by Malea Wilson, Novak King 6th Grade Center
This is an advertising project for 6th grade language arts students to get them acquainted with reading alternative texts and to understand how to read advertisements.
Introduction
Every day, we are exposed to hundreds of ads. Some are on billboards and in magazines while others are on tv and in your email in boxes. How do advertisements work? Why do we buy based on what we see? This WebQuest will help you to better understand advertisements.
Did You Know?
- The average
teenager spends about 6 3/4 hours a day using media -- 38+ hours/week
. That's TV and movie time, magazines, newspapers, playing video games
and using the computer
- The average
child sees approximately 20,000 commercials/year. About 57% of viewers
surveyed in 1996 enjoy commercials as much as television programs. Advertisers
spend over $40 billion each year on television commercials (p. 32).
- Teenagers
spent $141billion in 1998. How much money do 4-12 year-olds spend each
year on candy, soft drinks, and snacks? $2 billion. It's estimated that
78% of children influence what their parents buy (p. 33).
- By the
time you are 18, you will have seen about 20,000 food commercials advertising
food low in nutrition. The average woman shown in ads is 5'9'' and 110
lbs; the average American woman is 5'4' and 142 lbs. (p. 36).
(from Media Focus: Analyzing and Producing Media by McDougal Littell, 2001)
With this project, you will explore advertisements. In these advertisements, you will examine how they are effective and why the advertisements work they way they do. You will then create your own advertisement.
