Reading Advertisements

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Objectives

Activities will help students:

• learn to conceptualize advertisements as texts that can and must be critically read.
• develop explicit strategies for reading and interpreting advertisements.
• recognize that advertisements are constructed messages.

Essential Questions

• How do you read an advertisement?
• How do you respond critically to the content and form of an advertisement?
• What are some motivations for creating advertisements?

Introduction

As students learn to be critical readers and thinkers, it is important that they learn how to read and respond to everyday media. Throughout the series, students will practice the strategies developed in this lesson.

Activities

1. Introduce the idea that advertisements are actually a form of text, just like books, movies and songs. Explain that, as with other texts, particular strategies can help us be good readers of advertisements. 

2. Provide students with a variety of advertisements directed at children. Some possible examples include 

LEGO® City 2012 Great Vehicles Commercial  

Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Minis 2011 Commercial

You could also print advertisements from websites that are popular with your class, or clip advertisements from children's magazines. As students examine the advertisements, ask them to pay attention to what they are doing as readers or viewers. For example, are they paying more attention to the pictures or the words? What kind of questions are they asking themselves that help the advertisement make sense? How are they forming opinions about the message the advertisement sends?

3. Bring the class back together and invite students to share the thought processes they experience while reading or watching the advertisements. Using student input, come up with a list of the steps necessary to critically read advertisements. For preliterate students, you might invite children to draw icons next to each step to help them remember what the list says. The list should be no longer than five steps, and it should include the following ideas:

• Pay attention to how words and images work together to communicate a message.
• Ask yourself what is the purpose of the advertisement.
• Ask yourself how the advertisement fulfills this purpose.
• Form a personal opinion about the advertisement and/or its message.

Students will likely come to these ideas on their own, though they may use much simpler language. Make your list on chart paper and display it prominently, so you can return to it in future lessons.

Reflection

The goal of these lessons is to teach children meta-cognitive awareness—awareness of their own thought processes. Ask students to remain aware of these processes as they encounter advertisements. Ask them to consider whether and how this lesson affected the way they read advertisements. Give them time to share their observations the next time they meet.