Y9 Propoganda Slogans and Animal Farms

The Y9s have just finished reading Animal Farm. To help them understand the power of words and propaganda, we had a short lesson on how to write effective slogans. 

To get them settled as they entered the classroom , we did a quiz from page 51 of Made You Look:  How Advertising Works and Why You Should Know.  

I projected page 51 of the book. I covered up the companies' names and student had to guess which slogan belonged to a company. Most students correctly identified 5-6 companies by their slogans.

I also showed some famous slogans so that students could see the common elements that made them powerful, effective and memorable.  
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Based on these examples, students worked in groups and came up with the following conclusions about how to make effective slogans. ​

Group thoughts on what makes an effective slogan.

Group 1's own conclusions and answers to quiz.

Group 2's own conclusions and answers to quiz.

Last week students were given a handout on different strategies to form commandments to support their slogans from the Institute of Propaganda Analysis in 1937.  Students had to employ 4 different strategies to support their own slogan, much like the characters in Animal Farm.  But first I gave them an example of my own slogan of how to end world hunger, that was actually inspired by the this book.  By using the Frayer model, they had to guess which commandment strategies I had used in each quadrant. ​

My pizza slogan with it's four supporting commandments.

Students guessed the correct commandment strategies I employed and also justified how other strategies could have been used from their perspectives.  Here's the other teacher's example using Animal Farm.

Another teacher's example of a slogan with 4 commandments based on Animal Farm.

Students then embarked on creating their own slogans and supporting commandments, also using a Frayer model.