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Learning Activities

A Feast for the Eyes and Ears
Objective:  Students will appreciate the significance of barley as a nutritious food source and an important part of Alberta’s agriculture industry.

Procedure:

1.       If necessary, review the information on the processing, uses, and nutritional benefits of barley on the Resource Sheets included with Activity #1.

2.       Discuss how barley is like/unlike other grains commonly used in our daily diet.  How is barley unique?   What are its key advantages?  What would motivate you to choose a product containing barley rather than another type of grain?  Why?

3.       Hand out copies of the Activity Sheet, “Create an Ad.”

4.       Students work in small groups or individually to develop advertisements for barley.  The focus can be on barley as human food, livestock feed, in beverages, its nutritional value, or alternative uses (e.g. straw as livestock bedding or as a building material).

5.       Students can develop their advertisements in a variety of ways, including:

• visual (e.g. print ad for newspaper or magazine, product label, display)
• audio (e.g. spoken commercial, testimonial or jingle, recorded on audio tape)
• multi-media (e.g. a video)

Encourage students to brainstorm creative approaches.

6.  Finished advertisements are presented to and critiqued by the class.

For Discussion:

1.       What additional uses of barley can you think of?  How could these be successfully marketed to the consumer?

2.       How do marketing professionals determine what customers want?

3.       Which type(s) of media do you think would be most effective in promoting barley to consumers? (store display, newspaper, magazine, radio, television, internet advertising)

Ideas for Extending this Activity:

1.       Class can vote to choose the best advertisement and submit it to the Alberta Barley Commission. (See Activity Sheet for Entry Form and Contest Rules).

2.       Explore market surveys and their role in helping to meet consumers’ needs and wants.  Develop a simple survey form and use it to interview members of another class to find out how much they know about barley.

3.       Tape a variety of commercials for different food products.   Review them to see if they refer to the nutritional value or health benefits of the advertised food.  What themes and images do advertisers rely on?  Do you think they are effective?