New Realms for Writing

Inspire Student Expression With Digital Age Formats

By Michele Haiken

ISBN: 9781564847904

Published: June 2019

Length: 144 pages

Table of Contents

Read excerpt

Interview with author on BAM Radio

Read about the book in THE JOURNAL

“Michele reminds us that ‘students must read and write in school with real purpose, think critically, and formulate their own questions.’ No technology will do that. But, as a teacher, Michele will help you figure out how best to do these things with your own students.” 

-- from the foreword by Troy Hicks

Boost students’ communication and writing skills, with strategies and examples to help them craft their own stories, tell their truth and be heard.

The world should be the driving curriculum in our schools. Assignments should be authentic, have real-world connections and encourage students to create meaningful work. Accordingly, content created and read in school should go beyond books and include podcasts, popular culture, games and films to help students build writing and critical-thinking skills.

New Realms for Writing features a variety of teacher-created resources and samples of student work to illustrate how teachers can design inquiry units for their content area that are authentic and engage students while developing digital age skills.

This book: 

• Provides insights into creating and using innovative materials and texts that are differentiated and personalized to student learners, specifically for teaching writing. 
• Provides pedagogy and lesson ideas that promote student choice and voice within units of study that make cross-curricular connections.
• Offers tips to ensure that tech tools support student learning -- while not driving it.

There are many great tech tools to support learning, but the conversation must center on thoughtful teaching and purpose, with tech supporting robust pedagogy. This book offers strategies and lesson ideas to help teachers make sure their instruction does just that.

Audience: K-12 educators

About the Author

Michele Haiken is a literacy teacher at Rye Middle School in Rye, New York, and an adjunct professor at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York. She’s a frequent speaker and has written or contributed to multiple books, including Teaching Literacy in the Digital Age, Personalized Reading and Gamify Literacy. 

Media Review/Interview

“As she's developing new units or lessons, [Haiken] constantly asks herself, 'Would I want to be sitting in my class every day? Would I want to do a project like this?' Her advice to others: 'Be creative and get outside of our traditional thinking space. Yes, there is so much technology out there that it can be overwhelming, but if you home in on a tool and think about how it can help you to boost your students' writing and literacy skills and it fits well into your unit or the ideas that you're teaching, explore and work with the students to try it out and have fun.'”  -- Dian Schaffhauser, THE JOURNAL