Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Becoming a Smarter Consumer

Details

Activity Description

Requires Flash. The Federal Trade Commission has created an interactive site for teaching students about advertising techniques, target marketing, suspicious claims, business competition, supply and demand, protecting your privacy, identity theft and bogus offers. The site is designed for 5th - 8th grade, so it would be good for many ABE, ASE, and higher level ESL classes when learning about consumer economics. In the Parents/Teachers section there are fact sheets with class activities and a lesson plan that complements the site.

This Web site supports critical thinking, language arts, writing, media literacy, business, civics, and social studies. Also appropriate for Career - Business classes.

An example activity would be one on Advertising & Marketing from the West Terrace portion of the mall.

Preparation

1. Watch the First Time Here? overview to see how to navigate the site.
2. Preview the Parents/Teachers section for an activity that is appropriate for the level and interest of your class. There you will find Fact Sheets on several topics.
3. For this activity, we will be using the Promoting Stuff Fact Sheet and the Shuman's Shoes portion of the mall. Once you are at Shuman's Shoes, click on the young couple standing on the left to listen to their dialog about some shoes Issac wants to buy and what Emily says. Listen for any vocabulary that may be unfamiliar to your students. Then read the Promoting Stuff Fact Sheet and prepare to lead discussions about the questions in the Things to Talk About and Do section.
4. Make sure that the student computers are able to run the site (the site requires the Adobe Flash browser plug-in) and if you cannot get the plug-in installed before you want to use it, the site does offer an HTML variation .
5. Download and print the Promoting Stuff Fact Sheet for your students or read it to them as part of the class discussion.
6. You may want to prepare a comprehension quiz to give at the end of class. This can be on paper or build one online using Kahoot! or another online tool. (For more instructions on how to set up Kahoot! take a look at this activity .)

How-To

1. Explain that you will be talking about advertising and it's effects on consumers. Address any new vocabulary.
2. Play the Shuman's Shoes video. Ask students to comment on what they saw. Using the questions in the fact sheet, lead a discussion with your students.
3. If you created a paper quiz, distribute it at the end of the discussion or run your Kahoot! for a more interactive activity.

Teacher Tips

• The reading and comprehension level for this site is 5th - 8th grade.
• Here is the new link to the lesson plan for Competition Works in Our Flavor , which comes from EconEdLink. (the link on the FTC site is bad.) EconEdLink also offer many other lessons you may want to explore when you are done with the FTC site.

More Ways

• There are many other activities at this site that can all be handled in a similar manner.
• The Federal Trade Commission site offers a lot of information for consumers on a variety of topics. The information there could be used in a variety of other lessons on consumer issues and money.

Program Areas

• ABE: Adult Basic Education

Levels

• Intermediate
• High

View Subjects

View Tags