Printer-friendly versionOverarching Objectives
Some of the key social justice concepts addressed by these lessons include
- the meaning and impact of stereotypes;
- the impact of unequal representation and access;
- the effect of biased messages about how to view ourselves and others; and
- the importance of developing independent voices as activists.
Some of the key language arts skills addressed by these lessons include
- using oral and written language to express a point of view;
- putting words and images together to comprehend a cohesive message;
- considering an author or a creator’s purpose in conceiving a specific text; and
- synthesizing information from a variety of sources.
Essential Questions
Each lesson addresses three specific essential questions. In addition to these, the series asks students
- What is the purpose of advertising?
- How can we ‘read’ advertisements actively and critically?
- What are stereotypes, and how can we work to fight against them?
- What is representation, and why is it important?
- What is the relationship between advertisements and fairness or justice, and how can we play a role in this relationship?
Mini-Lessons
Part One: Introduction
Students discuss the purpose of advertisements and their relationship to social justice.
Lesson 2: Reading Advertisements
Students construct strategies for reading advertisements critically to use in other lessons.
Part Two: Advertising and Stereotypes
Lesson 3: Stereotypes in Advertising
Students learn about stereotypes and examine how advertising can influence them.
Lesson 4: How Advertising Perpetuates Stereotypes
Students analyze advertisements that perpetuate stereotypes.
Lesson 5: How Advertising Fights Stereotypes
Students will create advertisements that fight against commonly held stereotypes.
Part Three: The Issue of Representation
Lesson 6: Representation in Advertising
Students discus representation and why it matters in advertisements.
Students analyze how some groups are over-represented in advertisements (and how some are excluded).
Lesson 8: How Are We ‘Supposed’ to Be
Students consider how advertisements represent families.
Students debate diversity in advertisements.
Part Four: Bias in Advertising
Lesson 10: The Impact of Bias in Advertising
Students examine the messages advertisements send about people who are different.
Lesson 11: Minimizing the Impact of Biases
Students develop strategies to view advertisements without succumbing to biased messages.
Part Five: Advertising Activism
Students write letters to advertisers.
Lesson 13: Advertisements of Our Own
Students design and create a social justice advertising campaign.
Standards
Activities address the following Common Core Anchor Standards for Language Arts
1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.
6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.1
8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.
