SELI Young Writers Club

The SELI Young Writers Club for JSS II (Form II) students now meets at the Sentinel English Language Institute in Tengbeh Town, from 11:30 am -12:30 pm, four days a week (Mon., Tues., Thurs., and Fri.), allowing students to reach their schools in time for the opening bell at 1:00 pm. As usual, this activity is being offered at no cost to the student. We hold our mini-lessons in a 415 sq ft palaver house first (shown here), and then move on to the classrooms to write! We've set up a display board for final drafts, and any member who has produced four final drafts (Whew! They produce 3-5 drafts per topic just to reach the final draft stage!) can choose her/his best to publish in the club's newsletter.

No one doubts the need for developing writing skills in our junior secondary school students. The clubs offer some children their first experience in a cooperative, collaborative instructional setting. It's unfortunate that the problem of facilities in the schools (see previous post) made it too difficult to carry out the clubs in the schools themselves. The presence of community activities such as clubs is vital if our schools are to succeed. The clubs which, decades ago, schools in Sierra Leone used to offer were not frivolous, but played a vital role in broadening and developing our children.

SELI Writing Clubs

Under the auspices of Sierra Leone's Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, SELI is running several writing clubs conducted as writing workshops, in selected junior secondary schools during the 2008-2009 school year. The two goals of the clubs are to improve the written communication skills of participating students, and to attract interest among language arts teachers in using process writing to teach English communication skills. Assessments of learning growth are matched to what we teach. The leader/facilitator for the clubs is SELI's director, whose teaching specialty is teaching English as a Second Language and who has substantial experience teaching writing in Sierra Leone.

In both schools where clubs are being offered during this term, a primary school fully occupies the classrooms during the mornings. The junior secondary school that occupies the compound in the afternoons is an entirely different entity from the primary school and also fully occupies the facility. Since the school day ends for the junior secondary schools at 6:00 pm, our clubs are held at 11:00 and 12:00 am, before school begins and during the time the primary school is in session. Clubs meet two times a week in classrooms provided by the participating schools (pictured here) at no cost to the student or to the school. Schools were selected according to need.

Our writing workshops operate on a set of beliefs about writing and learning:
• writing and reading are recursive activities--we go back and in and out and revise and re-see and re-think things
• our language and literacy develop best when we are carrying out real-life activities
• our backgrounds and experience shape the way we learn and can enrich the learning of those around us
• language and literacy learning is social, and workshops promote it because they are collaborative and supportive

We all need formative evaluation tools to improve instruction in the classroom. They're best when they're descriptive, so students can use them to improve, too. SELI has been consolidating the West African Examinations Council competency expectations for writing with ERB's WrAP rubric, and NWREL's Six Traits writing rubric. The result is the four-trait, five-point analytic SELI Writing Rubric, which we'll refine as we go.

English Lessons for Speakers of Other Languages

If your stay in Freetown, Sierra Leone is your first experience living in an English speaking country, you may need English lessons. We offer English lessons to speakers of other languages, having had many years' experience improving the language proficiency of adults from all parts of the world.

We first administer a placement test to assess your proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing English. Our instruction reflects the fact that English is a major language of international communication. Our lessons explore many countries, regions, and cultures. We feel that English is best learned when used for meaningful communication, in context. With the help of CD support we encourage the learning of natural, conversational, internationally-acceptable language. In addition, SELI has a 1,500-item library aimed at a variety of proficiency levels and reading interests with the intention of stimulating as much reading as possible in our students.