Abstract

The paper presents a small scale action research conducted and implemented in a Primary School in a Greek city with 6th Grade Students (11-12 years old). Sixteen children participated in the program, which aimed at promoting children’s critical understanding of print ads. The procedure included pre & post test questionnaire with open-ended questions and a teaching intervention planned on the basis of the framework of analyzing images from a social semiotic aspect suggested by Kress & van Leeuwen (1996) and verbal text analysis. The pedagogic approach followed the principle of fading scaffolding, including gradual guidance activities of critical deconstructing of print ads as well as exemplary presentations of manners of analyzing images in a communicative and collaborative way. The results showed increased critical involvement with the multimodal advertising text, better understanding of the purposeful construction of the advertising message, and more critical reading and questioning of it. There are also indications of children’s attitudinal change towards advertised products, namely foods and drinks. Although the teaching intervention was one of a small scale, whose results cannot be generalized, there are serious indications that a teaching approach of this kind can bring about very encouraging and fruitful results in the future.