Standard of Learning

7.3 The student will investigate and analyze the various factors that guide an individual's decisions about health and wellness. Key concepts/skills include:

1. the types of advertising techniques used to influence adolescents' decisions;
2. the validity of information from different resources;
3. family practices and customs.

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Understanding the Standard

The student will investigate and analyze persuasive advertising techniques used to influence adolescents' decisions about health care products.

Essential Knowledge and Skills

The student will:

• define advertising. (designed to influence consumers to buy a product or service)
• explain infomercial advertising for health and wellness products. (anti-smoking messages, encouraging milk consumption, etc.)
• identify types of advertising designed to influence adolescents' decisions. (groups of teens, beautiful people, good times, status, etc.)
• describe misleading advertising. (claims sound too good to be true, blend opinion with fact, exaggerate the good and barely mention the negative aspects of the product, etc.)

Sample Lessons

CNNfyi.com: Bullying solutions
Grade(s): 6-8
In this lesson plan, students will learn how to identify, recognize and make an individual plan for bullying.
http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2001/fyi/lesson.plans/03/08/bullying/
Free

Education World: "36 Public Policy Questions to Energize Your Government/History Classroom Debates "
Grade(s): 6-12
Students will  engage in discussion and debate relating to issues of importance to them and the world.  This lesson includes thirty-six open-ended questions relating to public policy issues that are in the new that examine issues from all perspectives. 
http://www.education-world.com/a_tsl/archives/07-1/lesson011.shtml
Free

The Educator’s Reference Desk: Lesson Plans> Health>Consumer Health Lesson Plans>Magazine Ads and You, the Teenager
Advertising is often aimed directly at young people. Not only do they spend $70 billion a year, but they influence their parents' purchases also. Youth are hit by certain appeals - appeals to be like everybody else, sex appeal, even negative appeal. This activity is to increase student awareness of persuasion tactics as seen in magazine advertising.
Sponsor: The lesson was developed by a teacher at Daly Middle School, Lakeview, OR. The site is part of the Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM). GEM is a Consortium effort to provide educators with quick and easy access to thousands of educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial Internet sites. GEM is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education.
Contact: http://www.eduref.org/cgi-bin/printlessons.cgi
Free

In the Mix: "9-11: Looking Back...Moving Forward"
Grade(s): 7-12
This lesson is designed for students in middle school up through high school.  In this lesson students will learn how things have changed since that day and stereotypes that have come from that day.
http://www.pbs.org/inthemix/educators/9-11_guide.html
Free

Kellogg Special K Ads
This lesson helps students understand the relationship between body image and marketing by exploring the Kellogg’s Special K “look good on your own terms" advertising campaign. Students begin by reading about this award-winning, controversial campaign which uses humor to skewer traditional advertising stereotypes about thinness. Students will deconstruct a series of Special K ads and discuss how marketers target “ideal beauty" messages to both men and women. Students will also look at the differences between the different marketing campaigns for Special K that have been used with Canadian and American women.
Sponsor: Media Awareness Network
Contact: http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources
Free

LifeSkills Training
Grades: 6-8
Model substance abuse prevention and competency enhancement program focusing on the major social and psychological factors causing substance use and abuse. Teaches drug resistance skills, personal management skills, and general social skills. Includes self-image, self-improvement, decision-making, anger management, assertiveness, communication, media, and conflict resolution issues.
Contact: http://www.lifeskillstraining.com
Cost

Macmillan McGraw Hill Lesson Plans and Activity Sheets Cybersmarts Identifying High Quality Sites
Students learn that, because anyone can publish on the Web, they must carefully evaluate the sites they use for research. They review evaluation criteria and use a checklist to "grade" informational sites. Students will learn how the ease of publishing on the World Wide Web may affect the usefulness of some sites' content. Students will interpret the criteria on a site evaluation checklist and apply the checklist to a site, evaluating its usefulness. The activity sheet may be downloaded in PDF format.
Grades 6-8
Contact: http://www.cybersmartcurriculum.org
Free

Magazine Ads and You, the Teenager
Grades: 6-8
Advertising is often aimed directly at young people. Not only do they spend $70 billion a year, but they influence their parents' purchases also. Youth are hit by certain appeals - appeals to be like everybody else, sex appeal, even negative appeal. This activity is to increase student awareness of persuasion tactics as seen in magazine advertising.
Sponsor: Ask Eric
Contact: http://www.eduref.org (select lesson plans – health – consumer health)
Free

Media Awareness Network: "Prejudice and Body Image"
Grade(s): 3-7
This lesson lets students take a good look at our society's pressures to conform to standards of beauty -particularly to be thin - and the particularly to be thin - and the "overweight." Through class discussion and activities, students begin to recognize how the media pressure us to achieve certain looks and how media images may lead to prejudice against those who don't conform to their standards of attractiveness.
http://www.media-awareness.ca/resources/body_image
Free

Media Literacy Lesson Plan: Recognizing Propaganda—Unreliable Testimony
After completing this lesson, students will be able to: Recognize the importance of personal hygiene and grooming, demonstrate health advocacy skills in an original advertisement and apply the media literacy skill of recognizing unreliable testimony to an ad for a hair care product.
Sponsor: Glencoe & McGraw-Hill
Contact: http://www.glencoe.com/sec/health/teachres/lessonplans/mlshampoo.shtml
Free

MedlinePlus: Evaluating Health Information
Filled with tips on how to evaluate health information. This well organized web site links the reader to reliable resource, for instance the NLM and NIH Guide to Healthy Web Surfing, the Federal Trade Commission Health Claims on the Internet: Buyer Beware and American Psychological Association Watch for Commercial Influences. Sponsor: National Library of Medicine & National Institute of Health
Contact: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus
Free

New York Times Daily Lesson Plan>Diagnosing Delusions: Debunking Common Medical Myths Through Education
In this lesson, after reading a background article from the New York Times, students learn how widespread medical myths can be potentially dangerous. They then synthesize their knowledge by creating pamphlets that help patients learn the facts behind some commonly believed medical myths.
Sponsor: The New York Times in partnership with the Bank Street College of Education in NYC.
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons
Free

The New York Times Daily Lesson Plans. Bigger Than Life, But Not Necessarily Better
Evaluating Images of Health in American Society: A Science Lesson
In this lesson, students examine where one develops his or her views about health and ways in which different products promote specific ideas of what should be seen as healthy. Students then investigate different ways in which people alter their bodies to become more like the "ideal"' picture of health promoted in American society and assess the marketing of dolls, action figures, and nutritional supplements, focusing on the images of health that they present.
Sponsor: The New York Times in partnership with the Bank Street College of Education in NYC.
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons
Free

Selecting and Using Health-Care Products
This Web site offers a lesson plan entitled “Selecting and Using Health-Care Products". Registration is required in order to access the lesson plans.
Sponsor: Health Teacher
Contact: http://www.healthteacher.com/lessonguides
$100 for all teachers in a school to access the middle school lesson plan.

Additional Instructional Resources

• Center for Disease Control – http://www.cdc.gov
• Consumer Products Safety Commission – http://www.cpsc.gov
• Food and Drug Administration Center for Drug Evaluation -http://www.fda.gov/cder
• HealthFinder Current and Timely Information - http://www.healthfinder.gov
• Health Web - http://healthweb.org
• How Quackery Sells – http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics
• Internet Detectives - http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/tnl/detectives
• Medical Library Association - http://www.mlanet.org/resources/userguide.html
• National Institutes of Health – Over-the-Counter Medicines - http://www.nih.gov
• National Library of Medicine & National Institute of Health - Medicine Safety - http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus
• National Library of Medicine & National Institute of Health – http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus
• Quackwatch, Your Guide to Health Fraud, Quackery, and Intelligent Decisions - http://www.quackwatch.com
• Six Types of Advertising - http://www.smalltownmarketing.com/sixads.html
• Types of Web Advertising - http://www.pr2.com/webads3.htm
• United States Postal Service - http://www.usps.gov

Assessment Ideas

The student will:

• work in small groups to design a persuasive advertising message for an adolescent health product.
• explain types of advertising designed to influence adolescent consumer decisions.

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