This lesson analyzes campaign ads and techniques they use to convince voters, claims and feelings. Students will watch 4 campaign ads, including LBJ’s “Daisy Girl” and W Bush’s “Wolves, make notes of the techniques, and then have small group discussions. 

As I teach World History, I think it would be harder to incorporate into my lessons. But I think it would work well in the “Thinking Like a Historian” unit. We’ll be heading into an election year during the next school year, so I think it will be very important to show students this. We’re in Texas and during the last midterm elections, there were so many misleading ads.On TV and on the radio. With this, maybe I can show the students how the ads manipulate them and maybe they can use that information in the next voting cycle, or even take it home and talk to their parents or older siblings about it. 

I’m in a rural, medium sized public high school. Our school is around 65% Hispanic and over 70% are considered economically disadvantaged. My classes range between 15-26 students. I teach on-level and AP World History, typically 10th grade but I have 9th through 12th in my class this year. 

I think no matter what, during an election cycle, this will resonate with my students. Depending on the class, I think I would have to use lower level questions or sentence stems to help guide some students, especially the emergent bilingual students. I do think I’d have to be careful about the ads that I choose, as politics can get fiery. For the most part, I think I can use this as is, maybe do an extension activity researching the accuracy of the ads and/or creating an accurate response to a political campaign ad.