Fun with Mentos

A few weeks ago a colleague started a group session by having the participants guess what was in a bag- and it was apple Mentos. This reminded me of the goofy series of 90s Mentos (the Freshmaker!) ads like this one:




I realized there are a number of good language opportunities in this series and subsequently have had fun using it in groups of teens:
-Wordless materials are often a good opportunity for students to practice narrative language and interpreting nonverbals (my students needed some cues with this, so it was definitely in their ZPD)
-A number of the commercials show someone breaking a "hidden rule" (e.g. we don't block people in when parking), a concept applicable across the day in social cognitive instruction.
-Ads are always fun for having students figure out the main idea or advertiser's intent/implied message: What do Mentos have to do with the situation?

Here are some more:

The Lunch Date

The Broken Shoe

The Car Movers

Fresh Paint

Associated activities:

-Play Foo Fighters' Big Me, which parodies these ads. What's the same and different?
-Eat Mentos!
-Do the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment. Naturally you can't do this in your room so it's an opportunity to have students figure out where you can do it, and practice walking and chatting together with bodies in a group. One of my HS students did a great job of evaluating where we could stage it so that we would not distract any nearby classrooms who might see us out the windows ("thinking with the eyes," among many Social Thinking® concepts)