When was the last time you shook up your writing instruction? Shawna Coppola's new book is built on the premise that our students are ever-changing, and so is our global landscape. While there's nothing inherently wrong with relying on instructional strategies that have worked in the past, Shawna challenges writing teachers to rethink and revise their practice regularly--leading to the renewal of their professional lives. By looking at whether a practice matches students' needs and interests and examining whether it fits into what we know about children and learning and then adjusting our teaching accordingly, we can nurture students to become critical thinkers, problem solvers, and risk takers in the writing classroom and beyond. Shawna uses a framework of Rethinking, Revising, and Renewing to examine the most pervasive educational practices in writing instruction and to help ask the questions necessary in order to revise those practices so that they are effective for all students. She describes why it's vital to engage in this challenging work and goes on to examine some of the most ubiquitous practices, including what it means to write, the tools typically used to teach writing, and how writing is often assessed. She also offers ideas for how teachers can nurture their own writing lives and thus reinvigorate their instructional practice.

When most of us think of writing we think of pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. Shawna Coppola would challenge us, however, to expand our thinking of writing to go beyond strictly alphabetic and consider alternative forms of composition when assigning writing to students. By allowing ourselves and our students to redefine writing, we redefine what it means to be a writer. Writing, Redefined gives teachers the power to change what ""counts"" as writing in schools and classrooms, opening the doorway to students who may not consider themselves to be writers, but should and can. Shawna offers alternative, engaging writing assignments that are visual, aural, and multimodal that will involve all students, specifically the following: who prefer to compose using a wider array of forms and modalities; for whom so-called ""standard"" English is not the norm; who've been identified as dyslexic; whose cultural traditions lean heavily toward more aural forms of composition; and who are typically considered ""struggling"" writers. There is no question that composition in its most common, alphabetic form is important and worthy of frequent study, practice, and play, but broadening our definition of writing opens up an enormous range of possibilities for composing for all students. Even teachers who might feel unprepared to embrace such a new approach will find Shawna's specific suggestions and examples intriguing, perhaps irresistible.