Introduction
            What in the world do toy cars and stickers have to do with cereal? Those gimmicks lure children into a particular cereal without even knowing the nutritional value of the cereals contents.   Most children have grown up going to the grocery store and picking out the cereal of their choice.  The HEALTHY CEREAL FINDER lesson enables the children to decifier healthy versus unhealthy advertising on cereal boxes.

Audience
             The intended age of the children participating in this activity is Second through Third grade students.  The children involved must be willing to bring a cereal box or cereal advertisement of their choice.  Competencies for this health activity include the child's ability to recognize words, phrases, and pictures within the advertisement.

Objectives
    A. Media Literacy Objectives
            Goal 1: The learner will experience a wide variety of reading, listening, and
                        viewing resources to interact with ideas in an information-intensive
                        environment.
                        Objective 1.1- The learner will explore reading, listening,
                                                viewing sources and formats.

             Goal 2: The learner will identify and apply strategies to access, evaluate, use,
                        and communicate information for learning, decision-making, and
                        problem-solving.
                        Objective 2.2 - The learner will engage in a research process to meet
                                                 information needs.

Activity
    A. Statement of Objectives:
         1. Today, we are going to experience healthy and unhealthy advertising, as well as, recognizing the goal of product
             messages.
    B. Teacher Input:
         1. Definitions
             a. consumer
             b. advertisement
             c. commerical
          2. Types of Advertsing   ( easy student involvement )
              a. television - view cereal commerical clips
              b. magazines - bring in
              c. signs on the road
              d. newspaper - bring in
           3. Healthy and Unhealthy Advertising
               a. healthy = describes nutritional value, ingredients, description of food
               b. unhealthy = treats in the box, ensentives to buy the product, things that do not describe the food
    C. Guided Practice
         1. In groups of three, discuss and list the healthy and unhealthy advertising on your cereal box.
         2. With the same groups, create a commerical for a product that contains five healthy ads concerning the cereal created.
    D. Independent Practice
        1. Write up a news report about why advertisers include unhealthy advertising in their commericals or in the cereal box.
            Include the importance of healthy advertising and also the vocabulary words discussed at the beginning of class.
Media Analysis

1.  All media are constructions.  Media products are carefully crafted constructions, the results of many decisions,
conscious and unconscious. The constructions of unhealthy ads on cereal boxes is very crafty and deliberate.  The advertisers place the ads in stategic places in order to grab the children's attention.

2.  The media are commercial entities.  All media products are shaped, in terms of both their form and their content,
by commercial considerations.  Commericals of cereals include ideas and content that would relate to the viewer, which in this case, is young children,

3.  Media communicate values and ideology.  All media products contain implicit and explicit value messages and
assumed truths about the nature of human beings and the world in which we live.  The unhealthy ads that the students will learn include the values of the viewing age. Unhealthy ads relate with the students and with what they enjoy.

4.  The media have social and political implications.  The mass media have the potential to affect out behavior as
individuals and citizens in a variety of ways.  Learning to understand cereal ads will enable the children to critically make decisions later based on their previous knowledge.

5.  Media forms are related to content.  Different media represent reality in different ways:  the form of a given piece of
media shapes the message it sends. Cereal advertisements are everywhere: television, magazines, newspapers, and roadsigns.

6.  The media have aesthetic qualities.  Familiarity with the aesthetic dimensions of media can lead to deeper
understanding and greater enjoyments.

7.  Audiences are involved in the process of creating meaning.  What a viewer makes of a piece of media depends
 on his or her past experiences, viewing skill, and current state of mind.  This advertising activity will enable the children to discern health related inforamtion with unhealth realted information.
 
 

Links to Media Literacy on the Web
         general mills cereal guide
           nutritional value of cereals
           food pyramid
           kellogg's ensentives