Lesson 2: Persuasion

(2 days)

 

Standards:

MMSD third grade Social Studies Behavioral Science Standard

• Explain how the media may influence behaviors, opinions, and decisions.
• Demonstrates an ability to interact within a group while performing various group roles (i.e. organizing, planning, and goal setting).

 

 

Objectives:

• Students will analyze ads for specific advertising strategies that are meant to persuade an audience to buy their product/service and share their findings.
• Students will be responsible for a specific job when working cooperatively in small groups.
• Students will create a whole class bar graph of most common strategies found in advertisements.

 

Materials:

• Ads used yesterday in Lesson 1
• Kid Magazines
• Newspapers (ads from sections related to family, kids activities)
• access to a computer to look at online kid games� (all 3 for students to explore and choose an ad they want to analyze for presence of advertising persuasion strategies)
• prepare graph with strategies on bottom, number of times seen in ads on side
• signs with each of the strategies being explored in the lesson

 

Procedures:

Opening:

Yesterday we started with advertising.� The purpose of advertising is to persuade people to buy their product.�

• What does it mean to persuade?� �persuade is to convince or try to get someone to do something or believe something that you want them to�� Lots of ways to do this. When do people try to persuade others?�
• Civil Rights- tried to persuade our nation to support African American rights
• �write a letter to a senator to vote for specific bill
• tell someone in family will clean room another time�.all persuasion�

Advertisers create their ads by trying to persuade a specific audience using some strategies they have learned.�

• Descibed some ads yesterday, today going to look at some more ads that are aimed at kids your age that use specific strategies.� (as you explain each, put up a piece of posterboard with each term/idea on it)
• Amazing toys/sounds, lifelike
• Use of celebrities
• Heartstrings/family fun
• Excitement � never boring
• Bandwagon (everyone doing it)
• Put down their competitor
• Facts and figures
• Repetition
• Cartoon characters

Relate each of these to the ads we saw yesterday.� After each strategy ask students if that kind of strategy makes them want to buy the product, does it persuade them?�

This part may take 10 minutes

(If possible, let each group talk a little about how they saw that strategy in their ad.)

• Have the class break into small groups (different from yesterday�s) and analyze ads of their choice.� One group member will choose the ad they all will analyze, one will be the presenter and one will record which strategies they found in their ad on the class graph.� Students can find their ad in magazines, newspapers or online and are to point out some of the strategies they see being used.
• Share the ads and findings as short presentations- one student from each group mark the strategies they found in their one ad on the graph.� (have room to add extra strategies that the students find)

Closing:

Congratulate the group on their hard work!� But why is knowing how advertisements persuade you important to know?� Remember back in Kindergarten and first grade how you probably talked about wants and needs (most students have as it is a standard for those grades)� Do most advertisements try to sell you things you want or things you need?� Sometimes they make you think that their products are things you need but what are the three important things you need to be happy? (Food, water and shelter).� They try to persuade you to buy things by making you think you need them- just good to be aware of that and remember what kinds of things you need and what kinds of things you want.

 

Assessments:

Informal-

Small group presentations of ad strategy findings.

Teacher observation of role commitments and problem solving in small groups.

 

Formal-

Completed whole class bar graph of most common strategies found in advertisements aimed at children.

 

*During free time can choose to do computer game called �Co-Co�s AdverSmarts� which allows kids to create their own cereal box advertisement by choosing from three options of five popular gimmicks that advertisers use to get kids to buy some products.