Resources for Teachers - Marketing & Consumerism

Favourite Sports and Athletes: Introduction to Sports Media - Lesson

This lesson develops a beginning awareness by students of how they feel towards, and respond to, different sports, and how the media represents athletics.

Healthy Food Web

In this lesson, students consider the role of snack foods in a healthy diet. The teacher then guides them on a tour of popular sites aimed at children, where the class identifies and classifies the advertising encountered there and looks at how the food products being advertised fit – or don’t fit – in the food groups found in the Canada Food Guide. Students then play the game Co-Co’s AdverSmarts to understand some of the techniques used by online food marketers and then create their own mock website promoting a healthy diet.

Packaging Tricks - Lesson

This lesson introduces students to the ways in which packaging is designed to attract kids.

Thinking Like a Tobacco Company: Grades 7-9 - Lesson

In this lesson, students learn how the tobacco industry targets the needs, wishes and desires of young people in order to sell cigarettes.

Gender Messages in Alcohol Advertising

In this lesson, students think critically about culturally inherited gender stereotypes, and explore how stereotypes about men and women are promoted and reinforced through the images and messages in alcohol ads. In the first half of the lesson, students discuss the nature of gender stereotypes, common male and female stereotypes, and where these stereotypes come from. Students also explore why adolescents are a particularly vulnerable group when it comes to stereotypes about gender and gender relationships. In the second half, students view and discuss alcohol ads that integrate gender stereotypes into messaging about drinking.