Book Study Teaching Language in Context by Derewianka and Jones

Dates & Times: February 24, March 3, 10, 17, 24, and 31, 2022. All events take place at 4-5pm central time.

Facilitators: Ruslana Westerlund and Pauline Jones

Price: $175

Description: This is a book study consisting of six sessions where we'll be studying the book Teaching Language in Context by Beverly Derewianka and Pauline Jones. In this book study, participants will learn how to support multilingual students in writing in the disciplines using Systemic Functional Linguistics. We will look at actual classroom texts from SFL perspective which makes language visible and meaningful to students. We will examine language for appreciating the story worlds, language for recounting what happened, language for explaining, language for persuading others, language for reporting. We will also be learning a pedagogy of apprenticeship simply called the Teaching and Learning Cycle with the focus on Deconstruction and Joint Construction where equity through explicit attention to language in context is made possible for our students.

This event includes an author visit, where Pauline Jones herself will join us for a discussion and a demonstration of how to teach language in context.

The book is a separate purchase and is not included in this book study.

About the facilitators:

Ruslana Westerlund, Ed.D., is a Ukrainian-American multilingual and multicultural person. She received her Master’s in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from Bohdan Khmelnytskyi Cherkasy National University, Ukraine in 1995, and Doctorate in Education from Bethel University, St. Paul, Minnesota in 2014. She joins CESA 2 as a Language & Culture Center of Excellence consultant. She will be creating online, ready-to-use resources, materials, and courses. She will also be working with educators on the use of Systemic Functional Linguistics within all content areas and classrooms in all grade levels so that all students have access to the state standards. Her work will bring to life in a very concrete way our CESA 2 equity mission statement with the state standards, learning for justice and learning for joy. She will provide educators the support and training they need to make the saying, "all means all" a reality in their classrooms.

Associate Professor Pauline Jones is a researcher and teacher educator in the School of Education at the University of Wollongong, Australia.  Her research interests are educational linguistics/semiotics, advanced literacy development and disciplinary dialogue. 

Her research involves cross-curricula themes such as sustainability and creativity in the disciplines of Science, English and History and how these develop across the years of schooling. Her current research focusses on the dialogic basis on argumentation in secondary curricula. She has recently led the Transforming Literacy Outcomes (TRANSLIT) project, a local study of literacy development from preschool to junior secondary. She is also chief investigator on an ARC grant investigating the use of multimodal texts in tertiary science classrooms. 

Cancellation Policy: Registered participants will receive a refund if they cancel prior to 3 working days before an event, minus any material costs that have already been incurred. Cancellations must either be made on MyQuickReg or by emailing cancel@cesa2.org. Because of our commitment to the presenter and the food vendor, participants who cancel less than 3 working days prior to the event or who do not attend the event, will be billed the full fee. CESA 2 reserves the right to cancel any event. Registered participants will be notified via phone and email if a cancellation occurs and will receive a full refund. 

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In-Person Events: Restrictions on our in-person events due to COVID-19 have been lifted. We will be responsive to what's happening within our communities, and guidelines from the CDC and local health agencies for future offerings and will update guidelines when necessary.