ABSTRACT 

The purpose of our children's book is to simplify the complex issues of climate change and present short and long-term solutions to our audiences, specifically young children. The book utilizes visuals and language to convey the message of climate change to younger audiences. The use of multimodality allows the information to be portrayed in different ways that are comprehensible for a younger audience. We used detailed pictures and clear language to illustrate the harm of animal agriculture on a farm. The combination of illustrations and transparent wording allows young readers to match the issue from the outside world and connect it with visual representations.  Children’s books are a great way to have younger readers begin to understand real life problems. The main character in the story, Franny, grows up on a farm and she sees how animal agriculture affects the environment around her. These detrimental impacts include deforestation, effects on the aquatic ecosystem, methane gas released from farm animals, water consumption and animal exploitation to produce animal products. All of these situations contribute to problems with the environment and are doing more harm than good. Based on our research, eating less meat and consuming less animal products, reduces the negative environmental impacts of animal agriculture. In the end, Franny makes a personal decision to eat less meat and consume less animal products to minimize the harmful effects on the environment. Teaching children about complex environmental issues at a young age can help shape the           future to be more environment-friendly.
 

POSTER:


Kate's Reflection 

Although I did develop my rhetorical writing skills a lot throughout this semester, I think I still have progress to make as a writer. In our final creative project. I had to use rhetorical writing skills to communicate information to a specific audience. I think I can develop my writing by applying these rhetorical skills to other works that I create in the future. I want to incorporate rhetorical devices into my writing such as logic, audience, and emotion. I think my writing sounds repetitive and by incorporating these devices I can enhance my work. 
If time allowed, I would work more on our creative project. I loved what we produced but I think the drawings could be more crisp and clean. They also turned out dull in the book and with more color, they would have really popped. The bright drawings did not shine which I would love to fix. In the end, I loved our final product and I think we did a fantastic job given the circumstances. I would not change our poster because I really liked our final product. Even though I would want to work on the creative project more, I think what we produced was amazing. 

I thought it was beneficial to produce both creative and scholarly work because I got to draw and have fun while still producing a knowledgeable and informative project. Creating a children’s book allowed me to develop my creative skills. I got to draw and color which was very fun and brought me back to my childhood roots. I feel like most college courses lack creativity in assignments so this was a good way to use my imagination to produce a project that I am proud of.  I also enjoyed making the poster because we got to take our research and make an organized product. I liked making the layout and choosing the poster design. This more formal assignment helped my group and I summarize the complex data into comprehensible information for our children's book. The use of both creative and scholarly assignments made this class very enjoyable because I got to be inventive. Overall, I liked being an author of both creative and scholarly work for two different public audiences as opposed to just a classroom rubric.

This class has helped me expand my rhetorical skills. Now I can take information and develop an argument to persuade my audience through tone, voice, language, genre, style, and form. Previous to taking this class, my writing skills were average. After learning about persuasion through rhetoric, I have been able to compose persuasive texts for specific audiences. 

 I enjoyed this class because we got to take our hard work and make a tangible product. I thought it was beneficial to present our work to scholarly audiences. This helped me develop my public speaking skills. I liked the student symposium because we got to have outside sources see our projects. I thought I was going to be nervous at the symposium because there were “authority figures” present but our one visitor was very nice and listened to our presentation. I was scared that he would ask questions that I was not able to answer or comprehend but his questions were valid and answerable. We were stunned when Dr. Bressman came into our room and offered to give us connections with the Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation. We are going to use this opportunity to try and get our book recognized beyond our class. The student symposium was fun and I am glad I got to present my final creation to a scholarly audience. All in all, I enjoyed taking this course and I will apply the lessons learned to future writing.

Lexi's Reflection  
This class led to many new opportunities and I was able to expand on my skills in rhetoric and composition in the end. Taking this class, my expectations were different at first then what they actually were. I initially thought this class would consist mostly of writing essays and annotating books or stories. However, instead of completing the typical English assignments, I was able to branch out and discover more than just writing for essays and assignments. 

I really enjoyed creating our project for this class, especially making the children’s book, because it was a unique process. If I could go further with this project I definitely would. I love being creative and thinking outside the usual norms with school assignments. So being assigned a children’s book on a topic I am passionate about, was something I was very excited to create. Going further with the book would offer me more time to expand on the project. There were some challenges along the way with creating the book, like figuring out how to create the pictures for the story, and writing the literature in a context that a young audience can comprehend. Luckily, with the collaboration of my group, we were able to work cohesively and find the right approach to put the project all together. And in the end, we were proud of the finishing product. Since this was a big project and we worked on it throughout the entire semester, I learned how to work well in a group setting. I usually struggle with this because I prefer to be independent in my school work. So this was a challenge in itself for me, but as the semester went on and my group and I continued to work on our project further, I learned how to work effectively with my other classmates. Communication was a very important part of this process. Our group would have meetings weekly and consistently message about the next steps for the project and the book. Because of our communication and our effectiveness when working on the project together, I think is why we had the success we did, and I am proud of that. With the accomplishment of writing the children’s book, our group is even hoping to take a step further with it. At the Scholar Symposium we were offered the opportunity to receive feedback for the book and possibly try to get it out there for kids to read and be educated on our topic. This was a huge accomplishment for my group, and was a goal that we thought would not be attainable. Hopefully if we continue further with this opportunity, our message can be reached out to even more people. 

When I first went into this class, I did not feel confident in my writing when it came to rhetoric and composition. Now after completing all the assignments and the creative project, I have more trust in my writing. Learning more as a writer and composer this semester, I think has opened more doors for me. Creating short stories for children could be something I am passionate about and is a craft that I have now discovered that I did not know before. Although there is still a lot of improvement ahead with my writing skills, this class has made me feel more comfortable in writing and I hope to continue to improve these skills. 

Josh's Reflection

I learned a lot about writing with rhetoric this semester. Specially, considering Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Although I didn’t necessarily display my writing improvements in this particular class, due to the fact that we weren’t assigned huge academic papers, I was able to utilize my developing skills in my other classes. Creating a rhetoric has been such an important aspect of my papers and I hope to continue how to effectively implement Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. 

If time were allowed, I would continue on my group project barring that my entire group wanted to as well. I feel this way because during the Chapman Symposium, a Dr. visited us and gave us excellent feedback and tips. Additionally, he had written a children’s book and was currently trying to get it published. He offered to write an introductory email the director of a group advocating for children’s environmental literacy, and we sent him our book so he may provide feedback. He did, and it was very positive! He told us that we might want to be more particular about the sources we cite, noting that PETA is often very controversial. Personally, I was nervous what he might say about the overall design since none of us are necessarily ‘artists’ but he gave very nice compliments about our pictures. If my group wanted to continue working it, I would too.

Creating both creative and scholarly work and presenting them each to different audiences was very interesting to experience. I often felt more relaxed when presenting my creative work, whereas I had to ‘stick to the script’ when presenting scholarly work. I enjoyed both, but they were definitely different.

I feel good viewing myself as a writer in and outside of Chapman. I consider writing to be best skill. I write frequently for all of my classes. I’m majoring in political science and economics which demands a lot of reading and writing. I’ve published an article before in my local paper in Northern California, and I enjoy writing op-eds for fun. However, designing a post and a children’s book were both very different than what I had done before. I’m grateful to have had the experience of making them. 

I am encouraged somewhat to engage with these larger communities again academically and creatively. Writing academic papers will be extremely important depending on what career path I choose to follow, especially within economics, and anything I write will hopefully be viewed by my peers. I also think it would be amazing to write non-fiction someday, so that would fulfil my creative engagement. 

Collaboration affected our process is very positive ways. Sometimes, there was enough to do where everyone would be doing the same things, or parts of the same thing. Other times, there wasn’t enough to do for everyone so one person had work on an aspect on their own. However, because every had to take on their own mini projects at some point they all balanced out. For example, Kate often drew most of the pictures for our book, I would photoshop them all and upload them digitally, and Lexi would often put together pieces of the project that we had created. Most times, however, we all tackled the same thing together. 

I would like to continue to grow in a group setting in particular. I often don’t have the opportunity to work in teams in my other classes, but I am a good teammate and enjoy working in groups a lot. I would still like to continue to work in groups and grow as much as I can. In fact, I do feel that this is the area that I have also grown the most. I think being online with Zoom had this affect. I have never been in a group project where it’s been entirely online, and I’ve had to make small adjustments for sure. Actually, I did have one group project last semester on Zoom, but it was super difficult to manage because it was a first for everyone. I think I’ve come a long way since then, and I have enjoyed the learning curve that Zoom has presented.