Hey, what's so funny? Explore the use of satire in a variety of media with a hands-on lesson. Fourth in a five-part journalism series from iCivics, the activity introduces satirical language in print and online. Pupils work alone or in pairs to locate and analyze types of humor and irony about today's big topics.

Concepts

satire, humor, irony, news articles, news media, journalism, journalism ethics, bias, media bias, political cartoons

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Additional Tags

english language arts

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Instructional Ideas

• Show a brief slideshow of the history of political satire on television, then have learners choose and view examples on YouTube
• Print and hand out political cartoons and ask the class to analyze them using the tools in the lesson
  

Classroom Considerations

• Be sure to complete the Misinformation lesson before this one, as students are asked to compare misinformation with satire
• Choose a satirical article for the class to analyze and create a class set of copies
  

Pros

• The content is fun to deliver!
• It's easy to adapt the lesson to work on Common Core skills
  

Cons

• None

Common Core

RI.9-10.2 RI.11-12.2