Candy Creations
Writing to Persuade the Reader (Virtual Tour)
Stage of Literacy Development:
Stage 2: Consolidation / FluencyStage 3: Literacy for Growth
Ages:
7-10
Grade Range:
2nd 3rd 4thFood Groups:
Primary: Text Structures & Genres
Transcript
In my classroom this year, we had a theme about imagination. And one of the things we did with this theme is we talked about how a movie tells a story, and we looked at the movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which of course is a wonderful movie about imagination. One of the extension activities that we did was to design your own candy. So the challenge for the children was to take an actual role of candies, which these all are, and they had to come up with a name for their candy, they had to come up with a candy company name, they also had to think about where would the candy be made, and how they were going to get people to buy their candy. So we really talked a lot about persuasive writing. Why should someone buy this candy as opposed to this candy? So what they did is they created labels for their candy, which are actually on the rolls of candy. They have a little product label here, which tells the company name, and then they were asked to make a poster to really, really promote their product. They were told that they had to use color, they had to use words that had things like marvelous, they're fruity, they're delicious, they're fruity-licious. How sometimes you can even make up a word if you want to get somebody's attention.
Related References
Activity Objective
The goal of Candy Creations: Writing to Persuade the Reader (Virtual Tour) is to help students develop an understanding of various types of media and to encourage students to write a persuasive advertisement.
Quick Tips
Additional Comments:
- Using the familiar topic of candy gets students interested in learning about print advertisements and persuasive writing. - Modeling how to use media literacy terminology, including marketing and target audience will help students build their vocabulary. Using the terms throughout the activity will encourage the students to use these new terms as well. - Encouraging students to discuss the product, package design and target audience fosters critical thinking and promotes the idea of being an informed consumer. - Integrating art into your literacy program fosters student motivation and engagement.
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