Child Advertisement

These last few weeks, as you know, I have done presentations to several groups of children, most recently to the junior high kids Tuesday. While we were thinking of ideas, I thought back to our presentation to the elementary students, and what made them jump and yell and scream with excitement. From what I had seen, it was what got them involved. Things like asking questions and involving them in activities seemed to raise their interest far more than us talking, and rewards like candy exacerbated the reaction. This seemed to hold true again to our presentation with the junior high kids, which was a simple game of question and answer. After those, we posed to them several riddles, which, if they got right, would gain them a small piece of candy. All of the students seemed interested and engaged with the activity, with an enormous participation rate. I could barely keep up with all of the students raising their hands. So, recently, I decided to see if advertisements elsewhere backed this up. While looking, I found an article entitled "How Marketers Target Kids" on mediasmarts.ca, which seemed to fit perfectly with what my line of thinking was. The article begins with how much influence that the children had on their family in a variety of subjects. For instance, in the choice of food for breakfast and lunch, the child has an average of 96% of influence on where the family eats. The list goes on: clothing purchases (95%), software purchases (76%), family entertainment choices (98%), and family trips (94%). This surprised me, as I knew children exercised influence, but I never realized how much influence that they actually had. The first method that I saw wasn't very related to my type of advertisement, it involved setting up brand name recognition from early stages of life, and my project starts, and possibly ends, this year so that strategy was out. The second strategy, however, related more to my project. It is referred to as "buzz marketing", and it is where a company gets a "cool" person to try their brand in the hopes that it attracts more customers later. In my project, this could be something to try. Getting one kid to join may influence their friends, and their friends friends, and so on. We have a few signed up already, but the downside is I do not know who the sixth grade cool kids are, and we have little time with them still in school. If I continue the camp, however, this may have its merits as now in retrospect I can know that this is a strategy. The final related section of the article that I saw fit perfectly. It went with what we had been doing all along, and it all opened up with the title "Commercialization in Education". This is when a company offers a school money to come in and advertise with posters and presenters in order to promote their products. Aside from offering money, this is exactly what we had been doing. We went to a school, did our activity, handed out our flyers with the Oregon Park District label slapped on there, and gave our speech. Unfortunately, I saw no alternate strategies for advertisement excluding the use of the internet. I feel that at this point, having little time at the end of the year, needing to plan other parts of our camp and do final organization that this strategy is unlikely, but again, if I do this next year, it will likely be incorporated into my strategy and put on every flyer and poster that we put up in order to reach a higher variety of kids with more consistence. Overall, looking up these strategies was a positive and helpful thing to do, and though it may be too late for me this year, next year it could help me and others that I inform of this.

Elementary Presentation

This past week, on Wednesday, my partners and I led a day of fun for the children at the elementary school. The day mainly consisted of a scavenger hunt, which was followed by a brief presentation to the 4th through 6th graders. We spent the last two weeks designing the clues for this scavenger hunt, leading them on a merry journey around our Park West. The actual scavenger hunt itself did not go as planned. We had a plan in which the clues were set up in their designated positions, in envelopes, which the students were to take one of. This didn't quite pan out. Our first complication was us setting up our clues at the position that they led to. The clue that should have led the kids to the tennis court was at the tennis court. After scrambling in the wet grass to fix that mistake, which I ended up doing on my own because my partners had to go to their classes, I ran into another complication. The baseball fields we had planned on using for some of the clues were locked shut, and I could see the kids streaming from the first clue location. So I found a table near the baseball fields and laid their clues there, sending a frantic text to my partners of this information. At the last clue location the kids had caught up to me, and I was completely exhausted. I threw down the rest of the clues where they were supposed to be and ran up the hill with the other kids. As the other groups slowly made their way to the hill I passed out candy to the winners of the race. Luckily, we found at the end that the children enjoyed running around outside more than anything. Many had taken more than one clue, so after each round I replaced them in their proper position. I would like to mention one child in particular, simply because he impressed me. This child did a quadruple cartwheel down a large hill. The other reason besides me being impressed with him was that he was a good example of how the kids were having fun out there. I was very preoccupied with making sure that everything was perfect, but after a few rounds I discovered that if the scavenger hunt was set up properly or not, the kids would still have fun. Many rolled down the hill, played ninja, talked, laughed, and chased each other around. The presentation was brief, so while describing it I too will be brief. We had three slides on our powerpoint, which had pictures of the kids from the scavenger hunt that day. The slides had few words, just titled with what the camp was, why they should do it, and how to sign up. I myself had trouble projecting to the students, as we had no microphone so it was different than usual, but Kelsey on the other hand did very well. She ended up doing much of the presentation, as the kids looked as if they were losing interest. Next time I would want to prepare more, and now I will have it in my head if I ever do a scavenger hunt that the clues do not go where the clues themselves lead. All in all, our day went well, and when I asked a few kids  afterward, several said that they were at least considering signing up.

Academic Update #4

Recently, I have accomplished much more in my completion of the academic standards set forward by our Open teachers, especially English.

Last time in Math I had told you about my completion of chapter 9. This week, I have completed the first half of our chapter 10 study guide. Alex and I decided this time, similar to last time, to simply go straight to Mr. Davidson, who gave us, as he calls it, a "crash course" in the topics. This has proven to be effective in the past, as we always pick up what he lays down quite quickly. This led us through the first half, and we are relying on the help of a peer, Dylan, for the other half. Dylan has completed all 10 chapters and the final, so along with Rosie, who has done the same, he is the peer to go to when one needs help on math. We hope to finish the study guide, and possibly another this week. The test and final will be taken over the next two weeks, closing out Math for good.

In English, much more has been accomplished since last I told you. I finished my rough draft of my essay, and had it peer reviewed by Alex and Dylan. This prompted many comments towards my intro, conclusion, and formatting of my paragraphs. I spent time with them talking it over, and we finally discovered what was being missed in my paragraphs. We had first thought that I was simply missing a topic sentence leading into each paragraph, but later Alex discovered that I put my topic sentence as the second to last sentence in nearly every paragraph. My intro and conclusion were almost completely scrapped, which I was fine with because I can learn from the mistakes I made here. During this week I also completed two sitting responses, of which I have now only one remaining before I have reached all of my standards, excluding research standards. I hope to finish my other discipline specific paper, likely based off of an AP Gov't and Politics assignment, and then focus on reaching specific standards such as research standards. 

This upcoming week I will be presenting to students in the elementary school in the hopes of influencing them to join our camp. I will likely blog about that soon after it has been done. All in all, I am very confident in my ability to finish all of my standards in both Math and English, as they are progressing at a pleasing rate.