Week 6 Blog

The three building block activities from week 1-5 are the Connect Big three annotations assignment, TIME article annotations, and the Connect conscious chimpanzees assignment. The “Big 3” annotation was helpful because it created a foundation for my LR essay. The annotations were extremely helpful while I was writing my essay and I would often come back to them and add on during my essay. The TIME article annotations were also helpful because it introduced me to a variety of researchers and topics on animals. I found the intelligence TIME article useful because Klugger gives some historical context on animal intelligence that I used for my introduction. Lastly, I found the “Conscious Chimpanzees” helpful because it was a good example and template on how to structure and organize a Literature Review essay.

I believe I met most of the requirements for the Literature Review Draft. Personally, the most difficult part for me was making connections between the sources, scientists, and studies. If I elaborate on how all the three sources are connected I think I can reach the minimum required words. In addition, I think I still need to work on my organization and structure because I still haven't found a way to introduce my Big 3 in a logical way. In contrast, I think my Introduction is the best aspect of my essay because it clearly mentions that my essay is a Literature Review and I state the purpose and significance behind chicken intelligence.

For my social media campaign I plan to take on the issue of Factory Farming. I chose this topic because it has a clear connection to the species I am writing about in my Literature Review. The organization I found was Farm Sanctuary and I found disturbing statistics about chickens in factory farming. According to the organization, in 2018, over 330 million hens were kept and expected to lay nearly 95 billion eggs and were often subject to mutilation, confinement, and abuse. In addition, every year, over 9 billion chickens are slaughtered for meat in the U.S, making them the most commonly killed domestic animal.