Trick or truth: Recognizing the hottest trends in advertising

Students will study commercials and advertising techniques, will work in groups to select different types of ads from magazines, and make a collage to illustrate one of the ten techniques advertisers use.

A lesson plan for grade 5 English Language Arts and Information Skills

By Kathy Idol

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Related topics

• Learn more about advertising, cooperative learning, language arts, media literacy, and read-alouds.

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Learning outcomes

Students will become familiar with the ten tricks of the trade advertisers use to sell their products. Students will be divided into groups and will search through magazines to find examples of ads that illustrate their assigned topic. Each group will create a collage on poster paper and explain how the examples they have chosen fit their topic.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

6 Hours

Materials/resources

• Video: Buy Me That! A Kids’ Survival Guide to TV Advertising, and discussion guide; available from Consumer’s Union or Library Video Company.
• Advertising: What They Don’t Want You to Know, by Pearl Gaskins: Scholastic Choices, 1993, pp. 26-29. Also available on SIRS Discover.
• Brown, Marc. Arthur’s TV Trouble. Little Brown, 1995.
• Video of commercials taped from television (fair use guidelines apply)
• Old magazines for cutting
• Scissors
• Glue
• Tagboard

Technology resources

• Television and VCR
• Computer with Internet access (teacher resource, not necessary for lesson)
• Overhead projector/write on transparencies

Pre-activities

Day 1

• Introduce the unit on television advertising by asking students who they think pays for the television shows that they watch everyday. Guide the discussion until students come up with the answer that advertisements & commercials pay for the majority of television programming that they watch.
• Ask students what influences their decisions about what they buy. Brainstorm together and come up with a list of answers to the question “Why do we buy what we buy”? Hopefully, some of the students will answer that advertisements are a major influence on their purchases.
• Read the book Arthur’s TV Trouble to the class. Discuss the idea of truthfulness in advertising. Do ads always tell the truth? Do the products always deliver what they promise? Is it legal for advertising to mislead consumers? Can advertisers present false or misleading information?

Activities

Day 2

Show the video Buy Me That! Discuss each section with the class.

Day 3

Divide the class into 7 cooperative learning groups. Make enough copies of the 7 sub-topics in the magazine article Advertising: What They Don’t Want You to Know for each person in the group. (Do not include the last section, 10 tricks of the trade, in this activity). Explain to the class that each group will read their section of the article, discuss it together, and develop a list of the five most important facts to be written on a transparency and shared with the rest of the class.

Day 4

• Pass out the rest of the article Ten Tricks of the Trade to everyone. Read and discuss each of the tricks advertisers use and see if students can think of an advertisement they have seen to illustrate this trick.
• Show commercials that have been taped from television and have students identify the different techniques used in the commercial. Show examples of print ads that use these techniques.

Day 5

Divide class into 10 groups and assign each group one of the 10 advertising techniques that have been discussed. Pass out a definition of each technique that has been typed in large print on a word processor. Students will look through old magazines and cut out examples of ads that fit the description of their technique.

Day 6

• Students will create a collage of ads to illustrate their technique. The collage should contain clear examples as well as the typed definition of each technique.
• Each group will share their collage and explain why each ad was chosen.

Assessment

Assessment will be based on three parts:

1. How well the finished student collage illustrates the defined technique.
2. Oral presentation to the class, explaining why each ad was chosen for the collage.
3. Understanding and recognition of different techniques used in commercials taped from television and other print ads.

Supplemental information

Educating the Consumer of Television, by John Splaine and Pam Splaine - Critical Thinking Press.

“How Sports Stars Sell.” Zillions Magazine, Feb./March, 1996.

Comments

This is an enjoyable and educational unit that I do each year with my fifth grade students in the media center. The topic of misleading advertising generates a great deal of discussion and stories from students and makes students realize that what you see isn’t necessarily what you get.