Tagged: Shawna Coppola

MiddleWeb’s Latest Back to School Posts

At MiddleWeb central in North Carolina, late summer means fresh back-to-school ideas from our bloggers and guest writers. Discover the wealth of teacher wisdom highlighted in one, easy-to-access post. We’ll add more posts as they arrive.

Expanding Our Idea of What Writing Should Be

In Writing, Redefined Shawna Coppola proposes alternatives (comics, podcasts, etc.) to traditional writing assignments to welcome the students who aren’t drawn to essays and book reviews. Literacy coach Pam Hamilton likes the ideas but wonders if teachers are ready for them.

Our Students Need a New Definition of Writing

The narrow “alphabetic” definition of writing found in many school classrooms actively disengages youth, says literacy author Shawna Coppola. Students simply prefer to compose using forms that incorporate visual, aural, and multimodal texts as a way to make or enhance meaning.

Ways to Become a More Authentic Writing Teacher

In Renew! Become a Better—and More Authentic—Writing Teacher, Shawna Coppola challenges us to reconsider three long-standing traditions of classroom writing instruction: a step-by-step writing process, graphic organizers, and the prioritization of words over images.

Rethink First-Day Writing to Better Engage Kids

Literacy coach Shawna Coppola urges us to rethink the familiar start-of-year writing activity – the personal narrative. In its place she suggests a framework of ideas to free students to write about what interests them. As we try new approaches, we also renew ourselves.