Evaluating political ads
Title
Evaluating Political Ads
Description
In this lesson, students are introduced to how political advertisements use free speech and persuasive techniques to motivate voters. Students will evaluate advertisements, consider the ethical dilemmas of using persuasive tactics in political advertising and create their own political advertisements.
Objectives
- Students will explore trends in political advertising.
- Students will identify persuasive techniques in political advertising.
- Students will evaluate ethical dilemmas and free speech issues in political advertising.
- Students will create their own political advertisements.
Common Core State Standard
| CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.9-10.8 | Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the usefulness of each source in answering the research question; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation. |
| CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.2 | Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text. |
| CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.3 | Analyze how the author unfolds an analysis or series of ideas or events, including the order in which the points are made, how they are introduced and developed, and the connections that are drawn between them. |
| CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.4 | Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper). |
Length
90 minutes (depending on class size
Materials / resource
Slideshow: Political Advertising
Storyboard Assignment Sheet (Copy front to back, and have extras)
Lesson step-by-step
Step 1 — Review political ads and strategies (30 minutes)
Use the slideshow linked above to review political ads and teach strategies commonly found in advertising. There are teacher notes and prompts in the slideshow, and showing the linked ads along with pausing for discussion prompts will likely take around 30 minutes.
Step 2 — Introduce the lesson (5 minutes)
Explain to students that they need to use their knowledge of political advertising to create an idea for their own political ad. You, their teacher, and thinking of running for state senate, and your students should create an ad idea to persuade voters (if you’re really feeling brave, you can let them decide whether they are persuading FOR you or AGAINST you!).
Step 3— Storyboarding (20 minutes)
Pass out the storyboard assignment sheet to the groups you formed during the discussion and slideshow review.
Give groups 20 minutes to determine the storyboard for their ad, sketching the scenes and describing the music, mood, lighting, and techniques on the lines below each scene.
Step 4 — Present and assess (5-8 minutes per group)
Groups should present their storyboards. As groups present, instruct them NOT to give away the strategies being used in the ad, just the description of how the ad will flow.
Students in the audience should take notes of which strategies they identified in each ad as a way to check for understanding.
Finally, decide as a class which ad will be more persuasive and why.
For past Constitution Day materials, go here.
Read MoreConstitution Day is right time
to apply for FAPFA recognition
by Lori Keekley, MJE
As advisers, we work to support student journalists on a daily basis.
Taking a moment today to apply for the First Amendment Press Freedom Award is a great way to symbolically show this support.
Read MoreStudents, join movement to make change:
Mary Beth Tinker
Mary Beth Tinker claps her hands while sining a song to high school students in the grand ball room on Tuesday October 1, 2013 at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. The engagement was part of the Mary Beth Tinker Bus Tour.(Photo by David Dermer)
by Mary Beth Tinker
The student uprising for safer gun laws is going to rock gun culture to its core. It already has.
As it does, student journalists will be on the front lines, proving again they are not only the future, but the present. In this, they also have an opportunity to join with student leaders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School in Parkland who promote youth voices often left out of student journalism, those of low income students of color.
This week, Parkland students met with students from Chicago, where gun death is epidemic. Students discussed how gun tragedies affect their very different communities.
[pullquote]”Those who face gun violence on a level that we have only just glimpsed from our gated communities have never had their voices heard in their entire lives the way that we have in these few weeks alone.” –– Emma Gonzalez, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Parkland student leader[/pullquote]
Emma Gonzalez, a student leader at Parkland tweeted, “Those who face gun violence on a level that we have only just glimpsed from our gated communities have never had their voices heard in their entire lives the way that we have in these few weeks alone.”
Emma made a commitment to share the platform Parkland students have established with “every person, black or white, gay or straight, religious or not, who has experienced gun violence,” saying “hand in hand, side by side, We Will Make This Change Together.”
In Baltimore, hundreds of students from different racial and economic backgrounds joined in a walkout March 6 for a march to City Hall in protest of gun violence. They expressed solidarity with Excel Academy, where seven students have been killed by guns in the last two years.
David Hogg, a student leader at MSD who is also a leader in broadcast journalism there, tweeted words of support, saying “Yeah Baltimore!!!!!!!! Let’s do this !”
‘Tinker Tour’ finds common fears, causes among students
Last week, as part of my “Tinker Tour” to schools around the country, I visited with students at Thurgood Marshall Academy in Ward 8 of Washington DC. According to its website, “almost 100 percent” of the students in school are African American and 75 percent qualify for free lunches.
Students at Thurgood Marshall have lost two classmates this year from gun violence, Zaire and Paris. Zaire’s twin brother, Zion, told me his brother was killed by a person wearing a prison ankle bracelet, and there should be more limits on who can get guns. Washington DC has strict gun laws, but guns flow in from elsewhere.
Zion’s father testified at President Trump’s ‘listening tour’ on gun violence, saying his tragedy began on Sept. 20 and the family struggles to recover from their grief.
Students at Thurgood Marshall Academy won’t express any of this in their school newspaper or in broadcast journalism class. Like most Washington DC students, they don’t have a journalism program. In fact, only a handful of high schools in Washington DC do.
One is Wilson High, where students at the award winning Beacon decided to do s
omething about that. With The Paper Project, student journalists at Wilson meet with students at schools where there is no journalism program to share skills and help with publications. They raise money through student fundraisers and contributions.
Too often, young people must endure policies they have had absolutely no part in making. Funding for journalism is one. For some, cuts to journalism budgets are retaliation for articles. For others, journalism education was never an option to begin with. As I travel the country to schools and communities, that is most often the case, with a “sliding scale” for First Amendment rights, particularly student press.
Bringing these voices together as an issue in civics
Frank LoMonte, past director of the Student Press Law Center, advocates for an increased connection between civics and journalism, natural partners for an active citizenry. But, civics education shares the same gap that afflicts journalism education.
The Civic Mission of Schools, a coalition of civics organizations, cites this disparity and attributes it to an education system that a provides “far fewer and lower-quality civic learning opportunities to minority and low-income students.”
Despite all of this, young people find their voices and make them heard.
You can hear one of them, Jonothan Gray, in a powerful twitter video highlighting the coverage to gun violence in schools (mostly white students) compared to that out of school (mostly kids of color). Jonathan says in Baltimore, like so may places, gun violence “has become the norm.”
At a stop at Kent State University during her Tinker Tour in 2013, Mary Beth checks out the May 4 Visitors Center. Members of Ohio’s National Guard shot and killed four students in 1970 during a time of national protests against the Vietnam War. Photo by John Bowen.
Great movements begin from civic awareness, student voices
From great tragedy come great movements. The civil rights movement, also a story of the free press, was surely one. The current movement by students for safer gun laws, with walkouts and plans for rallies throughout the country Marcy 24 will be a story of the free press as well.
When I was 13 and in eighth grade in 1965, like the students, I was moved to action by great tragedy and great journalists. I watched the horrors of the Vietnam unfold on the evening news, with Walter Cronkite giving a daily “body count” to keep track.
A group of us in Des Moines, Iowa, including my brother, John, wore black armbands to mourn the dead and to promote a Christmas truce being proposed by Senator Robert Kennedy.
For doing that, we were suspended.
The American Civil Liberties Union took our case to the Supreme Court, and in 1969, the Court ruled that neither “students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
The ruling was chipped away by three later rulings, with “Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier” in 1988 targeting student journalists and being the most harmful.
Young people are on the move.
They are winning in the court of public opinion, and they are winning laws to affirm the rights of young journalists through the New Voices movement. Washington state is the latest, with the legislature voting for student journalists’ rights.
By coming together, young people will also win victories against gun violence. When they do, student journalists and advisers have a real opportunity to advance the First Amendment for all youth across the country.
Read MoreThe importance of staff edits:
critical thinking, leadership QT 38
Student editors are busy. In addition to leading their staffs, making publication decisions and helping reporters, they are likely also still reporting and creating their own news content — not to mention carrying a full academic high school load.
Given all of these responsibilities, it’s easy to see why writing an unsigned staff editorial might seem a lower priority than getting the next edition to print or finishing that great feature on the new student body president.
But these editorials represent a unique and powerful opportunity for the board to be leaders in their school communities, and editors tempted to skip writing them should reconsider their priorities.
As overseers of all publication content, school news editors know more about what’s going on in their communities than just about anyone else in the school. As they read each article and listen with a journalist’s ear to what’s happening around them day-to-day, they can see patterns and problems most people cannot, adults included.
Coming together as a group, they can choose meaningful topics to address and think critically about what they want to say about those topics as a board. Once they reach a majority opinion on the topic, they can write collaboratively on a Google doc or take turns writing the first draft and then edit that draft into a clear, concise final piece.
Because staff editorials are unsigned, they carry more weight than a single writer’s opinion and may have greater impact. Well researched, authoritative editorials are powerful tools for change in a school community, and editorial boards should make them a priority.
Guideline:
Student journalists should act as candles lighting issues within their communities as
well as mirrors reflecting current events. One way to enact this leadership is for the student editorial board to write regular unsigned editorials to advocate, solve a problem or commend. Editorial opinions should be clearly labeled and separate from the news section and should not affect objective news coverage.
Social Media Post
Does your student editorial board write regular unsigned editorials? If not, they are missing an opportunity to lead.
Reasoning/suggestions: Student media show leadership in many ways, and one of the most traditional is through concise, focused and authoritative statements of well-argued and supported opinion which represent the institutional voice of the student media. These editorials are a unique opportunity for student leaders to give voice to student perspectives on important topics. Editorial board members who take this process seriously and write consistently can advocate for change, serve as calls to action or commend positive conditions. Because staff editorials are unsigned, they carry more weight than a single writer’s opinion and may have greater impact.
Resources:
Quick Hit: Picking a topic for staff editorials, JEA Scholastic Press Committee
Quick Hit: Staff editorial process, JEA Scholastic Press Committee
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” JEA Scholastic Press Committee
“Where have the leaders gone?” JEA Scholastic Press Committee
Editorials under attack, Student Press Law Center
Explained: why newspapers endorse presidential candidates, Dylan Baddour, Houston Chronicle
“They need the freedom to make mistakes, too,” Lindsay Coppens, JEA Press Rights Committee
Reading newspapers: Editorial and opinion pieces, Learn NC
Video: How to write an editorial, New York Times
Writing an Editorial, Alan Weintraut
Read More
The importance of staff editorials QT16
Student editors are busy. In addition to leading their staffs, making publication decisions and helping reporters, they are likely also still reporting and creating their own news content — not to mention carrying a full academic high school load.
Given all of these responsibilities, it’s easy to see why writing an unsigned staff editorial might seem a lower priority than getting the next edition to print or finishing that great feature on the new student body president.
But these editorials represent a unique and powerful opportunity for the board to be leaders in their school communities, and editors tempted to skip writing them should reconsider their priorities.
As overseers of all publication content, school news editors know more about what’s going on in their communities than just about anyone else in the school. As they read each article and listen with a journalist’s ear to what’s happening around them day-to-day, they can see patterns and problems most people cannot, adults included.
Coming together as a group, they can choose meaningful topics to address and think critically about what they want to say about those topics as a board. Once they reach a majority opinion on the topic, they can write collaboratively on a Google doc or take turns writing the first draft and then edit that draft into a clear, concise final piece.
Because staff editorials are unsigned, they carry more weight than a single writer’s opinion and may have greater impact. Well researched, authoritative editorials are powerful tools for change in a school community, and editorial boards should make them a priority.
Guideline:
Student journalists should act as candles lighting issues within their communities as well as mirrors reflecting current events. One way to enact this leadership is for the student editorial board to write regular unsigned editorials to advocate, solve a problem or commend. Editorial opinions should be clearly labeled and separate from the news section and should not affect objective news coverage.
Social Media Post/Topic:
Does your student editorial board write regular unsigned editorials? If not, they are missing an opportunity to lead.
Reasoning/suggestions: Student media show leadership in many ways, and one of the most traditional is through concise, focused and authoritative statements of well argued and supported opinion which represent the institutional voice of the student media.
These editorials are a unique opportunity for student leaders to give voice to student perspectives on important topics. Editorial board members who take this process seriously and write consistently can advocate for change, serve as calls to action or commend positive conditions.
Because staff editorials are unsigned, they carry more weight than a single writer’s opinion and may have greater impact.
Resources:
Quick Hit: Picking a topic for staff editorials, JEA Scholastic Press Committee
Quick Hit: Staff editorial process, JEA Scholastic Press Committee
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” JEA Scholastic Press Committee
“Where have the leaders gone?” JEA Scholastic Press Committee
Editorials under attack, Student Press Law Center
Explained: why newspapers endorse presidential candidates, Dylan Baddour, Houston Chronicle
“They need the freedom to make mistakes, too,” Lindsay Coppens, JEA Press Rights Committee
Reading newspapers: Editorial and opinion pieces, Learn NC
Video: How to write an editorial, New York Times
Writing an Editorial, Alan Weintraut
Read More