Media Literacy Lesson Plan: Common Advertising Strategies

Lesson Procedure:

1. Have students read the Related Reading feature with a partner or discuss it whole class. Encourage students to share their own examples of ways they've heard products in advertisements are altered to look more appealing, or experiences they've had with photographs that have been retouched.
2. Play the Media Literacy movie with closed-captioning on to aid students in comprehension. Have students talk with a partner about real-life examples they've seen of the advertisement strategies in action. Pass out the Worksheet (which lists the strategies at the top of the page) to help facilitate discussion.
3. Tell students you are going to play the Media Literacy movie through a second time, and this time, you want them to take notes using the worksheet. Each student should choose 3 advertising strategies from the movie to write about, ensuring that they choose a different set of strategies than their partner. You may want to pause the movie to allow additional writing time, and provide several minutes after the movie is over for students to complete each section and talk about it.
4. Challenge students to work with their partner to use the Make-A-Map tool. They will create a graphic organizer which explains each of the common advertising strategies they wrote about on their worksheets. The Make-a-Map created by each pair of students should feature the 6 strategies they took notes on, and may include the additional 2 strategies from the movie for extra credit.
5. Have students complete the Primary Source Activity for homework or in a follow-up lesson.