PRESENTERS:

• Brian Dare, Lexis Education
• Jan Finlayson, Blackfriars College
• Juliana Martino, Catholic Education Office, South Australia
• Lina Russo, Catholic Education Office, South Australia
• Monica Williams, Catholic Education Office, South Australia

TITLE: Applying SFG in the classroom

ABSTRACT: Over 2000 teachers from South Australia have now completed the Language and Literacy Course, a thirty hour professional development course focused on the classroom applications of systemic functional grammar. Many of these teachers have been able to show how grammar can be integrated into their practice and taught in a meaningful and productive way. Some of the most exciting work in this area has been undertaken by those teachers who have participated in teacher research projects funded by the Spencer Foundation.

In this workshop, we will present the work of a number of such projects which involve teaching students various aspects of the grammar. The contexts considered will include those from the first years of schooling, where students are beginning to learn about participants, processes and circumstances to secondary contexts where students focus on nominalisation as a key resource in learning how to write in a more written mode.

The findings presented here point to the potential for developing metalinguistic understandings in even the youngest students and likewise challenge misguided beliefs held in the wider educational community about the teaching of grammar.