Travel Brochure Lessons
An educator can use common travel brochures in a variety of teaching scenarios. For instance, students can use travel brochures to gain understanding of a different culture in a foreign language class, or they can create their own to demonstrate what they've learned about a geographic location and its culture. Social studies, history and geography classes can use travel brochures to showcase a state or town. Brochures can also teach students about text structures found in informational writing and how to write descriptively.
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Deconstructing a Brochure
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Obtain samples of travel brochures from a hotel lobby or travel agent to teach students about descriptive writing and writing complexities. Have English students take a paragraph from a brochure and break it down into as many simple sentences as possible. For example, the sentence "the long, sandy beaches are good for tanning" could be broken down into "the beaches are long", "the beaches are sandy", "the beaches are good for tanning". This activity will help students explore the types of writing found in a brochure and will help them to gain composition and syntax understanding.
Text Structure and Brochures
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Before having students create their own brochures, have them discover the text structures that are common to brochures. Provide students with two travel brochures obtained from a travel agent. Ask students to create a T-chart listing all of the sections/headings and types of information found in each brochure. Students should then compare each side of the T-chart to determine which elements are common to both brochures. For example, students might note that each brochure contains testimonials from visitors or celebrities and a section listing local festivals and events.
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Vacation Destination
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Students can research their ideal vacation spots and create brochures. Included in the brochure should be a description of the location, activities to do while on vacation, and paragraphs about the food and customs of the location. Students should find photos of the location on the Internet to use in the brochure, and should scour online reviews of the vacation destination to find at least two testimonials to include in their brochures. They can be adapted for a foreign language class to have students research locations that speak the language students are studying.
Fictional Brochure
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After reading a novel or short story in class, have students create travel brochures to showcase the setting of the book or story. The brochure should contain a description of the overall setting and briefly describe the important locations in the book. Students should include pictures depicting the various locations in the book, at least two quotes from the book that describe the setting, and made-up testimonials from characters about why people should visit that setting.
My Town
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Pretend that students have been hired by your town's division of tourism to create brochures showcasing the town. Student brochures should include adjective-filled descriptions of the town, testimonials about how great the town is from at least three fellow students, and lists of popular attractions. Students can take digital pictures to use in their brochures and insert them into the brochures using a brochure creation program on the computer. Students can present their brochures to the class or invite a city councilperson into the classroom to view student brochures. Adapt this lesson to social studies by having students research a specific region or state.
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