Past Event

Start time: 2:45 p.m.

Bringing SFL to School: A Study of Teaching Science Writing in the Elementary Grades

Tracy Hodgson-Drysdale

The study is based on an action research project designed to examine the work of one science specialist in an urban elementary school as she integrated systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and literacy practices into her teaching of a 5th grade unit on ecosystems. The teacher participated in a school-wide initiative on teaching writing informed by SFL for 5 years prior to this study (Christie & Derewianka, 2008; Halliday & Martin, 1993) and had a good understanding of SFL. The study explores how the teacher scaffolded the teaching of writing into her inquiry-based model of science instruction (Eisenkraft, 2003) by incorporating the teaching/learning cycle (TLC) and by focusing on both content and language (Rothery, 1996). The teacher engaged students in a unit on ecosystems that included field trips, creating models, conducting research, and writing both a report on ecosystems and an explanation of a food chain or food web. The teacher used the TLC throughout the unit to support students’ developing understanding of science concepts while explicitly teaching them to use the language of the unit to write meaningful texts. Analysis of her use of language during teaching revealed the linguistic resources she utilized to increase her students understanding of the language of science in written texts. Through their research and the independent writing of reports and explanations, students demonstrated their learning of science concepts and language, as well as their understanding of the genres to express that knowledge. Findings suggest that combining an inquiry model with an explicit focus on language and writing presents bilingual learners with many opportunities to learn both the content and the language of the unit thereby reinforcing their understanding of new concepts and providing them with the linguistic resources to express their learning in writing.

About the Speaker

Tracy Hodgson-Drysdale has taught in various capacities over the past seventeen years in Canada and the United States. Her roles have including working as an elementary generalist, a reading specialist, and an instructor teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses in language, literacy and bilingualism. She is currently a part-time professor at Lesley University’s Graduate School of Education where she teaches online courses for the Language and Literacy Division.

She completed her dissertation at Boston College in Curriculum and Instruction in 2013 with a focus on bilingualism and teaching writing in elementary school science. She has participated in three research teams over the last seven years, which focused on creating genre-based writing interventions and curricula designed to improve instruction for bilingual learners. Her current research interests include teaching writing across content areas, systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and genre theory, bilingual learners and culturally responsive teaching.

Recently, Tracy authored the article “Concepts and language: Developing knowledge in science”, published in Linguistics and Education in 2014. She has also written a chapter for a book on teaching bilingual learners, to be published in 2016, and has an article under review with the Journal of Second Language Writing. She has also co-authored two articles with teachers that were published in Science and Children. Her current projects include co-authoring two articles on teaching writing informed by SFL.

This event is sponsored by the School of Linguistics and Language Studies