Breakfast Cereal Product Choice: A Lesson For Family Literacy by Mary Bradely
I.
Content standards/indicators/levels for the lesson plan
A.
Social studies-economics: Indicator A2 for level ABE II: The adult
learner uses and applies social studies concepts in a variety of situations.
She/he employs basic economic concepts, evaluates problems, and makes rational
choices in her/his roles as a consumer, worker, and citizen. She/he uses charts,
bar graphs, and pie charts to describe basic economic concepts.
B.
Mathematics: Indicator A2b and c for Level ABE III, Indicator B1a and b
for Level ABE III; and Writing Skills: Indicator A for Level ABE II may also be
cross-referenced to this lesson.
II.
Lesson Premise
As a parent and a
consumer, the ability to understand the influence that mass marketing strategies
may play on the family’s choice of food items is instrumental to aiding in
making informed and rational product choices. Even if the adult is the ultimate
product purchaser, adult learners should understand how their decisions are
influenced by strategies and tactics aimed at other family members.
This lesson also provides adult learners with some experience as observers
and recorders of data in a “real world” environment.
III.
Materials/Handouts
Each student should be
provided her own activity sheet/list of questions. Students will also need
pencils and clip boards for in-store observation, recording of data, and
response to questions 1-5.
Students
will need to watch weekend national television in order to complete questions 6
and 7. (Bonus! Students have to pay attention to what their children are
watching on Saturday mornings!) Questions 8 and 9 are based on recall and
observation of products available in the home.
To complete questions 10-14, students will need paper, pencil, calculator (if needed), graph paper, ruler, protractor, and colored pencils.
IV. Main Activity
To
complete questions 1-5, a class “field trip” to a local grocery store will
need to be orchestrated. Friday is an ideal day for this exercise. (It’s
suggested that the instructor clear this with the store manager ahead of time.)
Divide your class up into “teams” of 1-3 students apiece; assign each of the
five breakfast cereal categories listed in question 1 to each team.
Let
each team collaborate on answering questions 1-5. Circulate among your students
in order to clarify questions raised and make sure that students are accurately
recording data (especially for question 5.)
The
“field trip” should take about 1 hour of class time.
Students
should be instructed to complete questions 6-9 over the weekend.
Questions
10-14 can be completed as a collective activity on the succeeding Monday. (When
working through this lesson, my students had great fun helping one another with
the exercises. One student who was facile at the math could be helped in drawing
and coloring pie charts by another student who was more “hands on” in
learning.)
V.
Assessment Activity
Instructors
could verify that students understand the equivalence of fractions, decimals,
and percents by completing instructor-generated story problems or standardized
story problems.
Class
discussion could be used to informally assess that all students understand the
role that in-store shelf placement/aisle facing, pricing strategies, mass media
advertisement, and cents-off coupons are designed to play in influencing a
family’s product choice.
Since
performance standards for economics were not available at the time this lesson
was originally written, the assessment activity does not explicitly address any
performance standards.
VI.
Extension Activity
Ask students to
hypothesize about the distribution of breakfast cereals if the class were to
visit a grocery store in a neighborhood with a demographic make-up different
from that of the original store’s neighborhood. Ask students to hypothesize
about the distribution of breakfast cereals in various regions of the country.
STUDENT
HANDOUT
Breakfast Cereal Product Choices: An Empirical
Investigation
Directions: Complete Questions 1-5 in the grocery store.
1.
Circle
the breakfast cereal category that you are responsible for observing.
a. hot cereals
b. “adult”/ “natural” cold cereals
c. children’s cold cereals
d. bagged cold cereals e. store-brand cold cereals
2.
Circle
the shelf location of the cereals you are responsible for observing. Circle all
that apply.
a. top shelf- at or above eye level
b. second shelf- adult shopper’s eye
level
c. third shelf-older child’s eye level (or
eye level of child in cart)
d. bottom shelf- walking child’s eye level
e. bagged cereals-stacked in a bin
3.
Along a
particular shelf, for which of the cereals you are responsible to observe do you
notice more than one aisle facing for a particular brand (more than one space
along the shelf)?
_________________________ _________________________
_________________________ _________________________
_________________________ _________________________
_________________________ _________________________
_________________________ _________________________
4.
Why do
you think that these cereal brands are given more than one aisle facing?