Blog Entry 8--Production

When thinking about production, I automatically think about the commercial project I assign my world literature students. As defined by Egbert (2009), "Production is a form of learning whereby students create a product, or a concrete artifact that is the focus of learning" (p. 182). The first unit in my world literature class focuses on persuasion both in their own writing and the writing/multimedia presentations of others including commercials on television. As the culminating project, the students write, direct, act in, film, and edit their own commercial which must contain the types of persuasion. Then, we watch the commercials in class, and the other students decide how persuasive they think each commercial is. By completing this project, the students have a much better grasp of how to write an effectively persuasive essay, and since the graduation test essay is persuasive, that is a skill that they all need in order to graduate from high school.