Catalogue Lingo Past and Present

Grades
4-8

Subjects
Social Studies, Language Arts

Themes
Change; Writing for a specific audience

Resources

• Historic catalogues on this site
• Contemporary catalogues brought in by students
• Overhead projector and screen (optional)

Description

1. Ask each student to bring in one or more mail-order catalogues from home.
    
2. Before class, print out a few pages from one or more historic catalogues, or set up a projector and screen.
    
3. First, as a class, look at a few pages from one of the historic catalogues and select an item.
    
4. Next, select a similar item from a contemporary catalogue. Suggestions are a pair of shoes, a bike, or a stove.
    
5. Write out the text accompanying each item on your whiteboard or project it onto a screen.
    
6. As a class, compare the way both texts are written.
    
7. Next, ask each student to choose an item that they own and to write text for it that may have appeared in a catalogue in the past.
    
8. Ask a few students to read out what they have written.
    
9. You could also ask students to choose an historic item and write text that would accompany it in a contemporary catalogue.