The notion of "multiliteracies" and the development and creation of multimodal texts within classrooms is of pedagogic interest in this age of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). The case study reported herein provides an analysis of how one teacher engaged her class of primary school students as they responded to the challenge of…

A study involving eight elementary students suggested that active discrimination training can alter children's consumer responses to televised advertisements, and such training can take place with minimal teacher effort and classroom time. (Author/CL)

Discusses techniques used in advertising parity products (products that do not differ from brand to brand) to attract children's attention and advocates consumer education for children to make them aware of advertising claims. (HTH)

A collection of ideas from K-8 teachers for developing concepts and skills using television programs and commercials. (SJL)

Describes how a class of fifth graders, acting as anthropologists, examined two different collections of prime-time television commercials in order to make inferences about the cultures they represented. (JDH)

Open-ended interviews were conducted with 224 boys from first, third, and fifth grades to gauge their cognitive understanding of the structure and purpose of TV commercials and selectiveness of attitudinal response to them. Multiple measures also taken for maturational development, socialization, and television exposure as predictor sets.…

Describes data analysis activities for grades three to four and five to six based on popular television commercials. Includes reproducible student worksheets. (MKR)

This study reviews the literature on the effects of television viewing on children, examines the preferences of children for television programs and commercials, and analyzes selected characteristics of these programs. A stratified sample of 1,416 students in grades 1-6 in six eastern states was polled on their viewing preferences in November of…

In an effort to promote elementary school guidance in Arkansas, a group of educators developed a series of spot announcements for presentation on radio and TV. Examples of the announcements are included. (Author)

Videotapes of elementary school children watching a standard 15-minute television presentation were analyzed for attention to television, viewing patterns, and alternate activities. Recognition memory of auditory and visual content of the commercials and of the products was tested. Children's behavior during the program and during the commercials…

Four reproducible pages containing activities to help children understand the effect of television, to question what they watch, to study how they use television, and to explore aural and visual awareness. (MT)

A study was conducted to evaluate television commercials based on their reading (or print) content. Commercials aired on the three major networks during Saturday morning programing were viewed for six consecutive weeks. Each commercial was analyzed to determine how it used printed words to sell a product. The results revealed that the printed word…

A sample of 422 students from grades three through eight in Vermillion, South Dakota, schools completed a questionnaire about their television-viewing habits, including a day-by-day record of the amount of television viewed over a two-week period. Analysis of results indicated that the school population had an average of two television sets per…

Results of the staggering number of hours which children spend watching television (an average of 54 hours a week for a preschooler, who will have accumulated a total of 5000 hours by first grade) may be seen in the influence children--swayed by commercials--have over their mothers' grocery choices and in the dramatic increase of both wild…