What do Halloween costumes say?
This activity, adaptable across grades, is designed to help students look critically at the Halloween costumes marketed to them.
The Price of Happiness - Lesson
In this lesson students answer a brief questionnaire related to self-image, self-esteem, and advertising, and then work as groups to create and act in mock television commercials that parody advertising techniques.
The Anatomy of Cool - Lesson
This lesson helps students become more aware of the media's role in determining what, and who, are perceived as being cool.
Watching the Elections - Lesson
In this lesson students look at how elections are media events.
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.
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.
Advertising All Around Us - Lesson
This teaching unit helps students to become more aware of the language and techniques used in print advertising, as well as the impact of advertising on their daily lives.
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.
Advertising and Male Violence
To make students aware of the ways in which male violence is used and promoted in advertising.
Body Positive Ads
This lesson helps students understand the relationship between body image and marketing by exploring Aerie and Dove’s body positive advertising campaigns. Students begin by reading about the impact that body positive advertising campaigns have on companies, as well as on their consumers. Students will then look at body positive ads aimed towards men and read research about how there is a lack of representation in this field. They will then deconstruct a series of traditional ads compared to body positive ones and discuss how marketers target "ideal beauty" messages to both men and women and whether they are effective. Finally, students will evaluate whether body positive ads are effective in general or not through discussion.