Level: Grades 5 to 8

Overview

This lesson and all associated documents (handouts, overheads, backgrounders) is available in an easy-print, pdf kit version.   To open the lesson kit for printing, click here.   To print only this page, use the "printable version" link at the top of the page.

In this lesson, students explore their beliefs and values about independence – and how cigarette advertising exploits peoples’ desires for greater freedom. Students identify the activities, lifestyles and role models that define the “independent” man and woman in our society. They then analyze ads that associate smoking with images of independence.

Learning Outcomes

 

Students will demonstrate:

• an understanding of the marketing strategies used by the tobacco industry in order to sell cigarettes
  
  
• an understanding of how the tobacco industry capitalizes on the needs of young people for independence and freedom, as a means of marketing cigarettes to them
  
  
• an awareness of how kids respond to these strategies

Preparation and Materials

 

Review the teaching backgrounder:

• Freedom in the Shape of a Cigarette
  
  

• For ideas on how to conduct discussion groups on this topic, see Guidelines for Peer-Led Discussion Groups, on the sidebar.
  
  

• Copy handout: Are You Talking to Me? – one for each student.
  

Photocopy or create overheads of the following tobacco ads for the group assignments:

• Newport Pleasure
  
  
• Camel – Pleasure to Burn
  
  
• Merit
  
  
• Lucky Strike: American Original
  
  
• Virginia Slims: Find Your Own Voice
  
  
• Have ready large sheets of paper for brainstorming.

Procedure

 

Class Discussion: 10 min

 

• Make a sketch of a road on the board.Discuss adolescence as a transition from dependence to independence.
  
  
• Annotate the diagram of the road with the students’ ideas about how this transition progresses.
  
  
• In what ways are you dependent when you begin junior high school? (You live at home, depend on parents for food and clothes, can’t always choose what you want to do, wear, etc.)
  
  
• What independence do you gain as you travel through school? (You might get a part-time job, which gives you more money and therefore more independence; your parents might let you make more of your own decisions; you might learn how to drive.)
  
  
• When you leave school and get a job, will you be completely independent? (You will still have other responsibilities to employers, relationships, and society at large.)
  
  
• Does progress towards independence end when you leave home, or does it keep going? (Adults also wish for greater freedom and independence, in the form of more free time, more control over their lives and relationships, more money, more physical vitality, etc.)
  

 

Small Group Discussion: 15 min

• Divide the class into groups.
  
  
• Appoint a note-taker for each group and distribute large sheets of paper.
  
  
• Review brainstorming guidelines: all answers are accepted without judgement, and everyone has a chance to participate.
  
  
• Ask the groups to brainstorm these questions (Answers could include qualities, activities, lifestyles, and role models):
  
  
• • In our society, what does “independence” mean for women?
    
    
  • What does it mean for men?
    
    
  • Ideas are recorded by the note-taker.
    

Class Discussion: 5 min

• Share the results of the brainstorming.

Activity

• Using photocopies or overheads of the tobacco ads included in this lesson, or collected magazine ads, have students complete the assignment Are You Talking to Me?
  
  
• Have students discuss their answers.

Evaluation

• Completed assignment forms.