Writing by Hand for Learning and Memory

Does this super-engaged SELI Young Writers club look low-tech to you? Well, you might be surprised to learn that...

"Writing by hand beats typing for learning and memory

Yes, typing is usually much faster than writing by hand. But increasingly studies are finding deep brain benefits when we write out letters and words by hand. For kids, it can improve letter recognition and learning; and when adults take notes by hand it can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

 

Brain imaging studies suggest it has to do with the fine-tuned coordination required between motor and visual systems, which deeply engages the brain. Some artists even say writing by hand stokes their creativity. So if you're feeling stuck —  try jotting down your idea with pen and paper."

 

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/12/31/nx-s1-5243328/discoveries-mental-health-brains-neuroscience-2024

Whose Role Model are You?

 

In choosing what we want to do in life, our first criterion might not be gaining the admiration of those who are younger than we are. Funny, though—it happens. 

Sometimes we just take part in an activity we enjoy. We work hard at it when we see that it benefits us. That's what Damba F. Daramy did. Here she is gaining recognition for working hard at expressing herself in writing in the SELI Young Writers club at Dankawalie Secondary School over a period of two or more years. She is receiving a printed booklet of all the writing she worked so hard to produce.

And by doing so, Damba has become a role model. She has inspired the young newcomer to the school, also captured in this photo, to follow in her footsteps. We look forward to seeing this young girl also before the school assembly in a couple of years, being recognized for her achievement as a writer. And being someone else's role model, too!

Spreading the Word

 As schools with SELI Young Writers clubs begin each new academic year, some are faced with the need to enlist the help of more teachers willing to give of their extracurricular time. The Dankawalie Secondary School club this year welcomed English teacher Mr. Jawara who will be serving as a facilitator along with Mr. Kamara, since Mr. Sesay has left the school.

All organizations but especially schools need effective orientation mechanisms for new staff. New teachers must hit the ground running, and we need them running in the right direction—aligned with the school's (or in this case, club's) set of beliefs and pedagogies. This is particularly important when, as in SELI clubs, the expected outcomes of club attendance depend on following beliefs and pedagogies that differ from traditional rote learning practices.

SELI sees the club facilitators' time spent in the clubs largely as practical training. They become good writing teachers and acquire experience carrying out student-based instruction, which the MBSSE says it supports. For SELI to offer multi-day workshops for new facilitators with follow-up mentoring, which has been our go-to type of orientation, is not always feasible. A major reason is budget constraints, with clubs spread so widely across the country. 

For the very reason that the clubs are examples of student-based instruction, new facilitators learn by simply participating in the meetings. However, this can lead to cutting corners. To prevent that, I am looking into developing an orientation handbook for new club facilitators, or perhaps a recorded video presentation, that I could follow up with periodic in-person or WhatsApp video discussions with each new facilitator. Better yet: how many junior secondary schools, I wonder, would be willing to require all their new staff to participate in an orientation on teaching writing in the classroom?

Today's Reality

 

The most common method of instruction in many Sierra Leone schools being rote learning, SELI's Young Writers clubs continue to help develop the literacy skills of upper primary and junior secondary students. 

To master the Altogether-New task of writing their own thoughts, Young Writers club members work on a minimum of five personal experiences of their own choice through ESL-supported process-writing workshops, however long that takes them. When they have gone through all the stages of the writing process on their first personal experience, they receive a club button to pin on their uniforms and a typed copy of their piece.

Those who finish final drafts of at least five experiences receive copies of them in booklet form, in which pieces appear in their chosen order, with their own dedication and an about-the-author paragraph at the end. 

The tables of contents you see here are from booklets that appeared in May at SDA Primary School, Samuel Town (near Waterloo, Sierra Leone). Twenty-six experiences the authors can later convert to stories that would form the text for a children’s book—how’s that for supporting children’s book publishing in Sierra Leone? 

"The Club Plays a Great Role"

 I am getting messages from schools whose SELI Young Writers process-writing clubs were suspended when COVID-19 hit two years ago, telling me, "We really need this club back!"

When I ask why, they say "It helps the students improve greatly in their essay writing, and that plays a great role in their national exams." Hooray!

Of course, I am glad when school heads recognize the effect of what goes on in SELI Young Writers clubs. What needs to happen now is for school heads and English Language teachers to realize that the improvement they are seeing did not come about specifically because of the SELI Young Writers club, but because the club's writing instruction is centered around process writing. And it's all self-motivated writing. We do no testing at all.

I'm also pleased to hear school heads say that the club strengthens their teachers' written and oral communication skills. All good!

Now all we need is funding to make it happen! Every $10 counts!

Teachers Who Write

The Sentinel English Language Institute conducts professional development through its Leading Young Writers program, which trains teachers to be Young Writers club facilitators. Half our time together is spent writing in a workshop setting. The teachers enjoy sharing and perfecting their work as much as the students do.

We encourage teachers to continue writing after they return to their schools in our belief that doing so makes them better club facilitators. A few do continue. They share their work in club content conferencing groups and send it to me for teacher editing and/or typing along with the children's. I show them children's books I have published and we talk about ways available to us to publish in Sierra Leone. And how writing is a way of life for people who realize they are writers.

We were all saddened this week to hear of the death of Paul M. Conteh at UMC Heritage High School just outside Kabala in northern Sierra Leone. As one of these teacher/writers, he had been producing regularly since he began the Leading Young Writers program; I had just returned three pieces he had submitted to me. His colleagues, friends and family but especially the students who wrote with him will miss him greatly.

By way of contrast, today I received a text from a young urban police officer who was also for a number of years a Young Writers facilitator in the Northern Province. When I asked him how his new job was going, he replied, "I really thank you for encouraging me to write. It's just a continuation here." What a beautiful testimony to the view that by becoming an active writer one gains access to ongoing worldwide conversations, from anywhere.

Keep Those Kids Talking!

We made contact with seven SELI Young Writers clubs on our trip following the Seli River to Koinadugu and Karene Districts last week. All the facilitators were present in our training in May, 2018 and three of the clubs (in Lunsar, Yiraia and Gbenikoro) are new this year.

One common thread wound through all our discussions: facilitators can't minimize content conferences. If we're going to make second language learning happen, we have to keep those kids negotiating issues orally! We checked first that the topics they are choosing to write from are their own true personal experiences. Once that was settled, we put all our gusto into widening the space and time given to reading work aloud to peers, into listening to those stories read aloud and asking good content questions about them, into listening to the reply and amending the question, and so on.

I am finding that facilitators in established clubs may not even be aware that content conferencing has been a make-or-break factor in their success. We found one club's formerly lively content conferences have devolved into one-on-ones with a teacher, and students now refer to them as "correcting" sessions. Small wonder that the meeting lacked the vibrancy and productivity we have seen there before.

Another place in the writing process where students MUST talk is during teacher editing. If they are not reading their work aloud as you point out errors, how can you distinguish between students who left out full stops or commas because they have no sentence sense, and those who expressively pause or drop their voices where the punctuation should be, and simply need to be reminded?  How can you make paragraphing come from their own instincts if they are not switching gears orally as they read?

We did see inspiring work being done, and we're glad now that WhatsApp helps us keep in contact even with schools located out of mobile coverage areas.

Leading Young Writers Workshop 6

This is us, LYW6, all seventeen of us. We have spent the last three days together at SELI in Tengbeh Town, in Freetown, working on what process writing is, and how to use it in after-school SELI Young Writers clubs as well as in writing classes. You see us gathered here just before certificates were awarded.

There are teachers here sent by nine schools included in the Seli River Writing Project—schools located in Joe Town near Waterloo, Goderich, Lunsar, Kabala, Gbenikoro, Yiraia and Dankawalie.

For some, this was a refresher course; for others, it was a training for club facilitators needed to replace teachers who have moved on. And for three schools, it was an initial training to open a new club. It was marvelous having the experienced facilitators present! They shared their knowledge and learned new tricks.

We spent the three days working on writing theory, how to run clubs, English grammar and usage, and the elements of process writing that can be introduced one-by-one into writing classes without much fuss.

Part of each day was conducted like a process writing workshop, so the teachers could experience themselves what they would be asking their students to do. For our mini lessons each day, we used The SELI Wordbook. In the photo, you see a content conferencing group, listening to one person read his personal experience aloud as the others write questions they plan to ask him when he is finished.

Thank you to the SELI donors who made this training workshop possible, and to this wonderful group of teachers and their schools for appreciating the importance of writing!

The SELI Wordbook

We've come up with something new and exciting, that will soon be heading for our writing clubs.

The SELI Wordbook is a consumable, 26-page workbook produced by the Sentinel English Language Institute (SELI). It was written for Sierra Leoneans who are comfortable speaking Krio. It presents the sixty English words that have been found to most frequently beset junior secondary students when writing about topics of their choice, and it pairs these words with their borrowings in Krio. Students learn to articulate the differences in meaning and use, between the English and Krio word in each pair, and to improve their English use of these sixty common words.

The book is being sold for Le 10,000 (less than $2.) The minimal profit accrues to SELI, which is a nonprofit educational organization. Included are suggestions for teaching the book in class in ten-minute mini-lessons. This would be its ideal use; however, the book is also suitable for independent study. SELI hopes that use of The SELI Wordbook may contribute toward a more widespread awareness in Sierra Leone that the way a language is taught to native speakers differs from the methods used by teachers who effectively enable its acquisition by speakers of other languages.

It was hard for schools to operate smoothly with elections going on in the early part of this year, but we're looking forward to catching up now. Here's one way we're doing that.

We'll have a mixed group, which will be great to work with. We'll be training new facilitators from schools that have never had a club; we'll be refreshing experienced facilitators from schools that have had clubs for several years, during which we've made changes to our approach; we'll be training new facilitators from a school that has had an ongoing club for years; and we'll be retraining facilitators who never were active, from a school whose club has lapsed.

The Best Writing Teachers are Teachers Who Write

Leading Young Writers Workshop Part Two

Just a year ago, with the support of funds from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland, MI, SELI opened new SELI Young Writers clubs

in five rural primary schools in the Waterloo area, outside of Freetown.

Because we did this at a time when schools were trying to catch up after many months' being closed during the Ebola crisis, we were only able to provide a single day's training with the hope that our follow-up visits to the school could solve any problems they were having carrying out their workshops. We called it Leading Young Writers Workshop Part One, and we have great admiration for these teachers who forged ahead anyway.

Yesterday we held LYW Workshop Part Two, and it was a delightfully different group. They were no longer the slightly dazed but polite, brave learners from from last year but confident and outspoken process-writing teachers. Here they are doing self-editing on their own personal writing drafts we asked them to bring so we could carry out the editing process together—a stage that we had not had time to cover thoroughly in our first workshop.

We started the workshop asking for problems they were having in their clubs, and kept referring back to the list throughout the day, trying to work those through. When we asked whether they were seeing any benefit from the clubs, their enthusiasm nearly blew me away!

• The children have gained great confidence and skills in both reading and writing from reading their work aloud during conferencing.
• Any club facilitator who says a child who attends regularly is not improving, must not be taking them through all the stages. Every child who attends regularly, benefits.
• The children see themselves as authors: some even write creative work on their own now, and bring it to school to show the teachers.
• They have such self-confidence (boldness, it is called here)! When students are to conduct the morning assembly, it is the club members who always volunteer, and carry it out well.
• They communicate more: rather than sending someone to tell a teacher something, they will now write a note. They are much more willing to write.
• The club helps the teachers in their own writing tasks, with both skills and confidence.
• The club has changed how the teachers teach writing in the classroom. Even teachers who are not facilitators but only observe what is going on, now teach writing in class by telling students to draw on their past experiences for topics and by giving students choices of what to write on.
• The students in the club are more responsible in school, because of the club tasks that they perform and the understanding they have of management of the club.
• The club members are more able to read or answer questions written on the board during their regular classes than other students.

We have heard this before, but not so clearly explained and not from so many different angles. Maybe it is because their clubs started so recently that they are able to see the differences more starkly than club facilitators in a school that has had a club for several years. Or maybe it's because these are primary schools; we've always worked with junior secondary schools before.

Encouraging Writing Teachers to Write

Have you been looking for a writing group to join that will understand your cultural references to Sierra Leone or West Africa? If so, please come to the Seli River Writing Project Workshop!

Over the years, SELI has found that most teachers in Sierra Leone were never taught the writing process—rehearsal, drafting, getting feedback, revising, editing, and then producing a final draft. This is the reason that our LYW participants work on their own personal writing during workshops. We always hope that after the training the participants will not only be more prepared to teach writing, but also continue to write, themselves.

But there is an obstacle to continuing to write: the difficulty of finding a writing group to share drafts with. This stage, which we call conferencing at SELI, is one of the most enjoyable parts of writing both for our club members and for their teachers.

We therefore are providing a forum, or a writing group, which you and the teachers can join and use from any part of the world—because it’s online! Since Sierra Leone is moving (yes, slowly, but) steadily in the direction of getting and staying online—if not so commonly yet by computer, at least by mobile phone—most of our LYW teachers will have access to this forum.

Come and join us online at the Seli River Writing Project Workshop if you are a writer and have been looking for a writing group to join that will understand your cultural references to Sierra Leone or West Africa, or will understand mixed-cultural settings in which you have lived, or live now. Register—it’s free! We welcome anyone who is willing to give other writers helpful, constructive feedback and post their own in-progress writing. Whether you are experienced and published or unsure how to begin, you are welcome. No one ever outgrows the need for feedback. We’ll help each other write.