SLANSW Conference Day
Venue: State Library of NSW, Macquarie Street, Sydney
This conference will feature authors, academics, teachers and teacher librarians who have expertise in various aspects of reading across the curriculum and Indigenous language and culture. The purpose of the program is to share research into reading and language, and to provide practical applications of strategies for engaging students in reading and developing a broader understanding of language.
Specific attention will be given to the conference theme across all stages, with a focus on developing reading programs that address language and culture, with direct links to the curriculum. The keynote and concurrent sessions will provide research and strategies to assist in the creation of opportunities for students to develop an understanding of and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and languages.
Other concurrent sessions will address how reading programs can be designed to meet the needs of students with varying levels of physical, social and intellectual development. The structure of the program and the range of presenters provides participants with learning opportunities targeted to their professional needs.
Details of the full conference program are available here.
Featured speakers include
Alex Wharton
Alex Wharton is Head of Middle School at Carinya Christian School, Gunnedah. Alex is an English Teacher and has written extensively with regards to teaching and learning resources for subject English, and has presented at local, state and national conferences for English Teachers.
In 2014, Alex won a Premier’s English Teachers Association Scholarship and travelled to the United States in 2015 to research famous American novels including To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men and Catcher in the Rye.
In 2019, Alex became the Copyright Agency’s first Reading Australia Fellow for Teacher of English and Literacy. Alex’s research project is titled The Missing Peace and will be an analysis of the Australian literary representation surrounding the First Nation and non-First Nation colonial experience. In doing so, Alex will explore best practice around teaching Indigenous literature in the classroom.
Kirli Saunders
Kirli is an award winning, international children’s author, poet, emerging playwright and artist. She manages Poetry in First Languages and Poetic Learning at Red Room Poetry. Her picture books include Prime Ministers Literary Award Shortlisted, CBCA nominated and internationally published, The Incredible Freedom Machines (Scholastic) and forthcoming, Our Dreaming and Happy Every After (Scholastic) and Afloat (Hardie Grant).
Her poetry collection, Kindred was Highly Commended in Black&Write 2018. Kirli was the inaugural winner of the WA 2019 Premiers Literary Awards – Daisy Utemmorah Award, and is currently working on her verse novel, Mother Speaks (Magabala). She is the winner of the University of Canberra ATSI Poetry Prize 2019 and was Runner-up in the Nakata Brophy Prize 2018. Kirli was guest writer for the Australian Embassy, touring Jakarta and Bali in 2019 and will tour China in 2020 for Australia Writes. Her poetry has been published by a number of journals (Cordite, Overland, Planthunter) and commissioned for public art in Melbourne and Sydney.
Kirli is co-writing her first play, Dead Horse Gap (Merrigong Theatre) and her artwork, Intergenerational Healing – Returning was recently shortlisted for the Shoalhaven Gallery Contemporary NOW Art Prize. She has also exhibited with Curio Gallery.
In 2019, Kirli performed at NT Writers Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival, Sydney Writers Festival, Enough Said, Word in Hand, PULLiiMA Indigenous Languages Conference and over 60 schools in NSW, WA, and NT. Kirli returned as writer in residence at The Literature Centre, Fremantle this year where she performed The Incredible Freedom Machines with Matt Ottley and the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra in rural WA, at Coco’s Island and Christmas Island.
Other confirmed presenters for the conference include:
Melissa Jackson
State Library of NSW, Librarian Indigenous Engagement
Heather Zubek
Heather is a freelance writer and educator, based in Melbourne. Heather is conscious of the fact that early readers make life-long readers and takes every opportunity to play matchmaker with books and children. She is also a read aloud advocate who delights in reading to children and adults and in helping parents turn their children into enthusiastic readers.
Janet Agostino
Co-ordinator of Diverse Learners, Our Lady of Good Counsel, Forestville
Judith Wakeman
Judith is a Melbourne based Teacher Librarian who recognises the special relationships many students build with their school librarian, helping them view their library as a safe place – a learning environment where they are able to explore ideas and be themselves free of judgement from others. She has studied Bibliotherapy and Youth Mental Health First Aid, and believes that the school library can be one of many exciting and colorful pathways to building and maintaining good mental health and resilience for young people struggling with life pressures.
Winnie Mak
Teacher Librarian, Botany Public School & Kingsgrove Public School
Louise Sherwin-Stark
Chair, Australian Reading Hour Committee
Thank you to our event sponsor: The State Library of NSW
