Saturday 9th March, 10.45-11.45

Claire Acevedo Freelance
Reading to Learn: Pedagogy for Language and Literacy Acceleration (KEYNOTE)

This talk will examine the complex nature of the task of learning to read and write curriculum Genres through the lens of a Functional Model of Language. It will describe how this “linguistic gaze” has been developed by generations of educators in Australia to result in powerful pedagogies that combine the teaching of literacy with learning the curriculum at all stages of schooling; primary, secondary and tertiary. The principles of the latest developments in this pedagogy known as Reading to Learn will be explained with reference to successful cases of implementation.

Claire Acevedo is originally from Australia but has been based in London for the past 5 years. She currently provides a range of educational services, including teacher professional development, project management and curriculum resource development using multimedia to schools and education sectors across Europe. She is an experienced in-service teacher educator with a strong background in secondary school teaching and leadership which has been enhanced by experience in primary schools, adult education and the tertiary sector. Prior to taking up residence in the UK she worked in Australia as a consultant, provider of in-service education and a leader of large-scale education and research projects for an education authority for almost a decade. Her area of interest is literacy education and she has become an expert in using Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday) via “Sydney School” Genre pedagogy (Martin & Rothery) to improve reading and writing outcomes for under achieving students in all areas of the school curriculum. She has collaborated with Dr David Rose, University of Sydney, over more than a decade on the latest research into Genre based reading and she specialises in delivering the Reading to Learn literacy acceleration program to teachers and teacher educators.

Your favourite website:

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A gadget you can’t live without: my Mac – I love being connected to friends in Australia and the international learning community

Something you'd never throw away: a good book

Who or what inspires you? the teachers and students I work with

Useful teaching tool: highlighter pens for students

Your favourite lesson: a Detailed Reading lesson

Your favourite bit about your talk: explaining how to democratise the classroom

A lesson you've learnt while teaching: quality is more important than quantity