularly difficult to include them in after school activities. Young Writers clubs improve students' English communication and thinking skills as well as their cultural awareness. We don't want to undermine the structure of the family, but we need to keep trying to get girls the benefits they deserve!

We're pleased, too, to hear that AMASS has just launched a school library, and that the Young Writers are the first approved borrowers! Long live the Young Writers and all who support them!