My Ad Pitch to The Children’s Reading Foundation
Image Source: The Sits Girls Company, Leah-Anne Thompson, Dmitry Naumov, and Darren Young.
One of the big crises that you don’t see on TV is the literacy problem in the United States. According to The Literacy Problem, 40 to 44 million adults have a low skill in literacy (The Literacy Problem). The article indicates if a person can read at a 5th grade level or high they are consider to be literate. But if someone reads lower than a 5th grade level they are consider to be a functionally illiterate (The Literate Problem). Therefore I wanted to focus on kids before they reach the 5th grade. Harvard did a study on families that get involve with school activities, and this helped their child improve in literacy (Dearing, 2007). The article also states, families that weren’t involved in the school activity initially and later involved helped improve the children’s literacy (Dearing, 2007). In Literacy crisis: Pediatricians enlist to prod parents to read to kids, also suggest that parents read with their child (Paulson, 2014). Parents should strongly get involved with a child’s school activity between kindergarten to 5th grade (Dearing, 2007).
For these reasons I’m focusing on parents, but the parents with low-incomes that aren’t involved as much in their children’s school life. I want parents to help their child, so in the future there won’t be an increase in illiterate adults. For the ad I want to show a comparison between a child that doesn’t receive help from a parent, with a child that receives help from a parent. Parents that have low-income tend to not spend time with their children, because they are working to pay the bills and for their children to have a better future, but if the children are illiterate, all the work from the parents may not payoff in the future. When I was in 1st grade both my parents worked full time, and as the first-born I couldn’t ask an older sibling for help. Because of the lack of involved I suffered in school. In 3rd mom signed me in an after school program that would work with me. I know my mother worked, but I would of preferred to work with her.
According to The Children’s Reading Foundation parents should take at least 20 minutes reading with their children (The Children’s Reading Foundation). My goal with the ad is to make parents stop and think. I want them to think about taking the time to help their children. A great place to put this ad would be at bus stops and in subways, because most low-income parents take public transportation.
Work Reference
Dearing, E., Kreider, H., Simpkins, S., Weiss, H. (2007, January). Family involvement in school and low-income children’s literacy performance. Retrieved from http://www.hfrp.org/family-involvement/publications-resources/family-involvement-in-school-and-low-income-children-s-literacy-performance.
The children reading foundation. (n.d). Retrieved from http://www.readingfoundation.org/
The literacy problem. (n.d). Teaching Patient with Low Literacy Skills. Retrieved from http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/healthliteracy/files/2012/09/doakchap1-4.pdf.
Paulson, A. (2014, June 24). Literacy crisis: pediatricians enlist to prod parents to read to kids. Retrieved from http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2014/0624/Literacy-crisis-Pediatricians-enlist-to-prod-parents-to-read-to-kids.
Reflection
Discuss the role audience plays in determining what you said and how you said it.
I started talking about how a person is determined to be literate or illiterate, and I found that if someone can read higher than a 5th grade level they are consider to be literate. So I thought I could focus on kids that are between kindergarten and 5th grade, but parents had to help their child with literacy by getting involved with school activities and by reading with them.
Discuss how the media/design of this project enabled you to incorporate more visual components and how well those components turned out. If you had more time or better access to software, what would you have done differently in terms of the visual part of this project?
Because of the limited time to create this ad I couldn’t ask a younger family member to take a picture, so I found some pictures online and designed them as my mock ad. The first two ad I created on Photoshop, but the third picture is my picture. Under the picture I included the photographer or the company that had the pictures on their website. If I had more time I would have taken my own picture and that way I had more freedom to create my ad.
How did you make sure that your rationale and ad had no errors?
For the rationale I read the assignment page and made sure I answered all the question on the assignment page. And I read over the rationale a couple of time to make sure there wasn’t any errors. And for the ad I had my professor looked over it, and he gave me his feedback. With his feedback I made sure I included everything he recommended.
Print Ad Project Evaluation Writer: Maria Responder: Maria
| Item | Description | Score | Comment |
| Purpose/Theme(In Rationale) | The writer tackles a worthy purpose (theme) and the purpose is clearly presented somewhere in the rationale. | 4/5 | I wrote how a person is considered to be literate, and reading higher than a 5th grade level means you’re literate. And I found an article where they discuss about parents helping their child by between kindergarten and 5th grade. And I made a connection between both articles. |
| Inquiry/Development | The writer develops his/her purpose throughout the rationale, providing details and justification for the audience, design and content of the ad. | 4/5 | I started talking about adults being illiterate, then I started talking about helping the kids. And then I started talking about my ad and the meaning of the ad. |
| Secondary Research | The writer uses secondary sources to support claims in the rationale or ad. Sources are cited correctly. | 3/5 | I feel that I got good resource and included well into my work, but for the article The Literacy Problem the link no longer is available. |
| Audience | The writer chooses a worthy target audience and makes specific decisions in the print ad that are appropriate and enticing to the target audience. | 3/5 | My audience is parents with low incomes, and I wanted to get their attention by starting my rationale talking about adults’ literacy. I wanted the parents to help their child, so the child wouldn’t be part of the 40 to 44 million adults that are illiterate. |
| Purpose/Theme(In the Print Ad) | The purpose of the ad is conveyed clearly and persuasively in the print ad. | 4/5 | I used three images. The first is an image of a child by himself, the second image is a parent helping her daughter, and the third in image of graduation, which represents success. |
| Genre | The writer uses tone of voice, writing style, and visual texts that appropriate, useful and advantageous for this genre. | 3/5 | I broke down my rationale into three parts. The first part talking about adults’ literacy, then leading into kids’ literacy. The second part talks about my ad. And the third I briefly mention The Childers’s Reading Foundation. |
| Media/Design | The writer provides a well thought out layout, composition and presentation of the ad. | 3/5 | The three images show a journey of literacy. But I feel using images from Google made my design unfair, when others had to create their own. |
| Sentence Work | All sentences are “over half court” and a variety of well-structured sentence types are used in the rationale and ad. | 3/5 | I hope I have a variation of sentence, and I checked that all the sentences were “over half court.” |
| Mechanics/Proofreading | The writer has no zero-tolerance errors and the print ad has no errors of any kind. | 4/5 | I read over the rationale many times and I used different methods. |
| Bonus Points | |||
| Reflection | The writer discusses what he/she has learned from doing this project, including an understanding of rhetorical context, and rhetorical analysis (as presented on the course blog under the reflections page.) | 3/5 | I feel that I have improved throughout the course. I have learned different methods to proofread. |
| Total Points** | 34 |
My English 201 Course (May 28- June 28) 