For those of you who are planning to attend the annual NCTE convention in
Chicago November 17 - 22, the North American Systemic Functional Linguistics
Association co-sponsored session will feature Mary Schleppegrell, Jason
Moore and Ebony Thomas presenting a session titled *Using systemic
functional linguistics to focus on language and meaning in teachers'
professional development*.* *
*The session is *
*Session G.15: 9:30 – 10:45 AM, Saturday, 11/19/2011, in the Chicago Hilton
Conference Room 4A, fourth floor.*
An extended abstract for the session is below.
I also noticed some other names on the NCTE program that may be familiar to
members of this list. Perhaps those of you who are presenting there might
like to provide additional information on your presentations there.
Peter Fries
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Each of the three presenters will describe a professional development (PD)
context in which teachers are developing an understanding of SFL approaches
to literacy. The first reports on PD with elementary grade teachers that
makes links between reading and writing. The second describes a project that
uses SFL constructs to support bilingual students’ development of
disciplinary literacy in secondary English Language Arts. The third* *describes
a university course for preservice and inservice teachers that focuses on
language. The session will begin with a brief introduction from Peter Fries.
Then each presenter will speak for 15 minutes, followed by five minutes of
discussion. After the three presentations, we will have ten minutes for
general discussion.
FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR IN THE ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM
Mary Schleppegrell will report on a project currently underway to introduce
elementary grade teachers to a functional linguistics metalanguage that
supports talk about text. The goal is to help teachers support English
Language Learners’ reading and writing development, enabling children to
read for deeper meaning as well as to construct the text types that are
valued in early literacy contexts. Artifacts from the project will
illustrate how attention to an author's language choices, focused on
particular areas of meaning informed by SFL, enables discussion about
character development, plot elements, and the themes of a story. In
addition, student texts written with careful scaffolding of overall
structure and relevant language features will be used to illustrate how
children's language development is supported by this approach.
FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR IN THE SECONDARY CLASSROOM
Jason Moore will report on a project that is developing SFL approaches in
the secondary English Language Arts classroom. Students at the secondary
level, in particular, need support making form-meaning connections, where
they face more challenging, discipline-specific literacy tasks. Records of
practice will be presented to illustrate how a class of 9th grade students
used SFL-based metalanguage to make sense of a text, and some major
affordances and challenges of using SFL to plan and implement instruction
will be reported and discussed. In addition, the presenter will share
insights gained from the feedback of a classroom teacher unfamiliar with SFL
who observed and reflected on this instruction. Finally, the presenter will
draw some implications from this work for preparing other English teachers
to use SFL as a pedagogical resource.
FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR IN THE TEACHER EDUCATION CLASSROOM
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas will report on ongoing curriculum re-development in a
required course for elementary language arts and secondary English education
students at an urban university. The purpose of the course is to provide
preservice and inservice teachers with knowledge about grammar and usage
that is relevant to their English language arts classrooms. Students in the
course selected nonfiction texts appropriate for their level of
specialization and learned to conduct functional grammar analyses on those
texts. Using SFL constructs such as *text types* (genres), *participants and
processes*, and *interpersonal resources*, students then created
language-focused units of instruction. This work will be contextualized
through artifacts created by the instructor, and the ways students took up
this kind of learning about language will be illustrated.
--
Peter H. Fries
Box 310
Mount Pleasant MI 48804
Phone: 989-644-3384
Cell: 989-400-3764
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web page: <http://cmich.edu/chsbs/x23516.xml<http://cmich.edu/chsbs/x23516.xml>>
[among 'emeritus faculty']
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