Sample Lesson Plan

Ice Palace Lesson: Advertising Then and Now

Standard

Colorado Model Content Standard 3 for History: Students understand that societies are diverse and have changed over time.

Objectives

Students will demonstrate an understanding of advertising techniques in 1895.
Students will demonstrate an understanding of current advertising techniques.

Time

Discussion of ideas can occur in class over one class period. Students can then work on their own (or in groups) to design some sort of advertisement.

Focus

Build students’ enthusiasm for the lesson by asking these questions after you have finished reading about the building of the Leadville Ice Palace. Make a list of their answers.
*What did you notice about how people promoted the Leadville Ice Palace?
*If you were to build an ice palace today, how would you promote it?

Format

Pass out samples of a recent newspaper advertisement.
Talk about what works well (clear, uncluttered, specific, short text with important information about who? what? when? where? why? how?) and what doesn’t work well (too much information, hard-to-read fonts, missing essential information).
Talk about what motivates people (bandwagon: everyone will be there; promise of a reward: a free slice of apple pie at the palace restaurant; limited time offer: see it before it melts. etc.)
Work together as a class to write a newspaper advertisement for a modern-day ice palace.

Materials

Use Palace of Ice as a reference.
Bring several samples of modern-day advertising (magazine or newspaper ad, radio spot, e-mail, mass mailing, video clip, etc.) See this website for samples: http://www.webenglishteacher.com/media-ads.html
For information about teaching advertising in the classroom see this website: http://www.teachingk8.com/archives/how_to/how_toput_advertising_to_work.html
A book that offers lively, grade appropriate information about advertising is:
Graydon, Shari. Made You Look: How Advertising Works and Why You Should Know. Toronto, Canada: Annick Press, 2003.  http://www.annickpress.com/index.html

Wrap-up

You may want to have students present their advertisements to the entire class, or you may decide simply to display them around the room and allow students to browse.
End your project by asking some summary questions:
- How effective was advertising in the case of the 1895 Leadville Ice Palace?
- If Leadville were to build another Ice Palace, what effect could advertising have?