Advertising Literacy

Each year my students' reading class is centered around a common theme. This year's theme for my 5th/6th grade reading class is Changes. The students spent the first trimester focusing on changes in self, the second trimester focused on changes in society (human and civil rights), and this last trimester we are studying changes in science and technology. I chose to focus on advertisement literacy since technology has had a large effect on advertising and marketing throughout the years. I knew I would also be able to incorporate many crtical thinking skills into the lessons, such as making inferences and analyzing & synthezing visuals and text.

We are about two weeks into our unit now. The students started the unit by learning the meaning of the word, advertising, and identifying types of ads. As a class we discussed what it takes to be a smart consumer. The students were put into groups of four, and were given four different ads. Their job was to compare and constrast the ads as a group. They also needed to analyze the ads in order to determine the advertiser's point of view.

The second activity the students participated in got into the nitty gritty of adverstising literacy. The students analyzed adverstisements in order to understand the message(s) being conveyed in different ads, to determine the purpose(s) behind specific ads, and to identify techniques the advertisers use to accomplish their purpose. The students were given stacks of magazines and newspapers to browse through. They chose three that caught their attention, and answered the following questions about each of the ads.

• Who is responsible for the ad?
• What audience is the ad targeting? What makes you think so?
• What techniques does the ad use?
• What does the ad say or suggest about product or service?
• What does the ad say about the people who buy the product or service?  

When I felt the students had a strong understanding about advertising and how it works, I knew I could move into discussing changes in advertising throughout the years. They could use their new knowledge about advertising to help them understand and examine how technology has played a major role in it's transformation. The students read the online article The History and Evolution of Advertising, and answered depth and complexity questions to go along with the article. We will soon discuss their responses to these questions as a class. I hope our discussion will lead into our next topic which will be how the changes in advertising have positively and negatively effected our society.