Trash my ad

Year level

Upper Primary to Lower Secondary with a simplified activity for younger students listed at end of lesson plan.

Lesson description

This lesson is based around the Trash my ad campaign created by Keep Australia Beautiful asking young people to create a TV or radio advertisement about anti-littering to motivate people to do the right thing and place litter in the bin. Students view previous entries for inspiration and then produce their own advertisement.

In this lesson students will become aware that:

  • advertising is a key strategy for bringing about behaviour change
  • there are a number of different media that can be used for conveying a message, including amongst others, video, radio and posters
  • effective advertisements are memorable and easily understood
  • there are many different tools that can be used to convey a message including humour, emotion, special visual effects, facts and catchy jingles.

Curriculum links

Year 5

Plan, draft and publish imaginative and informative and persuasive print and multimodal texts, choosing text structures, language features, images and sound appropriate to purpose and audience (English - ACELY1704)

Years 5 and 6

Plan, produce and present media artworks for specific audiences and purposes using responsible media practice(The Arts - ACAMAM064)

Year 6

Plan, draft and publish imaginative and informative and persuasive texts, choosing and experimenting with text structures, language features, images and digital resources appropriate to purpose and audience (English - ACELY1714)

Year 7

Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, selecting aspects of subject matter and particular language, visual, and audio features to convey information and ideas (English - ACELY1725)

Years 7 and 8

Develop and refine media production skills to shape the technical and symbolic elements of images, sounds and text for a specific purpose and meaning (The Arts - ACAMAM068)

Plan, structure and design media artworks that engage audiences(The Arts - ACAMAM069)

Year 8

Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that raise issues, report events and advance opinions, using deliberate language and textual choices, and including digital elements as appropriate (English - ACELY1736)

Procedure

  1. Students view anti-littering advertisements produced by young people as part of a Keep Australia Beautiful campaign called Trash My Ad. Advertisements can be viewed on youtube by searching ‘YouTube Trash My Ad’.
  1. Discuss with students techniques that the creators have used to convey their anti-littering message. For example, humour or shock.
  1. Students work in small groups to create their own advertisements.
  1. The ads are then shown to the whole class and students vote in a secret ballot as to which three ads they think were the best and why.
  1. Discuss results,
  1. Videos are then shown to the rest of the school to encourage students not to litter within the school.

Simplified activity

Students create posters or an advertising jingle to encourage people not to litter.

Brisbane City Council

Rethink Your Rubbish Lesson Plan: Litter – Trash My Ad

Towards Zero Waste Strategy: Brisbane City Council

Insert document name and date