Teaching the New Writing

How has the teaching of writing changed in the 21st century? In this innovative guide, real teachers share their stories, successful practices, and vivid examples of their students’ creative and expository writing from online and multimedia projects, such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, electronic poetry, and more. The book also addresses assessment: How can teachers navigate the reductive definitions of writing in current national and statewide testing? What are teachers’ goals for their students’ learning—and how have they changed in the past 20 years? What is “the new writing”? How do digital writers revise and publish? What are the implications for the future of writing instruction?

The contributing authors are teachers from public, independent, rural, urban, and suburban schools. Whether writing instructors embrace digital literacy now or see the inevitable future ahead, this groundbreaking book (appropriate for the elementary through college level) will both instruct and inspire.

Anne Herrington, Professor, Department of English, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Site Director, Western Massachusetts Writing Project,; Kevin Hodgson, Sixth Grade Teacher at the William Norris Elementary School, Southampton, MA, and Technology Liaison for Western Massachusetts Writing Project; and Charles Moran, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and former Site Director, Western Massachusetts Writing Project.

“A book that invites reflection on one’s instructional practice. It is a book well worth reading.”

—TESOL Newsletter

“On every page, the contributors remind us that multimodal digital writing is here to stay.”
—Gail E. Hawisher, University of Illinois

“The millennia-old act of writing is reinventing and regenerating itself in the modern age, and teachers and their students are at the forefront of creating new knowledge in the teaching of writing. The sixteen educators collected here point toward the changes we must embrace.”
—From the Foreword by Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, Director, National Programs and Site Development for the National Writing Project

“One of the beauties of this collection is that it explores multimodal composition and assessment across levels of schooling, demonstrating that elementary, secondary, and collegiate teachers work best when they share understandings. Perhaps most importantly, this book reasserts a value on innovation and creativity within composition classrooms.”
—Cynthia L. Selfe, Humanities Distinguished Professor, Ohio State University