SELI Young Writers in Primary School

While most of our SELI Young Writers clubs are located in junior secondary schools, we have been glad to see clubs in a few primary schools as well. The earlier the better, especially because English is a second language for students in Sierra Leone.

SDA Primary School in Samuel Town is one of these schools. The club welcomes members from class three to class six, and has been very productive. 

Here is a piece written this year by Marie Kanu, in class six. I know you’ll be as pleased for her as I was when I read it.

My First Topic

When I wrote my first topic in the Seli River Writing Project, it was not fine because I was not writing fine. I was just writing sm…sm…sm to fill up the paper. 

When I came for the teacher editing step my teacher, Ms Coker, said, “Marie, now read your work.” 

I was not able to read the words. My teacher said, “Marie, because you cannot read your work, I will not be able to edit it. Mind you spell words by their letter sounds, syllables and digraphs. You have just made one set of two letters and filled the paper with sm…sm…sm and so on. Now, take another piece of paper and try to write again what you want to say.”

I took another sheet of paper. I tried to write again and went through the process before coming to teacher editing again. This time, I was able to write better than the first one and I read it to the teacher and we did teacher editing. 

After that, my teacher sang a Krio song about me, saying,

 

“Marie dɔn kɔmɔt pan sm…sm…sm!”

 

She danced with the Krio song. We were all happy and I went to do the process again. I felt good because I was able to write a bit. 

I really appreciate the Seli River Writing Project! I thank God for writing better English now.