One of the many aspects of this collaboration that I’m enjoying is the debrief that happens after particular lessons. This past week we both facilitated learning activities based heavily on the Media Awareness Network’s Sex in Advertising lesson plan. We chatted about the lesson on Friday afternoon, and agreed that this lesson works well in the first unit of the course. (Our unit outline with lesson plans is available, too.)

What we liked

• The topic of sex in advertising suits the grade level. I had considered trying this with a younger group, but we agreed that Grade 12 students bring a maturity to this that is important for getting into the material.
• It gets students really thinking. After looking at some advertisements as a class, they work in groups to analyze some of their own selected ads. There’s a lot of discussion about how sex is being used to sell products.
• It gets us as teachers thinking. It’s not always obvious how sexuality is being portrayed or used in some of the advertisements, but we jump in and talk it through with students. Usually they arrive at interesting conclusions in the course of the discussions – conclusions that we wouldn’t have expected, but that are backed up by some careful thinking.

What needs work

• I need to think more about gender in advertising vs. sex in advertising before facilitating this lesson again. Some of the discussions that we had made me wonder if I’d be better off preparing for this with a discussion of gender.
• The overheads available on the Media Awareness Network are a great resource, but like the authors suggest, it’s nice to freshen them up with ads from magazines that students bring in. I’ve adapted most of the overheads into a PowerPoint presentation for use in the classroom, which students can download from the unit page on our course website. I’d like to get these into a more web-friendly format, though. (Time to dust off iMovie.)