For educators · Lesson plan

Analyzing a wartime poster

Grades 9–12 Duration One 50-minute period Standards DE, NJ, TX, CA, IL
Objectives
  1. Read a poster as a set of decisions: image, words, color, scale, and what is left out
  2. Identify the propaganda techniques at work and locate each on the sheet
  3. Describe the audience the poster addresses and the response it wants
  4. Compare two posters from opposing sides and find the techniques they share
Procedure

Before class

Choose two posters from the archive, one from each side of the same war if the archive allows, or two from the same side that address different audiences. The pinned readings on each archive page are the answer key; do not show them until the end.

Procedure

  1. Look first (8 min). Project the first poster with the pins hidden. Students write for three minutes without discussion: what do you see, what do you feel, what does it want. Collect a few answers aloud. The point is that the feeling arrives before the reading.
  2. The five questions (12 min). Introduce the questions a poster analyst asks, one at a time, and apply each to the poster together:
    • Who is speaking, and does the poster say so?
    • Who is it talking to? (Look at the pronoun, the figures, the setting.)
    • What does it want the viewer to feel? (Name the emotion before the message.)
    • What does it want the viewer to do?
    • What is not in the picture? (The enemy's case, the cost, the alternative.)
  3. Pin it (12 min). In pairs, students place numbered pins on a printed copy or a worksheet, naming the technique at each spot and writing a one-line reading, as the archive does. Expect Flag Waving, Appeal To Fear, Common Enemy, Transfer, and Bandwagon to appear most often.
  4. Reveal (5 min). Show the archive page with its pins. Compare. Where students found something the editors did not, discuss whether it is there.
  5. The other side (10 min). Project the second poster. Students repeat the five questions quickly and list the techniques shared with the first. The finding, nearly always, is that opposing sides use the same devices; discuss what that implies about the devices.
  6. Close (3 min). One sentence each: what would this poster have to say if it had to give a reason?

Extension

Students choose any item in the archive and write its pins before reading them, then compare. The worksheet generator will produce a printable version of any artifact when it ships.

Assessment

A completed pin worksheet for one poster with at least four techniques located and read, and a short paragraph comparing it with a poster from the other side, naming two shared techniques.