Quebec Competencies Chart - Looking at Food Advertising

Author: MediaSmarts
Level: Elementary Cycles One and Two
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Personal Development
Lesson Link: Looking at Food Advertising

Description: This lesson introduces students to the ways in which advertising can affect their food choices. Working from television and magazine ads, students discuss the techniques used by advertisers to engage kids with products. Specifically, they assess the importance of "spokes-characters" and jingles as effective ways to build relationships with kids. As a class exercise, they create jingles and spokes-characters themselves for the foods they enjoy.

This lesson satisfies the following English Language Arts Competencies from the Quebec Education Program:

Competency 1: To Read and Listen to Literary, Popular and Information-Based Texts

Essential Knowledges:

• Uses prior knowledge and personal experience of the content of a text
• Use of pictures and other graphic representations to interpret texts
• Uses knowledge of the relationships between sounds and written symbols
• Questions and talk with others to clarify and enrich interpretations
• Makes predictions, confirmations and inferences, when prompted by the teacher
• Makes connections to prior knowledge or to other texts
• Uses different reading strategies according to the text type
• Reads, listens to and views a range of self-selected and personally relevant texts that include:
  • Use of personal, social and cultural background and experiences to interpret texts
• Develops a personal response process in the context of a community of readers through:
  • Discussion of responses with others individually, on small groups and in the whole class
  • Recount of the story and, with guidance, outline of information in a text
  • Development of opinions on literary or popular texts
  • Sharing of responses with others to clarify meaning and enrich interpretation
  • Comparing own responses with those of others at a beginner's level
• Moves beyond the initial response through:
  • Responses to texts in a variety of ways that include talking, writing, the Arts, Media
  • Early attempts to explain own views of a text
  • Support for own views with references to the text in small and large group discussions
  • Discussions of structures and features of text and their impact on the reader
  • Discussion of the structures and features of a text and their influence on the meaning of a text
• Understands the influence of familiar structures and features on the meaning of text through:
  • Identification of some structures and features of familiar text types

Competency 2: To Write Self-expressive, Narrative and Information-based Texts

Essential Knowledges:

• Writes to a familiar audience in order to express meaning(s):
  • Specific structures and features of familiar texts incorporated into own writing
• Experiments with familiar structures and features of different text types in own writing:
  • Based on wide repertoire of texts read, viewed in the media and encountered in her/his community
  • To suit own purpose and audience
• Develops concept of writer's craft:
  • Guided discussion and questioning of texts read, listened to and produced in order to discover how the text works

Competency 3: To Represent Her/His Literacy in Different Media

Essential Knowledges:

• Uses the familiar images, signs, symbols and logos in his/her environment:
  • Recognition that they are made by people for different purposes
  • Recognition that they have meanings/messages
• Uses a repertoire of strategies to unlock messages/meanings in various media texts:
  • Use own questions in order to predict and confirm
  • Draw on prior experience with familiar media texts to understand how they are constructed
  • Rereads/looks again in order to clarify and extend understanding of a text
• Uses structures and features of texts:
  • Compare structures and features of familiar media texts
• Makes meaning of a media text by:
  • brainstorming
  • drawing on prior knowledge
  • sharing responses with peers
  • making connections to own experiences
  • returning to text
  • considering some of the functions of different, familiar media in relation to her/his understanding of the messages/meanings of a text
  • Using structures and features of the medium and text type in order to clarify meaning and explain her/his response, in collaboration with peers
  • Confirming, in collaboration with peers and teacher, that a media text can contain more than one meaning or message
• Consider some of the functions of the media through:
  • Collaboration with peers in pairs, small groups and whole class to clarify, decode and respond to media
  • Recognizing and naming of familiar media: television, radio, film, magazine, video, Internet, CD-ROM, children's magazines
  • Identifying her/his understanding of the messages/meanings of familiar media texts
  • Looking at some functions of different, familiar media in relation to her/his understanding of the messages/meanings of a text
• Real and Imaginary Worlds
  • Explores, through discussion, how characters, incidents and/or events in media texts that tell a story relate to her/his personal experiences
  • Returns to text to make sense of real and imaginary events
  • Explores and discusses the distinguishing features of real and imaginary events and characters
  • Tentatively interprets the feelings, thoughts and motives of real and imaginary characters in discussions with peers

Production Process

• Pre-Production:
  • Selection from the following text types (NOTE: The texts listed below are the same as those that are referred to throughout the Production Process):
    • Immersion in the text type to be produced and discussion of its structures and features
    • Creation of criteria for guiding production:
      • Initial consideration, based on her/his knowledge of familiar text type
    • Exploratory planning in a risk-taking environment that promotes trial and error and includes:
      • Writing of script, storyboard or rough draft of project
• Production:
  • Production of the texts listed above in groups with peers that:
    • Incorporate images, symbols, signs, logos and/or words to communicate meaning or message
    • Incorporate appropriate communication strategies and resources given the text type and the context
    • Function as narrative media text type
    • Function as popular media text type
    • Function as information-based text type:
      • Communicates information to familiar audience
      • Use mixed media, e.g. images and words
    • Use different technologies in order to construct a variety of text types:
      • Multimedia resources to support learning
      • An audio recorder to listen to or record a story
• Post Production:
  • In collaboration with group members:
    • Review of texts produced in order to focus on message/meaning

Competency 4: To Use Language to Communicate and Learn

Essential Knowledges:

• Shares information with peers and teacher
• Talks about responses and point of view with peers and teacher
• Asks and answers questions from peers and teacher
• Responds to the ideas and points of view of others with sensitivity and interest
• Talks through new ideas and information
• Shapes communication to achieve its purpose and to meet the needs of the listener/audience:
  • Use of emotional appeals, such as to a sense of justice, duty or patriotism
  • Use of loaded diction or words with positive or negative connotations
• Uses language (talk) for learning and thinking by:
  • Participating in collaborative reading, writing, viewing, visually representing, listening and talking activities:
    • Writing, producing and reading together
    • Planning of a project
    • Brainstorming
    • Planning of a cross-curricular or mixed media project
• Use of technology resources for collaborative writing, producing and publishing projects for peer audiences
• Listens critically