Use Picture Books to Teach Essay Writing

Secondary school writing teachers, try reading Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems aloud to a class that is learning to argue, persuade or advise.

The problem this book presents is stated in the title: Gerald has an ice cream cone and is of two minds whether to share it with Piggie. The first half of the book uses all kinds of argument and gets nowhere.

• ·       Piggie loves ice cream. Piggie is my best friend. (concession, logos)
• ·       We should share with friends. (commonly-held value, ethos)
• ·       This ice cream is SO tempting! (emotion, pathos)
• ·       Maybe she won't like this flavor. It is wrong to force something unappetizing on someone. (commonly-held value, ethos)
• ·       I can just not tell her—she'll never know! (a stance to win)

By page 25 we are looking for how this will end. Stop reading the book aloud here. Have each student write an opinion for each side, drawing on their own personal experiences.

After they have written, go on reading. We expect a reasoned conclusion, don't we? Is that what Gerald will carry out? Or are there other ways opposing opinions can be resolved?

Half-way through the book, Gerald moves into speculation--What if Piggie is sad?--and from there into creating the future. And by staying in the future tense, Gerald becomes able to visualize future choices and their consequences. In other words, he moves into deliberative argument.

In the end, we feel satisfied when he comes to his decision. Deliberative argument is an empowering strategy and it is important for our student writers and debaters to acquire it.

Then comes a twist. The author carries deliberative argument one step further when the future takes on two complications:

• ·       Oops, Gerald's decision was taken too late. His ice cream melted, so a) nobody ate it at all, b) he could not make Piggie happy, and c) he's a failure.
• ·       The roles become reversed. Piggie gets a cone herself and does what it took Gerald so long to decide on doing: she shares it.

Now Gerald ponders—should he stick with his plan and mope, or adapt? But what a change in his mood! The frenzy of indecision in the first half of the book is gone, because deliberative argument has freed him. He contentedly goes for letting somebody else achieve his goal of sharing.

Thanks, Mo Willems, for such a great book!

Relevant Reads

Heinrichs, J. (2007). Thank you for arguing: what Aristotle, Lincoln and Homer Simpson can teach us about the art of persuasion. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Miller, R. (2011) "Being without existing: the futures community at a turning point? A comment on Jay Ogilvy's 'Facing the fold,'" foresight, Vol. 13 Iss: 4, pp.24 – 34.

Willems, M. (2011). Should I share my ice cream? New York: Hyperion Books for Children.

© 2012 Jacqueline Leigh

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!

Workshop with Mid-Term Peace Corps Volunteers

Today we spent the day with Peace Corps volunteers who teach in schools very similar to those where Young Writers clubs operate in the Koinadugu District and on the rural Freetown Peninsula, talking about teaching writing.

We discussed how closely our students resemble long-term English language learners in the U.S., and how it helps to look at strategies being used there to address the needs of LTELLs, to see if we can apply them here.

We are glad to see that the Ministry's 2011 JSS language arts syllabus supports the use of child-centered, inductive teaching methods and wants to see the children actively producing language in the classroom. This validates using process writing in our crowded classrooms, which we already know teaches writing skills, addresses ESL needs, and builds needed cultural self-esteem, at the same time that it eases class management. We practiced these strategies, some of which were taken from Natalie Hess' Teaching Large Multilevel Classes (Cambridge University Press, 2001). We had demonstrations on teaching several of these types of writing, by starting not from form or layout (as is so common even in the U.S.) but starting from content close to our students' hearts and experience, and then carrying the writing through the stages of the process.

A highlight for me was when we used Paolo Freire's problem posing method, which has come to be regarded as a useful ESL methodology. Report writing can be introduced effectively with this method in senior secondary school. Our problem-posing "code" for this workshop was a cane, which represented the flogging done in so many schools in Sierra Leone.

Our New Participant: Limicolaria flammea

The Goderich school where we are holding our Leading Young Writers workshop, Lady Patricia Kabba Memorial JSS, is doing gardening in preparation for the opening of school. With the hoe flying dangerously, this very determined being speedily took a supple beeline for our workshop. Here you see Limicolaria flammea about to climb our steps.

We spent the day talking about teaching writing not in our clubs, but in our classrooms. We discussed what the 2011 junior secondary language arts syllabus requires in terms of writing, and then divided into groups to plan how we would get a class writing the genre of our choice, and presenting it to the class. The participants found these practicals helpful, and we'll continue tomorrow. We also all enjoyed writing Tanka poems, and found them much more personal than the Haiku we had done earlier in the week. One of the teachers wrote a four-tanka poem about the death of his grandmother!

When I got home, I saw another snail outside my kitchen window. I've just been out there and took photos of more than two dozen Limicolaria flammea in my garden! What's going on? Although this snail is native to West Africa, has anybody done a study on its having become an invasive species on its home turf?

Leading Young Writers Workshop

In the photo you can see teachers from four rural junior secondary schools on the Freetown Peninsula, busy discussing how conferencing works in the writing process. I'm so pleased at their expertise and level of participation, and we are all learning from each other.

We took a break for the Id ul Fitr holiday, and are back at work today. Our 40-hour Leading Young Writers training is now half-way through. In our group we have teachers from Goderich, Hamilton, Sussex, Kent, and even the Koinadugu District in the northern province of Sierra Leone.

Getting Underway in Goderich

The SRWP is excited to start conducting a third Leading Young Writers training tomorrow, this time for new facilitators from junior secondary schools on the Freetown Peninsula. They will be joined by new facilitators from schools in the Koinadugu District; teachers replacing others who have moved on to employment elsewhere.

We appreciate so much the support of the Deputy Director of Education, Western Area Rural District, Ms. Frances N. Kamara, in introducing us to JSS schools on the Peninsula. We're also very grateful to the administrators of Lady Patricia Kabba Memorial JSS in Goderich, Mr. Mansaray and Mr. Cole, who agreed without hesitation to let us hold the workshop in their school, even though they are busy teaching summer school classes for incoming JSS I students.  We're all working for the same goals!

See for yourself!

Are you thinking of supporting SELI's work? Or have you already donated? We've come across a wonderful video by Kewulay Kamara that will help you see what Sierra Leone is like, and the difference between urban and rural Sierra Leone. You will see children from our Young Writers club in Dankawalie Secondary School dancing in a community event on the school grounds. The title is Ta Boh M'bareh Dankawalie. See it for yourself! 

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.

Teach Somebody (to Read and Write)!

September 8th is International Literacy Day. Here are some statistics from UNESCO's site at http://www.unesco.org/new/en/dakar/education/literacy/

·       "Learning to read and write is a fundamental right. Yet, 38 % of African adults (some 153 millions) are illiterate, two-thirds of these are women.

·       Africa is the only continent where more than half of parents are not able to help their children with homework due to illiteracy.

·       Adult literacy rates are below 50% in Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and The Gambia.

·       Only 1 % of national education budget of most African governments is earmarked to address the issue of literacy.

·       The situation is alarming as literacy is a crucial step to acquire the basic skills needed to cope with the many challenges children, youth and adults will face throughout their lives.

·       For many disadvantaged young people and adults, non-formal education is one of the main routes to learning. Non-formal education reaches people in their own context and ideally in their own local language."

SELI encourages mother-tongue literacy in Sierra Leone through its Heritage Writers program. We offer five writing lessons to formally-educated native speakers, and then try to move them toward authoring books in their own languages. Literacy isn't very useful if, once you achieve it, you can't find anything interesting to read. If you are not already teaching somebody to read and write, please support Heritage Writers by clicking on the DONATE button here!

Publishing our Writing

Starting with issue 3.1, the Young Voices newsletter of the SRWP (Seli River Writing Project) will be publishing the writing of our Young Writers during the coming year. (Check out Young Voices 2.1).

All Young Writers receive a typewritten copy of their final drafts that to show their family and friends. Selected pieces will make it into the newsletters. To the extent that our finances permit, issues will be shared among the participating schools and to friends and supporters of the SRWP. Few of our students have access to the internet, but the newsletter will be posted here, too, so watch for Young Voices 3.1 and expect to see Young Voices often to catch up on what the students are writing about and on progress in the SRWP. This will give the students' writing wider exposure than do the in-school notice boards where some schools display Young Writers writing.

Would you like to support SRWP newsletter production during the year? Please make a PayPal contribution using the Donate button on the right!