Developing Student Voices

We had a great time today. Ten teachers from five rural schools on the Freetown Peninsula and in the Koinadugu District participated in a full-day workshop on Developing Student Voices, offered through the Seli River Writing Project of the Sentinel English Language Institute in Sierra Leone. The workshop was partly needed because circumstances have changed staffing in the schools where SELI operates, and we all needed a reconnoitering after the extended "ebola break" this year.

All the teachers are facilitators of SELI Young Writers clubs in their schools, and basically, we spent the day with our students. Nothing could have been more exciting. At every step along the way, our ELL junior secondary students' writing formed a central focus.

We spent the morning analyzing and gaining an appreciation for their voices using SELI's analytic writing rubric; practicing getting good instructional conversation going during conferencing to enhance English language acquisition; examining how to model revision and what happens when we don't model it; and discussing which changes make teacher editing effective.

Our afternoon was spent learning about and practicing teaching research writing, contemporary poetry writing, and short story writing. We took a preference poll at the end, and found about an even balance in the number of teachers who were interested in introducing one of these three in their clubs. We can't wait to see the results!