Use This Old Superbowl Ad to Teach Situational Irony and Author's Purpose

 The year is 2015 and Go Daddy pulled their ad because it was too controversial:

Some of your students will find this as hilarious and others will not due to the puppy farm reference.

There are two ways to use this for your classroom.  The first is to give it as a reading comprehension (yes, I know no reading is involved, btu the same skills are used).  You can do this using the Daily EOC Blog post.  This blog gives a reading comprehension style question every day that you can use as a class starter or pull up several of them for a quiz or however else you choose to use it.  This gives you a chance to talk about the process of elimination if you have students that struggle with some fairly basic literary terms.  The question on this particular post refers to the humor in the ad.  Remind students that humor is subjective and one does not need to find it funny in order to understand what was intended to be be funny.

The other way to to use this ad is to talk about author's purpose.  Students that struggle reading often have problems understanding why a piece was written or why the author chose to present it in this manner or that manner.  The more we get them to think about the why the author did it, the better readers they will be and the better chance to get those type questions on your state test.

Here's the background to tell students - Superbowl ads, as they know, cost a lot of money.  This year (2024) it costs roughly $7 million for 30 seconds of air time (not to mention the cost for making the commercial to begin with).  In 2015 is was $4.25 million.  The author (in this case, the company sponsoring the ad) wants as many people to see this ad as possible for that kind of money.  Companies release their ads to the media ahead of the Superbowl so that news articles about the ads are ready to go as soon as the Superbowl airs.  This also gives more ad exposure.  The more extravagant the ad, the more people will want to discuss it long after the Superbowl.  What Go Daddy does here is absolutely on purpose.  They released their ad using a puppy mill for humorous effect knowing that once the media sees it, one group in particular is going to denounce it - PETA.  Once PETA does this, Go Daddy pulls the ad and replaces it with another that they just happened to have ready to go.  Remember that the purpose here is get more people to see the ad, so ask students how they got this to happen.  After some discussion, if nobody figures it out, you can reveal the trick.  

Once the headlines are "Go Daddy Pulls Ad for Being too Controversial", the one thing everyone wanted to do? See the ad.  Online newspapers, magazines, and other media outlets made sure to give the public what they wanted and showed the banned ad.  The result?  More people watched the Superbowl ad that DIDN'T air than those that did.

So enjoy it. This will give you about ten minutes of discussion and will leave them something to remember about what irony actually is and make them start thinking about author's purpose.

And if you want to incorporate the Daily EOC question (all state reading comprehension questions are basically the same format), its absolutely free and you can find it here: https://dailyeoc.blogspot.com/   

Cultural Literacy - New Product on XET (free for a limited time)

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One of my college professors absolutely loved the book Cultural Literacy by E. D. Hirsh, Jr.  The book was a proponent for rote memorization, but whether or not you like that concept, the other part of it has been useful to me in my teaching career.

Hirsh asserts that there are certain things all Americans are aware of just by being immersed in American culture.  For example, ask any American what McDonald's is, and you can pretty much guarantee that they will be able to answer with at least some degree of competency.  Same goes for Michael Jordan.  While the person may not know any details about Jordan's career, they should know that he is an athlete of some kind.  Hirsh believes that these are the things that help to make up American culture.  

He goes on to list several things that he feels every American should know, from history to science to music to sports to literature.  Some of those things I am very much aware of and others... well, not so much.  

These worksheets are assignments that probe students' knowledge of well-known sayings in American culture, such as "Putting your nose to the grindstone" and "Nothing breeds success like success."  It is fun to do these together, as a game, or as a research assignment.  These are phrases that come up in literature, writing, and day to day life, so it is as useful for students to know as are common allusions.

Each worksheet has 30 sayings on it, a chance for students to explain two of them, and a bonus question.  Answer keys are provided.  All worksheets are on Google docs so can be edited by making a copy of it for your own.

I am introducing this to the Extreme English Teacher store for free for a limited time.  I only ask that you enjoy it and PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW.  You would not believe how much reviews are helpful to TPT store owners.

You can get it here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/XET-Cultural-Literacy-Sayings-11073448

Who's to Blame? - A Great Class Discussion Lesson

This is my second year doing this and I think I have honed it down to a good 45 minutes to hour-long discussion lesson. 

I got the idea/inspiration from a podcast titled Alarmist.  The format of the show is to pick an event in history, say the sinking of the Titanic, the assassination of JFK, the Donner Party, the Superbowl XXXVIII halftime controversy, and many others like it.  They discuss the event and then start listing (well, they say they are listing it on a board - I'm just an audio listener so I will take them at their word) all the people and traditions and beliefs and anything else that is a factor.  The patriarchy is a common one that makes its way on their list.  Once their board is full, they start eliminating or combining until they have three.  One gets a warning, one gets a slap on the wrist, and the other goes to Alarmist jail.

So I began thinking - this would be awesome to use in a classroom discussion.  So I tried it out last year with my AP kids on who is to blame for Myrtle's death in The Great Gatsby.  It worked ok, but not with the flair I wanted.  I feel that maybe squashed some of the discussion by wanting to list everything first and then talk about it.  This year I did things a little differently. For one, I didn't read Gatsby this year, so I chose The Lord of the Flies.  Our mission was to decide who was to blame for Piggy's death.

It started with this:

The students were given some time to discuss and think about all the contributing factors.  Once I felt they were ready for the challenge, we started taking suspects.  This time, I let each suspect be defended or argued before we moved to a new subject.  That was the key to success.  After a LONG discussion of students getting very heated (but in a good way), the board was packed.  At that point, we marked out some suspects (Isaac Newton was argued for discovering gravity, but we released him from being a person of interest), we combined some suspects into others (Piggy's Auntie and parents were combined and then moved under the umbrella of Piggy), until we finally narrowed it down to our three main contenders: Roger, Human Nature, and Piggy.  

I did it again with the next class and they had the warning going to Roger, the slap on the wrist going to Piggy, and Jack going to AP jail.

This format could be used with almost any book.  Who's to blame for Macbeth's violent run?  Heathcliff's atrocities?  the hanging of Justine Moritz? the suicide of John the Savage?  You get the point!  And the amount of prep work for you is low - assuming you did your job earlier to get your kids ready for deep thinking.  Since there is a huge argument component, this works for AP Lang just as well.

It was so much fun!  They really reached deep and even the silly suspects (the color red, for instance) were vehemently fought for by their arresting officers.  How this would work in a lower level class, I am not sure.  I can only vouch for this in an AP class setting.  Try it and let me know how it worked in your class! 

TPT Sale - Feb. 6-7

 Heads up!  If you use TPT, there is a sale coming Feb. 6 and 7.  Get up to 25% sitewide.

Use it for anything you need, but I would of course love it if you checked out my store during this time:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Extreme-English-Teacher

And remember, if you find anything on TPT (for any store, not just mine) that you thought was helpful, the best thing you can do for that seller is to leave a positive review.  It helps so much!  I know the process is annoying because have to wait a day and it is easy to forget, but coming back to review helps others find and trust that resource.