What do Halloween costumes say?
This activity, adaptable across grades, is designed to help students look critically at the Halloween costumes marketed to them.
Reading Media
In this lesson, students are introduced to the idea of “reading media” through a medium’s rules of notice and the maker’s framing choices of what to include and what to emphasize. After a modeled and then guided introduction to these ideas, students analyze a work to identify how it uses rules of notice and framing and consider what meaning these choices communicate.Mirror Image - Lesson
In this lesson, students analyze their own body image and consider what they wish they could change.
Alcohol on the Web - Lesson
In this lesson, students explore issues surrounding the marketing of alcoholic beverages on the Internet.
Junk Food Jungle
This lesson familiarizes children with how and why “junk food” is advertised to kids. The lesson starts with an introduction to advertising and a discussion of the gimmicks involved in food advertising to kids. Students discuss the various foods they see advertised in their daily lives versus the ones they don’t see, drawing important points from this data. With this information in mind, students complete an advertising log and also choose an advertisement and analyzing its subject matter in relation to what they have just learned.