I was reading the blog of a presenter at C&W and found his “12 Beliefs About Teaching Writing.”
Major assignments must have links between them. A project begun in an earlier essay should lead in some way to a later essay. Students’ written reflections on their projects should foreground those links, and instructors’ written responses to student writing must acknowledge and foster those links, as well as acknowledging students’ writings as trajectories rather than as strings of individual performances.
This is one I haven’t really integrated into my classroom, except with the compare/contrast paper and the research project. Perhaps I need to think this through again.
Er, Casey, is this outing you? Should I take your name off my blog posts?
The idea of sequencing assignments to promote learning content is a major theme in William F. Irmscher’s 1979 book Teaching Expository Writing. Some of his examples are worth a look. I was impressed enough to buy a used copy for 1¢ + S&H!