National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Active Involvement in Creating High School Substance Use Prevention Messages
Planning a Poster
- The final activity for the YMD curriculum is designed to engage students in hands-on experience by utilizing persuasion and production strategies learned about advertising. Groups plan an ad for students their age illustrating why it is important to not use alcohol or tobacco.
- The groups are instructed to plan their ad by engaging all group members in the planning process. Each group fills out an activity sheet that requires application of the curriculum lessons to planning (and counter arguing) before moving to poster design.
- Once they return this worksheet, each group is provided with poster paper and colored markers to create their draft of the ad.
- The group leaders present the ad to the entire class and describe the claim, the persuasion strategy used, and how the group used the production techniques.
- Finally, the entire class votes on the best group poster presented to reinforce analysis, attention, and motivation (there is a gift card for “best group”).
- The curriculum concludes with a review and emphasis on application of the information presented in daily exposure to media messages.
Adolescent-Created Print Advertisement Posters:
(click thumbnail for larger image)