Resources for Teachers - Marketing & Consumerism

Watching the Elections - Lesson

In this lesson students look at how elections are media events.

Kids, Alcohol and Advertising - Lesson 2: Young Drinkers

In this lesson, students learn why the alcohol industry needs replacement (new) drinkers and how it exploits the needs and desires of young people in order to foster brand loyalty.

Advertising techniques

How advertising works… even when you don’t realize it. Just letting kids know they’re being advertised to is not enough to make them engage critically with an ad. Helping kids recognize how advertising works is essential, too. Even young kids can become more skeptical about marketing when they’re told why and how ads try to persuade them.

Media Literacy for the 2024 Provincial General Election in British Columbia

This lesson package is designed to be modular, allowing teachers to choose activities that are most relevant to their students. The lesson includes: an opening “minds on” activity that introduces essential concepts of election-related misinformation, helps students retrieve prior knowledge, and shows the relevance of the topic;  several activities which teachers can choose from based on the needs and context of their classes; a closing activity that introduces students to different strategies for verifying election-related information, including the idea of turning to a best single source (in this case, Elections BC). They then learn and practice engaging in active citizenship by responding to election-related disinformation.

Marketing to Teens: Alternate Ads

In this lesson students look at less obvious methods used by advertisers to reach consumers. Students first learn about “soft sell” ads that don’t make specific claims about a product. They then consider reasons why companies choose to use them over hard sell techniques. They will then focus specifically on why various companies might choose to use soft sell techniques as subtle forms of advertising in groups.