Class/Discipline Addressed: I choose to talk about the Conflict and Genocide Unit that we covered in World History class. This unit was also joined or integrated wit Language Arts class.

 

Claim of Growth: Through this unit, I grew in my ability to persuade a selective audience by using words or visuals to support my perspective.

 

What the growth looks like: At first, I was able to persuade an audience by using words, but I had to be provided a template that clearly led me to accurately defend my position. Now, I can actually defend my own position by gathering up information that can support it and successfully counter other perspectives as well. In addition, I have learned to use visuals and enhance them with a hidden metaphor that can convey a persuasive message to the viewer of my poster, painting, etc.

 

Evidence from other classes: I also grew in this skill in my Language Arts class. I have written many pieces of writhing in Language Arts class that can express a certain message but the most noticeable piece linked with this growth, is the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict essay, which focused on researching facts and using that information to defend my position. I even use this growth in Biology as well because in Biology I have to use Claim, Evidence, and most importantly Reason to logically defend my argument.

 

Learning endeavor: The learning endeavor that urged my growth was the Conflict and Genocide unit we learned in World History.

 

Purpose, process, and products: The purpose of the unit was to educate us on what the word “genocide” means and how there has been multiple instances of genocide in the world besides the Holocaust. It was also taught to us to educate us on how the world and its organizations, like the UN, handled these situations.

The process we went through was that we first listed what we already knew about genocide, then learned about the specific genocide or conflict (in this order: Armenian, Holocaust, Cambodian, Bosnian, Rwandan, Northern Ireland Conflict, and Israel and Palestinian Conflict), put the information we learned about the genocide in our “Understanding Genocide” Prezi’s, recorded that same information in our Genocide and Conflict packet, used quotes from our Language Art books to find connections, covered the Israel-Palestinian Conflict extensively, wrote an persuasive essay defending our opinion on the conflict, and finally made a poster that displayed a visual metaphor that should be connected with one or other genocides/conflicts we learned about. Products that were made during this process was the “Understanding Genocide” Prezi, Genocide/Conflict statics packet, Israeli- Palestinian Conflict persuasive essay, and Conflict and Genocide poster.

 

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict persuasive essay explanation: In the letter, we used primary and secondary documents to persuade our Congress Representative on our personal perspective and solution to the conflict. We had to use documents like the Balfour Declaration and UN Security Council Resolution 242, which are very important and they further aid us in conveying our position.  The “gist” of the assignment was for us, as students, to be able to talk intelligently on the topic and use solid evidence to defend our personal views and counter opposing opinions as well.

 

Visual Metaphor Poster: The poster use persuasion through more of artistic means instead focusing on words. My partner and I decided to use the Auschwitz gate from the Holocaust, replace the bars with the names of other genocides (and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict), and had the saying: Was it Really “Never Again”. The reason why we chose to use the saying and image because we wanted to educate our audience on how the UN failed to keep their promise on preventing genocide after the Holocaust. We also included a statistic to further sway our audience to support me and my partner’s perspective.

 

How artifacts show growth: The artifacts that I previously mentioned support my growth because in both of these artifacts I had to grow in my persuasion skills in order to complete the products to the best of my ability. For example, for the letter I had to use historic texts and the knowledge I gained from the unit to accurately and intelligently communicating to my representative the seriousness of the conflict and explaining my idea to the solution to the altercation. For the poster, I had to use the combination of words and a image to provide a visual metaphor and do it in a way that is relatable and persuasive, so the audience would be more incline to agree with me and my partners overall message for the poster.

 

Implication for the future growth: Implications that can come from this growth are that I can write better persuasive based assignments in the future and strengthen my ability to persuade people through different means of media. I also can use this persuasion growth to help me for future standardized test that might involve me writing a persuasive piece of writing.

How I will continue to grow: The Conflict and Genocide unit brought out my first growth but getting involved with more units and lessons like that one will only further develop my skills. The more I’m required to use the means of persuasion to complete an assignment the more my knowledge will increase in that field. I can always practice on writing prompts that assess my abilities to truly utilize and gain more skills in writing an effective piece of persuasive text.