Overview
When was the last time you shook up your writing instruction? In Renew!: Become a Better and More Authentic Writing Teacher, author Shawna Coppola builds on the premise that our students are ever-changing, and so is our collective knowledge base. Instructional strategies that have worked in the past may need to evolve accordingly. Coppola guides K-8 writing teachers with a three-part framework for Rethinking, Revising, and Renewing their approach'sand finding new energy along the way. Using the framework, Renew! examines the most pervasive educational practices in writing instruction and poses questions that guide teachers to revise those practices to ensure they are effective for all students. Coppola believes the work is challenging, yet critical, referencing R. Buckminster Fuller's Knowledge Doubling Curve: According to Fuller's paradigm, the amount of time it takes for us to increase our collective knowledge base by 100 percent will continue to shrink the older we get. If this is true'sor even close to being true'show can we, as educators, ever feel satisfied with teaching our students the same concepts, using the same methodologies and practices, that we have in the past? The book offers a road map for renewing key aspects of our practice, including:
- How we teach the writing process: Over time and frequent usage, some of our favorite teaching strategies can become rigid. Coppola gives a candid account of how her enthusiasm for the writing process as an undergraduate led her to teach writing for years as a set of pre-determined steps. Now she teaches that there are many variations of the writing process, and many twists and turns along the path. One foundational strategy used is opening up her own process as a writer'sand her writer's notebook'sto students and encouraging them to think and talk about their process with classmates.
- What we mean by Writing: Coppola argues that drawing isn't an accompaniment to writing; it is writing. Its another form of composition through which students can tell stories, convey ideas, and engage readers. The book is full of visual compositions by students as well as Shawna's wonderfully simple and evocative sketches from her writer's notebook.
- The tools we use to teach writing: The most ubiquitous tools used to teach writing'sfrom anchor charts to graphic organizers to sentence starters etc.'stend to be teacher-centric rather than student-centric. Renew! invites students into the process of constructing tools that are meaningful and helpful to them. The book includes a range of examples of tools built collaboratively with students.
- How we assess and evaluate student writing: Coppola draws a distinction between assessment'swhich should be an interactive conversation with students'sand evaluation, which is about judging and categorizing what students know and can do. Renew! offers a range of examples and resources that illustrate effective feedback for student writers, including online videos of teacher-student and peer-to-peer conferences.
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