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.

Kabala JSS Young Writers Club

This is what content conferencing looked like at Kabala Junior Secondary School last week. It's all about explaining and negotiating meaning in English, which is not easy for these students who have only recently left primary school. Still, they do it with spirit because they are writing about their own personal experiences, which they know very well.

Facilitators Alieu S. Kanu and Fatmata Kamara conduct well-organized Young Writers club meetings. This club meets at 4:30 in the afternoon, after students have had a chance to go home and eat lunch, wash their uniforms, and do some of their chores. This is why you don't see the students wearing uniforms here.

The photo below is a peer editing group in the same meeting.

Students knew how to help each other edit in this club. The authors read their work aloud for their peers, and they reached for dictionaries when they needed them.

Young Voices 4.1

Young Voices 4.1 is out! Click here to join these students sauntering home from Kabala Junior Secondary School reading their newsletters! 

Course in Workplace English, Feb.–May, 2014

SELI's next intensive Course in Workplace English will be offered at the Sentinel English Language Institute in Tengbeh Town from 10th February to 23rd May 2014.

This intensive English-for-Special-Purposes course meets the needs of beginning-proficiency English language learners who have pursued tertiary education in another language than English but need the communication skills expected in a professional English-speaking workplace. Students about to enter university who embrace this goal can also be accommodated.

CWE applicants are assumed to be non-English speakers. The course develops basic-user level competencies in speaking, listening, reading, writing and presenting in English. Classes meet mornings only, fifteen hours a week for fourteen-week terms. There are still 15 places available in the coming term. Sessions are participatory and interactive, requiring prompt and regular attendance.

SELI's Course in Workplace English helps to make SELI's charitable work possible. Please contact us for enrolment information.

Yay! Certificates!

SELI's first intensive ESOL Course in Workplace English came to a close today with a certificate ceremony.

This beginning proficiency class was very rewarding to teach. All the participants were university students or working professionals from francophone West Africa who feel that English will give them an advantage in the workplace in their own countries. The class met three hours a day, five days a week for fourteen weeks at the SELI facility in Tengbeh Town. Nearly all the participants were in Sierra Leone specifically to take the course, so attended promply, regularly and actively; as such, significant progress took place.

SELI developed the curriculum for the Course in Workplace English in real time throughout the fourteen weeks. The director used *. 

interactions with the class and formative assessments to pace activities and adjust the scope and sequence of lessons. Although this is an English for Special Purposes course, it could also be said to cover competencies described in CEF's Basic User level (A1 and A2). We would be pleased to hear in the future of some of the participants taking advanced degrees in English; opportunities to do this are rapidly increasing in continental European universities.

Registration is now taking place at SELI for the next session of the Course in Workplace English scheduled to begin 10 February 2013.

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* The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages

Adult Mother-Tongue Literacy Class

The Dankawalie Secondary School Library (in Dankawalie, Sengbe Chiefdom, Koinadugu District in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone) is a community library. One of its community services is offering an adult mother tongue literacy class in Kuranko.

I was glad to have the opportunity to meet with 7/10 of the class this week. Just for me, they gathered at the odd hour of 8 am on Monday morning before they headed out to their farms where they are harvesting rice and planting groundnuts. Although most of the class members have had a Koranic education (and can therefore read and write in Arabic) they have had no formal schooling so cannot read and write in the Roman script. Their days are already full with all the work they do.

Although Kuranko is not one of the mother-tongue languages The Institute of Sierra Leone Languages is currently working with, SELI arranged for two teachers from DSS to be included in TISLL's literacy-teacher training workshop in May, 2013. In June, the class began, and you can see from these short videos here that there have been results! TISLL monitors and certificates the program, and is a wonderful collaborative partner.

This SELI Heritage Writers program is expanding and needs your support. The current members keep pointing out that the materials (originally written in the '70's and revised in the '90s) are outdated and would like to revise them. New members of the community want to join the class as beginners. Some current members are ready to go on to Book Two. Although the members pay, by installment, a cost price for the books, the supplies need to be bought and brought to the village.  The two teachers have been doing this work without any stipend at all as encouragement. When class members have completed Book Two we would like to a) encourage those interested to go on to second language learning in Krio or English, and b) start them into a writing workshop where they can record their stories, which will become Kuranko readers to add to the DSS Library collection if we can pay to have them printed. The two teachers, Mr. Balla M. Kargbo and Mr. Alusine H. Kamara, would like to see the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology accept appeals for new Sierra Leonean languages to be added to the current four examination languages at junior secondary level.

If you are able to make a small contribution toward this Heritage Writers project, please click on the DONATE button to the right!

Update on Dankawalie School Library

SELI spent this weekend in Dankawalie, where the Dankawalie Secondary School Library still has many more books to catalog. One of the two librarians, Amara K. Tarawallie, began entering books this time, interacting with me about the decisions that need to be made about each book, such as:

Is this book fiction or nonfiction—folklore or biography?
Is this an "Easy" book or a transitional, middle level book?
Is this the name of the title, or of the series?
Did this author write the original, or this adapted version?
Does this book have an author at all?

Meanwhile, two students were helping another teacher, Ishmael K. Mansaray, to stamp the books and put pockets and cards in them in preparation for entering them. These particular books were donated by Books for Africa.

I also took a peek through the window into the new library building, which was brought to near-completion last year thanks to a grant from the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives. It is built in the same circular shape as the classrooms in the school. As soon as everyone is satisfied that it is as secure as it needs to be for a library, the collection, furniture, etc. will be moved from its temporary quarters in a classroom into this building.

During June and July of 2013, four university students from the U.S. were in Dankawalie doing community service. One of the students, Ariana Lutterman, elicited library rules from Dankawalie teachers and students, to develop this poster, which we love! Armed with these new rules, the librarians have agreed to resume circulation of the books, which they had suspended at the end of the last school year. The DSS Library thanks you, Ariana!

Stands for a solar array are being erected outside the library, the adult mother-tongue literacy class has been going on since June, and more books are waiting to be catalogued—the DSS Library is showing all the signs of growing into a truly vibrant community/school library. If Dankawalie weren't eight hours of hard riding on very rough roads from Freetown, I would spend a great deal more time there, myself!

My Prized Possession

SELI's 14-week Course in Workplace English for beginning English language learners is now about 80% complete. This week was presentation week, during which everyone prepared a 3-minute presentation on "My Prized Possession." It was an exciting day for all of us!

Here are the opening segments of Fanta's and Mohamed's presentations. We all thought they did beautifully—do you? Everyone learned a new expression today—butterflies in your stomach. They thought it was a very apt description of how they felt!

On the Freetown Peninsula

Mohamed Samking is the sole facilitator of the SELI Young Writers club at Goderich Comprehensive Junior Secondary School in Funima, in the hills of the rural Freetown Peninsula.

I always enjoy the way the members of this club are fully engaged. The students hold all their content conferences with the entire group, and good discussion takes place. All the materials are out for all the members to use and everyone knows the writing process well.

Here, Mr. Samking is showing the students the My Life booklets they will prepare, and be able to take away with them, as soon as they have completed five final drafts of personal experiences.Two students from this club earned My Life books in the 2012-2013 school year.

We appreciate the dedication of such facilitators of SELI's afterschool Young Writers clubs. The MacEwan Global Education Fund has been covering stipends for these facilitators. We need your contribution to continue!