Representing SELI in partnership with Transformation Education (TE), I thoroughly enjoyed 4 days in mid-April during which I conducted the writing aspect of two of TE’s early-education literacy teacher trainings.
The trainings took place in two different schools in Freetown, but the teachers came from a variety of schools that TE supports to develop skills in teaching early reading.
In addition to discussing what happens in the brain when we write and the developmental writing stages of beginning writers, the teachers spent time writing personal experiences in order to learn the writing process first hand. (In the first photo you see participants grouped according to stages in the process—sorry about the panoramic view distortion).
I think we all could see that an ESL and routine-based process writing class, low-stakes and frequently held, is an essential part of an early literacy program in our setting. Reading and writing activate each other. Learning to write our own thoughts must and can be taught, and doing it builds the same brain paths (although in opposite directions) as does learning to read.
