Talking about logos at West After School

Friday March 23 was the first day of the Black Dot Project at West After School. Before the students arrived, I set up the room by taping black balloons to the floor and inflating a large black exercise ball and placing it on the table.







I also inflated a large, 72-inch Mega Ball I had painted black expressly for this project, but unfortunately there was a puncture which I did not patch properly - it was raining, and the patch came off. So, I will need to patch the ball up properly before I will be able to use it for this project.

When the 5th graders came to the room and settled down, I led them in a discussion about advertising and logos. Some of the key questions included "what is the purpose of advertising?" "what do advertisers do to make you want to pester your parents for certain products?" "what makes a successful advertisement?" "what sort of 'promises' do advertisements make?" "what is a logo?" "what does a logo represent?"









The next part of the discussion had me showing the students images of popular logos (KFC, Big Red, Hummer 3, NBC, Adobe, Nike, Wonder Bread, Starbuck's, Cingular, Yellow Pages, Adidas, Champion, National Baseball Association, Apple) and asking them to identify the ones they recognized. I then had them get into groups to complete a logo activity worksheet. Each group got a logo (McDonald's, Pepsi, Air Jordan, or Quaker Oats) and had to complete the worksheet based on their logo. The questions on the worksheet were: 1) What brand does your logo represent? 2) Where have you seen this logo? 3) What product does your logo try to sell? 4) Think about the ads for your logo's product. Think about the "promises" your logo's ads make and imagine that these ads can talk to you. Now finish your ad's sentence: "If you buy my product, you will __________" 5) Finish another ad's sentence: "If you buy my product, you will be _____________".

Because the writing activity didn't take as long as I had anticipated, there was time for one more activity, a logo scavenger hunt. For this activity, each group had to look around the room and write down every logo they saw. All groups found more than 40 logos in our room, which underscored a point that came up in our discussion: that logos are everywhere and it is practically impossible for people living in the United States to be free from advertising.











At the conclusion of the workshop, each student got a balloon, as well as a Black Dot "product" - a ping pong ball I had painted black and packaged.









The day's lesson plan can be downloaded here. The logo activity worksheet can be downloaded here.