Nara: Teaching With Documents: Political Cartoons

Political cartoons are very clever, and often have deep meanings. This worksheet has learners consider a political cartoon. Next, they answer four questions regarding the cartoon. A very clever and effective teaching resource.

Readers decode and deconstruct political cartoons to heighten critical thinking, extra-textual literacy, and making meaning from symbolism and metaphor. A compatible activity to use in English class when your 8th or 11th graders are...

What advantages do political cartoons have over written editorials? Scholars discuss the topic by exploring editorial cartoons. Working in small groups, pupils analyze an Uncle Sam cartoon and complete a worksheet. As a fun extension,...

Difficult redistricting concepts are covered in a context that will make it understandable to your government scholars. They begin with a KWL on the term redistricting and then watch a video to answer some questions. They...

What fun! Have your class compose a narrative piece from an object's point of view. They research the object, its origin, and its history, then write their story. Stories can be shared with the class or read to children in a younger grade.

Data from the 1880 and the 1900 Censuses, and how these relate to the lives of Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder, are presented here. There are also ideas for teaching using primary sources.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but political art may be worth even more! After examining examples of political cartoons, murals, and other forms of public art, class members create their own pieces to reflect their ideals and...

Students select a cartoon to present to the class. They study it for a few minutes, write a list of questions about the cartoon. Students answer each others' questions and change the questions to declarative statements which are used as...

Contains plans for four to five 50-minute lessons about analyzing political cartoons. In addition to student objectives and standards, these instructional plans contains links to PDF handouts and links to sites used in the lessons as...

Learners make a list of every day symbols they know of and write down what each symbol stands for. Then they are asked to help their knowledge further by considering all the meanings various symbols might have.