This book is a call to action for English and English Language Arts teachers who understand that data are not numbers alone, learning is impossible to quantify, and students are our very best teachers.
Explore how pedagogical documentation—the practice of making learning visible, capturing what is seen and heard, and then interpreting those findings in the company of our students and our colleagues—is a humbling and humane practice that grounds what we think we’ve come to know in the lived experiences of those we intend to serve.
Multimodal composition is a meaningful and critical way for students to tell their stories, make good arguments, and share their expertise in today’s world. This book illustrates the importance of making writing a multimodal endeavor in 6-12 workshops by providing peeks into the classrooms she teaches within. Chapters address what multimodal composition is, how to situate it in a writing workshop that is responsive to the unique needs of writers, how to handle curriculum design and assessment, and how to plan instruction.
Multimodal composition offers students a powerful and relevant way to share their stories, present strong arguments, and showcase their knowledge in today's world. This practical resource highlights the value of integrating multimodal approaches into K–5 writing workshops. Drawing from real classroom experiences, it explores what multimodal composition entails, how to embed it into responsive writing workshops, and how to approach curriculum design, assessment, and instructional planning.
Timely and accessible, this book offers tangible strategies that will help teachers plan and sustain writing workshop experiences that are responsive to the needs of their specific students. Consider why some writers may not show up the way we expect them to and how seeing and serving them differently and better improves learning outcomes for all--including teachers. Organized in three parts, this book reframes common narratives about resistant writers, empowers teachers to design, lead and refine their workshop, and provides a toolkit to do so.
This book is a call to action for English and English Language Arts teachers who understand that data are not numbers alone, learning is impossible to quantify, and students are our very best teachers.
Explore how pedagogical documentation—the practice of making learning visible, capturing what is seen and heard, and then interpreting those findings in the company of our students and our colleagues—is a humbling and humane practice that grounds what we think we’ve come to know in the lived experiences of those we intend to serve.
Bullying prevention and character building programs are deepening our awareness of how today’s kids struggle and how we might help, but many agree: They rarely create cultures where students and staff see and support one another well enough to truly flourish. This inspired me and my colleague Ellen Feig Gray to begin seeking out systems and educators who were getting things right. Read their stories, consider the approaches we value, and reach out to us on social media to push our thinking even more.
This little book--my first--remains near and dear to me and many of my closest teacher friends. It's the story of how the writers I served once-upon-a-time upended everything I thought I knew about teaching, learning, and learners. This is a quick read with a ton of heart and five tangible strategies that can help you turn your classroom into a makerspace. This is where my understanding of multimodal expression and composition began to take shape. Each book that followed is a new chapter in that story.
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