North Vancouver School District
the natural place to learn©
News Item

​​

Student creativity shines in our Kids Design Your Ads feature

June 02, 2023

Note: Kids Design Your Ads is an exemplar of career education implementation in the intermediate years. It engages with the curriculum while providing content that allows students to share their ideas, connect to their community and build on social awareness.

district-of-north-vancouver_6x5.jpg

​By North Shore News Staff, North Shore News.

What would newspaper ads look like if they were designed by kids?

It’s a great question that we here at the North Shore News like to ponder, and it's the driving force behind one of our favourite annual traditions, the Kids Design Your Ads feature.

Every year we bring local businesses together with schools for an interesting exercise in community building and creative learning, allowing students to design ads to run in the paper.

This year the students “loved it,” according to Amy Meldrum, a Grade 4 teacher at Ridgeview Elementary in West Vancouver.

“I was impressed with the research the students did in their groups to learn about both their ‘clients’ and also about what elements go into making a successful advertisement,” she said. “The children took their jobs as advertisers very seriously. I was also very proud of them for creating designs that not only fit the brief of the company but also allowed for their artistic individuality to shine through.” 

Each advertiser picked winning entries to run in the North Shore News print edition, and the students were very excited about the prospect of seeing their work end up in the newspaper, said Meldrum, adding that their competitive sides kicked in as they worked to come up with the winning entry.

“They definitely learned about competitive collaboration as they worked together to help each other and push each other to achieve the best possible design entry,” she said. “I think they are also much more aware of the ‘tricks of the trade’ that advertisers use to attract customers. Most importantly, they made connections to the importance of how businesses that are community-minded can have a positive impact.”

You can see all the winning entries in the May 31 print edition, or in the digital edition of the Kids Design Your Ads Feature.

Other participating teachers included Amanda Turcato and Paula Stanley at Upper Lynn Elementary, Ally Monahan-Besse and Melissa Baker at Eastview Elementary, Susanne Steffens at Brooksbank Elementary and Victoria Van Schouwen at Bowen Island Community School. We’ve stitched all of the entries together into video montages for each school so you can see all of the artwork. Follow the links below to see the ads designed by students from each school:

Artwork for Upper Lynn Elementary 

Artwork for Bowen Island Community School 

Artwork for Ridgeview Elementary

Artwork for Brooksbank Elementary 

Artwork for Eastview Elementary