Brochures: Writing for Audience and Purpose

This brochure assignment gives students the opportunity to see how shifting purposes and audiences creates changes in their strategies as writers—in the stance they take, in the information they use or leave out, and in the processes they follow to complete the task. (from site) This brochure lesson is a way to help students understand that writing for differing purposes and audiences may require using different genres, different information, and different strategies. Developing a sense of audience and purpose in writing, in all communication, is an important part of growth as a writer. Shifting from one genre with its incumbent audience and purpose to another, builds sensitivity to these factors in students. Additionally, today's students are confronted by a variety of texts that integrate verbal and visual materials to create a unified message. Creating a text that combines verbal and visual elements can develop students' ability to navigate increasingly complex uses of text types in their world, especially their world online. (from site)

Weblink address (URL): 
Brochures: Writing for Audience and Purpose

Standards & Objectives

Learning objectives: 

Student Objectives:

Students will

  • explore how texts work more or less effectively. 
  • understand how writing reflects purpose through genres, writer stance, content, and presentation. 
  • use strategies for inquiry, investigation, drafting, and revision effectively to create an informative brochure. 
  • reflect on how their use of strategies for this assignment can help them in future writing situations. 

 

Lesson Variations

Blooms taxonomy level: 
Understanding

Helpful Hints

Preparation:

  • Have students complete another writing assignment, preferably a paper that requires inquiry and has a different purpose (such as persuasion or argumentation) and a primary audience of the teacher. Although this unit can be taught by itself, it more effectively accomplishes the desired objectives if it is taught after students have written a paper for another purpose: to persuade or to take a stand, rather than to inform. For an example that uses this strategy after both a research paper that requires students to take a stand and a reversal paper, see page 98-110 of Dean's Strategic Writing. 
  • Gather informative brochures from a variety of sources. You can collect in a range of places-car dealerships, college campuses, school counseling offices, doctors' offices, visitors' bureaus, and so forth. 
  • Check the Brochure Assignment, and decide if changes are needed. If necessary, your own version of the brochure can be created using a word processing program or using the Printing Press. 
  • Review Websites in the Resources section, and prepare handouts as needed, making copies or overhead transparencies of the Investigation Sheet, Assignment, Inquiry Sheet, Research Guide, Evaluative Reading, and Questions for Reflection. 
  • Arrange for time in library to conduct inquiry and gather visuals. 
  • Make sure access to computers is available for students to format and print their brochures. 
  • Test the Printing Press on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tools and ensure that you have the Flash plug-in installed. You can download the plug-in from the technical support page.

 

Materials and Technology:

  • A collection of informative brochures

 

Printouts:

  • Brochure Investigation Sheet 
  • Writing Brochures
  • Brochure Inquiry 
  • Brochure Research Guide
  • Evaluative Reading
  • Questions for Reflection: Brochures 
  • ReadWriteThink Printing Press Brochure Layouts 

 

Websites:

  • Get It Write
  • A Teacher's Guide to Fair Use and Copyright

References

Contributors: 
David Sneed
Originator: 
Ayers Institute for Learning & Innovation