Thank you!

 In wishing everyone a happy new year, I want especially to thank a very special anonymous donor for supporting SELI’s writing programs last month. Thank you so much for your generosity! That was a boost we needed.  

You see here some of the students in a SELI Young Writers club at the SDA Primary School in Samuel Town, on the rural Freetown Peninsula in Sierra Leone. I have just had a wonderful time typing up forty-two final drafts of the writing pieces these class 5 and 6 students have completed, and they tell me they have more to send me!

I will be returning these final copies along with the 3-4 revised drafts and conferencing notes attached to each one. Each person in the club is trying to complete at least five writing pieces to earn a club booklet of their work (and, as a side benefit, be better prepared for exams and promotions facing them at the end of the school year 👍.) 

I do enjoy reading their work. All of them are putting true personal experiences on paper for the first time. The emotional incidences playing in their heads as they write, matter. What will the effect be on the reader if they put this first, or if they don’t mention that? Every writer reading this knows that such questions don't go away as you advance; they stay with you and make you a better writer. 

For giving these children the chance to learn how to write, we all thank you! 👏

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

Can't Wait to Continue Storytelling

 I'm making plans for library services for the SELI library. 

I journaled starting out not just reading books aloud but doing storytelling as librarian at the American International School of Freetown a few (😆) years ago. I'll definitely work this into my plans at SELI.

Journal, April 1993: 

I'm trying to learn to become a storyteller (without a book).  Two weeks ago in my Library Fun club I told the story of Beowulf—the first epic poem written in English in the 8th century.  We have a good book that simplified it, but it was hard to learn and took 40 minutes to tell, partly because the kids all asked good questions. 

Today is St. Patrick's Day and I told an Irish story about a Brownie.  It took about 15 minutes, and they loved it!  It doesn't seem so hard now that I've done it twice, so I'm looking for another to learn.  I have to like the story and the way it’s written myself, but the idea is that you build their ability to think visually for an extended period of time because  right at the end of telling a long story, I read in a library journal, you can launch into a discussion of the highest theoretical kind--atomic theory or anything--and they will grasp it, because you already have them thinking visually.  I want to try that sometime and see.

Writing Makes Better Readers!

 SELI Young Writers Clubs demonstrate that process writing workshops adapted for English learners develop students’ reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, which gives them the self-confidence to keep learning.

However, it is hard to find it stated in any other context that writing facilitates reading. People see it as the cart coming before the horse. I didn’t see this short article when it came out, so I will quote from it now:

“Gene Ouellette, an associate professor of psychology at Mount Allison University, and Monique Sénéchal, a psychology professor at Carleton University, have done a number of studies on how invented spelling plays into literacy acquisition. “What we’ve found over the years is there seemed to be something with kids who are doing invented spelling on their own that’s really helping them learn how to read,” said Ouellette in an interview. “I’d say it’s like the missing piece” in early literacy instruction.” Loewus, L. (May 5, 2017). “Invented Spelling Leads to Better Reading, Study Says.” Education Week online. 

Some of the reading groups to which SELI offers instructional support, administered a gap-fill or cloze exercise using an early chapter in their next book to get an approximate idea of each person’s reading level (you see two here, one in Lunsar and one in Dankawalie). In cloze exercises every fifth word is omitted, and the candidate supplies it or a reasonable substitute. What a wonderful realm with neither carts nor horses, just reading and writing as one activity!

What's Better than a Book Talk?

Another way I promote all the purposes of SELI is by giving book talks in schools where the students have read my historical novel, The Heritage Keeper. Or, where I aim to interest the students in reading it! The schools must be among the few in town whose literature curriculum is not limited to the books set by the West African Examinations Council. Regrettably, since these are not SELI Young Writers schools, I do not have permission to post photos of the children at these events. 

In mid-February I attended an annual sports competition in the Hill Valley Academy at Mambo where in the past several years I have enjoyed lively discussions about reading, writing, and Sierra Leone history in that school with students who had read the book. It was good for me and lots of fun to see those same students that day in a different context.

I also was privileged to advocate for authorship of historical novels and read part of The Heritage Keeper to the secondary students of the British International School in Freetown during their Literacy Week. I loved the time I spent with them and hope they will enjoy the books and have lots of comments to make the next time I see them!

The Difference a Little Teaching Makes

MITESOL, the Michigan chapter of TESOL International Association, puts out a periodic online newsletter called MITESOL Messages. 

The latest issue (August 15, 2018) carries a description of the Seli River Writing Project in an article called “Grappling with Text,” Scroll down to the section “Updates From the Field."

Let us know what you think!

Editing—The Thinking Game

Don't let anyone tell you that writing isn't a thinking game! I think these students from the Northern Province have no doubts: you come to a Young Writers club meeting to think.

The two Young Writers above have reached the peer editing stage. Plenty of meticulous attention and even more discussion will be thrown onto the table before they're through. It's all worth it, because they'll proceed to their teacher conferences not with dread, but with confidence.

One sticking point that comes up during editing is punctuation of direct speech. Mastering it is a challenge for everybody.

The class you see here is trying to punctuate a whole conversation in a mini-lesson at the beginning of our workshop. They must lay it out in paragraphs and not repeat in the dialogue what they've already said in the narrative. Then, they are to go on to see if the final drafts they're submitting meet these standards.

I thank every one of these students for their effort and know it will pay off in learning growth. It's a delight to be around them. 

Working with Primary Schools

SELI Young Writers clubs have begun in the schools that participated in our March 5th workshop. As I go around to visit them this week, I have seen a lot of careful listening and thinking, as you see these class four and five students from R.E.C. Primary School, Bassa Town and R.E.C. Primary School, Kent doing here, as we work on the rehearsal stage of writing.

Learning to facilitate a Young Writers club is a transformative experience for teachers, because it means conducting a child-centered classroom.  I find these teachers, just as I have found so many

others, most willing to learn the role so long as someone is at their elbow for a while reminding them: let the topics come from the child's own experience, let the child choose which topic to write on, let the children decide when they need to stamp a new piece of paper, or staple their papers together. . . and in the end they are always astonished that it's actually in the children to do all these things. Soon we're all experiencing an elevated respect for the children's ability to listen and think.

Advertising Young Writers Clubs

We have a new flyer for SELI Young Writers Clubs! Check it out here!

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! 

Modeling the Ebola Outbreak

This video is a great explanation of what is happening in the Sierra Leone Ebola outbreak, and what some of our alternatives are.

The author, Sibyl Harleston, presents the mechanics of how EVD is spread, ways to interpret the results that models present, and suggestions for slowing the transmission rates.

Koinadugu Young Writers Clubs

We've just returned from Koinadugu District and had a great time interacting with students who like to write, and with the teachers who are making that happen.

In this village pocketed among these magnificent mountains, we were so glad to find Young Writers in the SELI club at Dankawalie Secondary School reading their work aloud during teacher editing so the facilitator can call their attention if the written version does not reflect the pauses and word endings in their speech. Or call their attention when they change the idea they are discussing and need to start a new paragraph. The facilitators in this club, Ishmael K. Mansaray and Amara K. Tarawallie, have learned that when the students stay in possession of their writing throughout the editing process, they come to own their errors better and do something about them.

All the schools were conducting exams this week; DSS was one of the two that did not consider exams a reason to suspend club meetings. 

Kabala Secondary School Senior Club

The senior Young Writers club at Kabala Secondary School has been meeting in this well-lighted space adjacent to the school library.

This club, too, was overwhelmed by new intake last week because the SSI students, who have been waiting for their JSS exit-exam results since school opened in September, have now begun attending senior secondary school. Here you see one of the club facilitators, Abdul Karim Koroma, giving an orientation. The principal, Mr. H.B. Conteh, assured us that new accommodation would be arranged so everyone would have a place to sit and write.

One of the students is holding the Young Voices newsletter issue 4.1. The poem on the back page was written by a member of the group.

A Senior Secondary Club

The Seli River Writing Project now has writing clubs in two senior secondary schools in the Koinadugu district in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. Here you see the club members at work in their airy, spacious classroom at Ahmadiyya Muslim Agricultural Secondary School.

The two facilitators, Sheku Bilo Conteh and Mohamed Ato Koroma, in their soft-spoken way, run a well-organized club. Two events happened today.

One event was that the first-year students (SSI) have just begun attending the school: all this time they have been out of school waiting for their BECE results! Eighteen of them arrived to join the club today.

The second event was that heats for their interhouse competitions began today, so a number of regulars are absent. Many of those that went to the heats are boys so the club membership appears today to have a higher percentage of girls than is actually the case.

You see here one of several conferencing groups that was going on in the room. The students are listening to someone read her work aloud, and jotting down content questions they plan to ask during the discussion of her piece.

Conferencing at LPK Memorial JSS

I enjoyed my visit to the SELI Young Writers club at Lady Patricia Kabba Memorial JSS in Goderich today.

The students all made a great effort to write nonstop for ten minutes on the topic of whether they like or don't like Nigerian movies. Then two volunteers, one for each opinion, read their work aloud. Our emphasis was on content, as always with first drafts. Later, in responding to their journals, I saw that despite all their errors in mechanics and expression, everyone had good reasons to back up whatever they chose to say.

The students all went on to whatever they were doing next: peer editing, self editing, starting a first draft, writing a second draft, teacher editing, and content conferencing.

This content conference group was particularly good. Several of the participants were new members of the group who had drawn up a list of topics to write on, but had not yet done first drafts. They didn't really understand during the first reading during the conference that each one of them was going to have to draw up content questions. So they requested this second reading, and notice how attentive they are to the reader (with her back to us)! Their questions were the type that provoked discussion. They all enjoyed the session, and the authors got help for their second drafts.

Thanks, LPKM JSS Young Writers! And thank you to the MacEwan Global Education Fund, which has been covering SRWP facilitator stipends for the past two years. The project needs your help to continue!

It's a Mystery

I'm one of millions of readers of mysteries. We don't passively absorb books. We interact actively from the first page. We use nuanced clues to keep changing our hypotheses. At the end we weigh the resolution against alternatives we'd been considering.

It's never surprised me how much the kids up our street like to play soccer, because starting a game is like opening a new mystery. So that's why I'm finding reading Jane McGonigal's Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World odd, because neither in the book nor in Amy Gonzalez's National Writing Project review at http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3654 , is game playing compared to mystery reading.

Yet McGonigal's defining features of a game are so characteristic of the experience of mystery reading: a goal which is often redefined as you go, and is enhanced by a good story; limitations (cultural, subplot- or information-based, etc.) imposed on ways the goal can be achieved stimulating you to stretch your thinking; a feedback system that lets you know your progress; and voluntary participation, meaning we agree to the goal, limitations and feedback system we're given.

I wish we could develop a whole set of quality children's mysteries in Sierra Leone.

Handing Over SRWP Supplies

This weekend SELI traveled north to hand over Seli River Writing Project supplies to eight schools in the Koinadugu District. Here you see supplies being received by the principal, Mr Sorie Ibrahim Sesay, and the two club facilitators, Sheku Bilo Conteh and Mohamed Ato Koroma, for the new Young Writers club at Ahmadiyya Muslim Agricultural Secondary School's senior school. The same school's junior secondary school has been operating a club successfully for three years now, and their supplies were replenished today, as well.

These Koinadugu schools also received new Young Writers Club supplies this weekend for the coming academic year: Heritage United Methodist High School, Dankawalie Secondary School, Loma JSS, Loma SSS, and Kabala Secondary School JSS and SSS.

Ten of the facilitators of these clubs are newly trained, having attended SELI's week-long workshop the last week in August this year. We so much appreciate their enthusiasm, and look forward to visiting the clubs during this coming school year!

Thank you to the International Reading Association, which has been covering donated supplies for the Seli River Writing Project. The project needs your help to continue!

Reading Sierra Leone

On May 10th, eight Reading Sierra Leone books were officially launched--hooray! You see here one of the eight.

To quote from the inside back cover, "Reading Sierra Leone is a collaborative initiative of PEN Sierra Leone and CODE, a Canadian NGO supporting development through education. The goal of Reading Sierra Leone is to produce locally written and illustrated books that engage children and invite them, through reading and writing, to think, to learn and to improve their lives."

The books are aimed at lower, middle, and upper primary reading levels and are part of a program providing huge numbers of books, as well as teacher training in reading instruction, to primary schools in Sierra Leone, beginning with schools in the eastern part of the country.

You can look through, and learn how to purchase, all the Reading Sierra Leone as well as the Reading Liberia books in this catalog. 

Sales will help finance a second round of locally-produced books under Reading Sierra Leone. Let's make this happen! (P.S.: We're told Reading Liberia is in its third round!)

Seli River Writing Project

The photo on the left is from the SELI Young Writers workshop that meets at SELI twice a week. It has turned out to be a mix of junior and senior secondary students. Mr. Allieu Sheriff, a workshop facilitator from Services Junior Secondary, Wilberforce is doing content conferencing with students here. You also see a student doing self editing at Goderich Comprehensive Secondary School in Funima.

Would you like to know more about the aims we are working toward in the Seli River Writing Project? Many of them are brought out in this article in the February 2013 issue of TESOL International's SRIS Newsletter.

Make Your Voice Heard!

This student at the Ahmadiyya Muslim Agricultural Secondary School (AMASS) in Yogomaia, Kabala is reading her first draft aloud for feedback from her peers.

Her classmates listen carefully, pens poised as this boy's is to write comments or questions about the content in her piece.  Following this discussion, and armed with the questions that each student writes down for her, she will write an improved second or third draft.

SELI has encouraged the schools where there are Young Writers junior secondary clubs, to give girls the added support they need to attend. We were so glad to see girls made up 1/3 of the students in the meeting we attended at AMASS last week.  Families depend on teenage girls to take care of younger siblings and prepare food, so it is particularly difficult to include them in after school activities. Young Writers clubs improve students' English communication and thinking skills as well as their cultural awareness. We don't want to undermine the structure of the family, but we need to keep trying to get girls the benefits they deserve!

We're pleased, too, to hear that AMASS has just launched a school library, and that the Young Writers are the first approved borrowers! Long live the Young Writers and all who support them!