It's no secret that cartoons reach us on a variety of levels, and span age groups through their selected use of humor and language.
The use of drawn characters to illustrate ideas on politics is not new - and it's a form of political commentary which can be easily translated by our students. In learning how to analyze political cartoons, and then studying politics to create their own political cartoons, the students use artistic concepts to express their own views of the world. Often, students are surprised to find that they even have such strong ideas about politics.
Not only does this article integrate art, but social studies, civics, and culture are addressed in a form that makes the topics much less intimidating. If you would like to use this lesson for students younger than grade 7 or so, you may want to change the cartoons and questions chosen for this article.
The cartoons and questions within the first handout come from Daryl Cagle's Teachers' Guide http://cagle.slate.msn.com/teacher/
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What's in this Article:
· Teacher's Guide
Foreword
Objectives & Prerequisite Skills
How To Begin
· Student Hand-Out One
· Student Hand-Out Two
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Teacher's Guide:
This lesson encourages critical thinking, analyzing, and studying the issues relevant to the past and present political states. Whether you decide to compile the student-drawn political cartoons into a book, publish in a school newsletter, or post on the Internet, this is a project which offers students a strongly motivated goal; notice.
Objectives:
To understand the process of analyzing a political cartoon.
To develop personal ideas about the state of politics.
To draw a political cartoon using the above knowledge.
Prerequisite Skills:
None nessecary.
Time Allotted:
1 class period and ongoing
How to Begin:
1. Pass around the first student hand-out. Ask the students to explain what they feel the cartoon means. Use the hand-out to introduce the concept of political cartoons, working as a class to answer the questions that are contained within the hand-out.
2. Pass around the second student hand-out. This hand-out contains 4 separate political cartoons with space to write an interpretation of them. Allow the students a few moments to analyze the cartoons and decide what they feel that the images mean.
3. As a class, using a recent newspaper or articles printed from the Internet, discuss some of the political issues that are creating a controversy today.
