Persuasion through Public Service Announcements

I started off the year with extremely reluctant writers.  I knew that to survive I would need a way to motivate and engage my students.  Digital writing has reignited a passion for writing in my classroom. 

Public Service Announcement commercials was one of my most successful projects this year.  The idea came to me this summer while reading Troy Hick’s The Digital Writing Workshop.  I started planning this project out and wondered….

• What are my students going to see as a public service?
• Do I really have the means and manpower to pull this off?

My students were shown many mentor texts (PSA’s from the 90’s), we discussed persuasive techniques, got into groups, wrote a script and started filming.

I was astonished with the end products and my student’s cultural wealth.

Student Samples:

http://vimeo.com/24136639

http://vimeo.com/24136632