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!

Partnering for Full Coverage

For the month of August, SELI is again delighted to be partnering with Transformation Education in their annual training to improve Class 1-3 literacy instruction.

SELI is also very glad that Moses M. Gbondo—a very able SELI Young Writers after school club facilitator for nine years now, as well as the acting school principal of Abundant Grace International School in Sussex—willingly agreed to carry out the presentation in my absence.

Our purview is as before: the writing aspect of early literacy. Topics we are covering are a) characteristics of classrooms where writing is taught well in an ESL setting, b) literacy and the brain, c) the writing process, and d) writing genres for classes 1-3. Lots of hands-on, practical work, of course!

Although heritage languages are not part of this training, we at SELI are glad to hear that Sierra Leone language literacy is being brought into schools in classes 1-3 in the near future. These literacy-teaching skills can be used to bring about literacy in children in whatever languages they may speak.

Training in Partnership

 

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.

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.

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.

Leading Young Writers, Part I

Despite the heat this time of year, SELI spent a breezy day on the 5th talking about Young Writers clubs with teachers from six primary schools in the Waterloo area, Samuel Town, Joe Town and Kent. Our gracious hosts were Heaven Homes in Joe Town and we were very glad for their hospitality and accommodation.

Because of the tight schedule schools are on as they make up time during this post-Ebola period, we have had to break up our Leading Young Writers training into single-day sessions, and Saturday was the introduction. This is the first time we are working with primary schools under the Seli River Writing Project, although personally I have had the delightful experience of conducting many writing workshops with primary-level ESL classes.

Here you see teachers asking questions in a content conferencing group, and one of the teachers doing author sharing. It is a gradual thing: developing an appreciation for taking part in a supportive writing workshop, and then taking the leap to understanding that that same room for learning growth is what children feel in the club—in a child-centered setting.

Our thoughts will be with our teachers as they begin their clubs in the coming weeks, and we look forward to visiting them to lend our support.

Having Trouble Reading? Write!

There are a few schools in Sierra Leone that have shelves full of reading books (as opposed to textbooks). However, in nearly every case where SELI has found such shelves to exist in schools, the books are not being read. Not only does the school not lend them out, but the students do not ask to read them. The sad fact is, many students would not understand the books if they did borrow them.

Much has been said about the lack of reading instruction in Sierra Leone's schools. Many of our secondary students have very poor reading comprehension skills and lack successful, positive reading experiences. Programs are being carried out to remedy this situation by improving reading/literacy instruction at the early primary level, and some of these programs also provide reading materials. What SELI does not see being implemented is process writing instruction at any level at all of the educational system.

After decades of teaching process writing in Sierra Leone, we are convinced that developing academic writing skills through process writing also improves reading comprehension. The literature supports our view:

 "Writing practices complement reading practices and should always be used in conjunction, with each type of practice supporting and strengthening the other. . . .Our evidence shows that . . . writing activities improved students’ comprehension of text over and above the improvements gained from traditional reading activities such as reading text, reading and discussing text, and receiving explicit reading instruction. . . . Students who do not develop strong writing skills may not be able to take full advantage of the power of writing as a tool to strengthen reading." (p. 29) 

Graham, S., and Hebert, M. A. (2010). Writing to read: Evidence for how writing can improve reading. A Carnegie Corporation Time to Act Report. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

TGIF

Here's how we spend the end of our Friday classes now in our Course in Workplace English at SELI: playing Scrabble!

The members of the class are all avid bilingual dictionary users (we allow the use of dictionaries, since doing so makes it a learning activity in this beginning-proficiency class). At first I gave some support to the lower performing students but they, themselves, stopped me—everyone's too competitive to tolerate that!

The whole session is taken up with discussions about new words and what they mean. Since the words remain on the board throughout the game, participants repeatedly revisit them and recall their meanings.

This is a noun, isn't it, and not a verb? He's trying to add -ing to it!  That's an uncountable noun—you can't put an -s on it!

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.

New Leaders of Young Writers

Yesterday the Seli River Writing Project concluded a week-long, intensive Leading Young Writers training at the Ahmadiyya MA Secondary School in Yogomaia, Kabala, in Sierra Leone. After this week we spent together I am excited that these talented people will be helping our students to write! Some will be facilitating in ongoing junior secondary (JSS) clubs, some will be opening new JSS clubs, and some will be opening new senior secondary clubs.

The schools represented in the workshop were Loma Secondary School, Kabala Secondary School, Ahmadiyya Muslim Agricultural Secondary School, and Heritage United Methodist High School.

The Seli River Writing Project is made possible by many treasured donations from individuals, as well as grants from the MacEwan Global Education Fund and the International Reading Association.

With more funds, we could do so much more. Would you like to help? Please click on the DONATE button on the right!

SELI Young Writers Takes Shape

Attendance hasn't been all we'd like in the last few meetings, but the SELI Young Writers program is really taking shape.

Since most of the students have domestic work to do at home, they come at varying times. We have found that it works to have a journaling table. When they enter, the first stop is to take their writing folders, and the second stop is to do the journal assignment. Today it was to describe and to "perhaps" about the photograph you see on the table. Who is this woman? Where does she live, and what is she up to? Why are we so sure she is not a Sierra Leonean?

The girls in the foreground are in the third draft of their first (analytic) piece of writing. At this point, they move to word processing, where it is easier to revise and build good paragraphs. The girl on the left has just cut a sentence from one paragraph and pasted it into the next, where it makes more sense. Not bad, for a novice computer user and paragraph builder!

The student at the far table has moved on to the first draft of his second assignment, a personal writing challenge. We read all our first, and sometimes our second drafts, aloud to others for discussion and feedback. And we need more students to enrich that discussion!

The SELI Young Writers

We're excited about the SELI Young Writers: our new writing class for senior secondary students. We plan to write in all sorts of styles and genres. We are doing journaling, and we write in multiple drafts, reading our work aloud for feedback. We are also stretching vocabularies as far as we can!

Everyone in the class wants personally to become a better writer, and everyone also wants to succeed in school. We plan to do both!

Non-formal Education

Let's highlight again the point made about non-formal education in the last post.

Especially when we read articles such as Steve Bradshaw's "Sierra Leone's School-Time Blues," we realize what an important need there is for non-formal education and community schools in Sierra Leone. Children need to be taught in their own context, with parents (whether educated or not) playing an assertive role in keeping conditions safe and conducive to learning.

A Notice Board for Services JSS, Wilberforce

Today SELI donated a notice board to Services Junior Secondary School in Wilberforce, so everyone in the school can read the pieces of writing they are producing. The donation was made possible by a grant from the Public Affairs Office of the U.S. Embassy.

Jackie Leigh, SELI's director, has been running the Young Writers club at Services since 2008, but this year, teachers from the school have taken over as its facilitators. Here we see one of the teachers, Mr. M. Kanu, with the principal, Mrs. S. Kenny (right), and the secretary of the school. The second facilitator, Mr. A. Sheriff, is not in the photo.

There is a need for writers!

SELI is pleased to be a member of this steering committee, otherwise known as the Opportunity Schools Project, and Books Sierra Leone, of which CODE Canada is one of the implementers. Learn more about this project here: http://www.codecan.org/blog/?p=126.

New Site: www.seli.co!

Check out our new website at http://www.seli.co.

Celebrate National Youth Literacy Day!

It's National Youth Literacy Day today (August 26th)! Celebrate by making an $8.95 purchase that keeps SELI Youth Writers writing in Sierra Leone--the purchase of Fostering Young Writers in Sierra Leone! Just click on https://www.createspace.com/3458058, and you're there, reading all the personal experiences these dedicated writers have chosen to explain to you! All funds generated by the sale of the book are used solely to support SELI's educational programs in Sierra Leone.

Keep watching! The Leading Young Writers teacher training workshop in Kabala begins next week. Ten new teachers are being introduced to facilitating Young Writers clubs in their own schools, At the same time, they are going to start writing in process-writing workshops themselves, What a great way to reduce stress and fight teacher burnout--be a writer yourself, with the support of a writers' group in your area.

You can read them, too!

A new book, Fostering Young Writers in Sierra Leone, edited by Jacqueline Leigh, makes it possible for you to read the writing of SELI's Young Writers clubs. Click the link here, or buy it on Amazon.com!

Fostering Young Writers in Sierra Leone is a collection of personal experiences of students in process-writing clubs in six schools in Freetown. After carrying out the writing process repeatedly on their chosen topics these students have come to see themselves, collectively, as authors. Readers gain insight into the society in which these children are growing up, and into the courage with which the students' voices leap from the pages. A foreword by the editor provides detail about the clubs, and the postscript explains where these writers might go from here, drawing on insights from James Moffett's work at the National Writing Project. All profits from the sale of this book support the writing programs of the Sentinel English Language Institute, the public charity conducting Young Writers clubs in Sierra Leone.

Fostering Young Writers in Sierra Leone is available now at https://www.createspace.com/3458058. We're also sending out complimentary copies in appreciation and recognition of donations of $50 or more to the Sentinel English Language Institute. Do let us know if you'd like to contribute at writing.SELI@yahoo.com.!

Leading Young Writers in Progress

Our junior secondary school teachers from five schools in Freetown (Gov't. Model JSS, Gov't. Rokel JSS, FSSG, UMSSG, and Albert Academy) have completed 3 weeks of their 4 week workshop and are looking forward to sharing their enthusiasm about writing with students in their school Young Writers clubs. You can see them here doing an exercise in revising writing; doing peer conferencing, and typing their revisions into netbook computers. Unfortunately, SELI has been able to pay for only 3-1/2 of the netbooks being used for this workshop so their use in the next Leading Young Writers workshop is not certain.