My first experience teaching, in Sierra Leone in July of 2010, is where I realized that most elementary students were illiterate and lacked the foundational skills in order to learn how to read. I decided to return the following year in May of 2011 to undertake a project to provide culturally-sensitive literacy materials for village and orphaned children in the form of storybooks. The school site for this thesis is Children of the Nations (COTN) which is a school of 98 orphaned and 1,488 village students that range from 4years-20 years of age. The titles of the two books produced by this thesis are: What's Up and ABC's of Sierra Leone. These books are culturally relevant to the students who helped in creating them and includes pictures and words that students can identify. This study will 1) provide insights into history and literacy development issues of Sierra Leone from the perspective of a Western educator; 2) examine modern factors affecting literacy development; 3) describe my teaching experience in Sierra Leone with multiage children learning English; and 4) explore the notion of creating culturally-sensitive instructional materials for village and orphan students in Sierra Leone.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses1990-2015-2303 |
| Date | 01 May 2012 |
| Creators | Shearhod, Jesica |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | HIM 1990-2015 |
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