Commercial campaigns for the Spanish class

A good resource for the Spanish class is to use some of the commercials produced by non-profit organizations or government campaigns. In the case of non-profit organizations, their campaigns are aimed at raising awareness about the situation in third world countries, the problems children encounter in situations of social exclusion or the need to give a step forward and help to make our world more sustainable, just to give a few examples.

Other campaigns we can use are the ones created by provincial or national governments again trying to promote healthy habits among citizens such as avoiding drug abuse. Other campaigns may target fundraising for humanitarian causes. 

As we can see the topics are very interesting and deal with issues that affect our students directly. We can use these commercials to target students' research and analytical skills as well as bring awareness to current issues affecting our society and the world. I am going to introduce 4 commercials that can be used in Bilingual or IB classes.

1. Government campaign against drug consumption by Ministerio de Sanidad in Spain. While the numerous anti-drug campaigns indicate that substance abuse amongst young people continues to be a serious issue, these commercials are also educational linguistically.

2. Campaign to raise Internet safety awareness. Campaign from a provincial government in Spain points out the dangers of putting too much personal information on the web. Once our profile is on the web, it belongs to everyone.



3. Campaign by Acción sontra el hambre. This is a simple but powerful advertisement with a beautiful message. Hunger is a huge problem in today´s world. It seems the children are the smartest here, hinting that world hunger can actually be solved quite easily. Perhaps this is some "food for thought" for adults!

  



4. Campaign UNICEF`. An interesting presentation regarding child hunger. It tells us how we can help much by giving little. We can do some work with our students using "cumplir años" and "cumplir días".

The campaigns created by non-profit organizations and governments can be a powerful resource in our Spanish classes. The language is simple enough to use in the lower grades. They also deal with current issues that affect us all and with topics which can be introduced in other subject areas.