Real life learning

With great excitement, the Year 4 students welcomed our first guest speaker for the year, Mr Peter Blackwood,  an Art Director with a wealth of experience in television, advertising etc. During previous weeks, the students had been inquiring into how media influences their lives and had already discussed stereotyping and advertising strategies used to cleverly persuade consumers to purchase something.

Peter was both entertaining and engaging as he described a variety of props he has created and some of the advertising campaigns he has been involved with.

Certainly the most spectacular of his demonstrations were the tricks used to encourage consumers to buy a delicious hamburger from one of our well-known fast food outlets. The students were aghast to find out that a huge amount of food is purchased for a photo shoot, just to find that special lettuce leaf with frilly edges, or the bread roll with exactly the correct number of seeds on top. They were even more horrified to learn that the meat pattie was not even cooked but just browned on the edges with a blow torch! Finally, a syringe was used to squirt the right amount of sauce so it dribbled out ‘just right’.  This is the photo you see but not what you receive when you buy this yummy hamburger!

Through this authentic and real life example, the Year 4 students learned a very important message and have become even more aware of the power of advertising.

Mrs Sandra Barrett
Year 4 teacher