Vegetables
Make the ordinary extraordinary | Suitable for 9-12 year olds
Amazing vegetables
Imagine that in front of you is a plate full of vegetables – very ordinary vegetables.
You are going to write about the colour, the texture, the taste, the smell, and much more. Make these vegetables irresistible!
Your job is to sell these vegetables with words. You need to make the reader not only love these vegetables, but want them so much that they go to the shops and buy them – lots of them.
Good luck!
Video by Marks and Spencer – embedded & hosted by Youtube.
Thinking ideas
- Think about how you would describe foods you love and foods you hate.
- What adjectives would you use?
- What verbs would you use to describe the action of eating these vegetables?
- How would you eat them?
- Can you think of disgusting adverbs? Can you think of delicious adverbs?
- Can you come up with similes to describe the textures and smells?
Discussion ideas
Did the advert change the way you feel about Brussels sprouts? Why?
What had the greatest impact – the music, the video, or the words? Why?
Can you think of a vegetable that tastes much better than it looks?
Why do supermarkets spend so much advertising food?
Writing ideas
- Your teacher has left a vegetable on your desk!
- Write a 60 second voiceover script to advertise your vegetable.
- Use rich description, figurative language, snappy phrases and zingers to make this vegetable irresistable.
- Imagine your vegetable is being served to the President of the United States, the King of England, the Jadis, the White Witch from Narnia, or your school principal.
- Finish with a catchy slogan that people will remember!
Teaching ideas
- Talk about how this video blends voiceover, visuals, sound, and clever language to sell the sprouts. Ask your students what they think worked.
- Create a bank of ideas on your whiteboard. Include students’ discussion points, examples of emotion, rhetorical questions, repetition, hyperbole, metaphors, similes, and powerful verbs.
- Use the word bank to model examples of catchy phrases, zingers, and slogans.
- Model how to edit scripts to last 60 seconds. Less is more – every sentence must have a purpose.
Resources
- This free resource from Oak Learning contains a complete teaching unit about persuasive writing and food, with PowerPoints and downloads to support writing persuasive adverts.
- BBC Bitesize has a great advertising writing resource with videos and activities.
- Here’s a big list of vegetables, complete with pictures.
- Have a listen to these vegetable sound effects.
- If you need ambient inspiration, here’s an interactive restaurent soundscape.
- This website features free to use creative commons background music that can be search by length in seconds, tempo and mood.
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Christmas Food
Seeing things differently
Photo by Michaela Šiška on Unsplash
Some people really dislike peas, so trying to sell peas to them probably isn’t a good idea. Talk to your friends. Find a pea-hater. Find out what they really like.
Write an advert with the title “If You Hate Peas – Try These.“
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