Workshop on Progressions:

A Structured Series

of Related Assignments

Leading to a Student Essay

Philosophical Structure

“In my beginning is my end…

In my end is my beginning.”

T.S. Eliot

“East Coker,” Four Quartets

Progressions as Inquiries

• Writing as Space not only to Articulate Ideas, but also as a Means of Locating Them

• Repetition with Variation

• Reiteration of Questions, with Evolving Contexts

• Try to Stay out of the Way!

What am I Trying to Do?

Goals of “Sport and American Culture”

• Content

• Skills

Goals of Unit on Boxing and Race

• Content

• Skills

Structuring the Assignments

• Affording students space for developing skills integral to writing the essay: See Assignments #1, #2, #7

• Affording students space for considering issues of content that will appear in the essay:

See Assignments #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7

• Using the classroom as a space to further enable the students’ developing ideas

Progressions as Sites of Reflection

• What’s Working/What isn’t?

• Suggestions for Revision?