Media Smarts
Newspaper Ads
Just how free is the press? After examining the advertising and propaganda techniques used by advertisers, class members consider the influence advertisers may exert over newspaper content.
Media Smarts
Advertising All Around Us
Here is a set of advertising lessons, explore language, techniques, representation, and target audiences. Discuss the impact ads have on our daily lives. What do we see and how do they make us feel? Observe ads from around the world and...
Media Smarts
Looking at Food Advertising
Tony The Tiger, The HoneyComb Kid, The Nestle Quick Bunny. As part of a study of the methods advertisers use to sell foods and how this advertising effects their food choices, kids create their own spokescharacter and/or jingle for one...
Media Smarts
Tobacco Labels
Adolescents compare and assess the efficacy of tobacco product health warning labels from around the world. In groups, they invent warnings and create labels that would be effective for teens and children. Discussion covers advertising...
Nemours KidsHealth
Media Literacy and Health: Grades 9-12
An essential skill for 21st-century learners is to know how to find reliable sources of information. Two activities help high schoolers learn how to determine the reliability of health-related news from websites, TV, magazines, or...
Curated OER
Media Awareness: the Basics of Advertising
Students explore marketing techniques. In this media awareness lesson plan, students watch instructor-selected advertising and identify the marketing techniques used in each of them. Students then create advertisements for products.
Curated OER
Health Education: Advertising
Fourth graders become conscientious consumers. In this personal health lesson plan, 4th graders analyze techniques used in advertising health-related products and services.
Media Smarts
Who's on First? Alcohol Advertising and Sports
Middle schoolers examine how alcohol companies use sponsorship of sports to promote their products. They complete a survey, analyze the results, and research the sports sponsorship portfolios of five beer companies.
Curated OER
Health: Media and Body Image
Fifth graders examine the influence of advertisements on body image and purchasing. They discuss the psychology behind the ads and working in groups cut out words in magazine advertisements that could entice them to buy the product. ...
Curated OER
Ads R Us: Understanding Target Marketing
Students build awareness of the way in which advertisers shape ads for specific audiences. They analyze the target audience intended for an advertisement and create their own targeted ads to demonstrate their understanding. They discuss...
Media Smarts
Truth or Money
Two compelling texts about tobacco companies' influence over editorial content in print media introduce readers to the concept of advertising censorship. After study and discussion, class members compose a mock "final column" by a...
Nemours KidsHealth
Alcohol: Grades 9-12
Two activities ask high schoolers to consider the role of alcohol culture in their lives. First, groups analyze the types of appeals used in newspaper ads for alcoholic drinks and compare those images with what they have observed....
Curated OER
Advertising for Healthy Habits
Young scholars create ads based on provided topic. In this digital art lesson, students role play as graphic designers working on a project for a client. They research about certain health issues and prepare a public poster about it.
Nemours KidsHealth
Food Labels: Grades 9-12
Check the label! That's the big idea in a lesson about using the nutrition facts on food labels rather than advertising hype to make healthy choices about what to eat. After reading background articles and learning how to read nutrition...
Curated OER
"He Shoots, He Scores": Alcohol Advertising and Sports
Students explore the ways that companies use sporting events to sell products. They show and tell to share what they love about sports. They discuss how advertisers, particulary alcohol advertisers, feature sports figures.
Curated OER
Lab Experiments in Nutrition
Looking for authentic hands-on nutritional experiments? High schoolers will perform experiments to test for the presence of vitamin C in several solutions as well as the effect of caffeine on Daphnia. They will also consider the...
Curated OER
Private & Public
Some disabled students have a difficulty understanding what is and what is not publicly appropriate behavior. Help them build healthy social skills by defining public and private behaviors, labeling public and private places, and...
Media Smarts
Packaging Tricks
As part of their study of how advertisers use various techniques to influence consumers, kids examine the design, the promotions, and the product placement in the packaging of their favorite foods.
Curated OER
The Human Body
Seventh graders explore the basic body systems and design a commercial advertising one of them. They also create a body systems handbook.
Health Smart Virginia
How the Namuhs Learned to be Content with Who They Are
The Namuhs have a lot to teach humans how idealized images presented in advertising can impact self-perception and self-worth. After brainstorming 10 traits the media sets as the perfect body, class members read a short story about the...
Curated OER
Eating Under the Rainbow
Students investigate the lure of snack-food advertisements to explain how snacks can fit into a healthy diet.
PBS
Stories of Painkiller Addiction: Prescription Drug Abuse Awareness Campaign
The I-STOP law was designed to regulate the distribution and tracking of prescription drugs. After reading an article about its signing and implementation, middle and high schoolers work together to come up with their own ideas for an...
Teachers.net
Smoking and the Advertising Industry (Middle, other) SMOK_AD.DOC
Students study advertising techniques and the effects of smoking on health.
Curated OER
The Health Risks of Smoking Tobacco
Young scholars discuss the consequences of smoking. In this smoking lesson, students research ads that promote smoking. The young scholars will then make an ad that is truly reflective of smoking.