Political Cartoons in the Classroom

This morning I am in Fort Myers, Florida for a conference with the National Council for History Education. One of the activities that one of the instructors is facilitating this morning deals with political/ editorial cartoons. The activity reminded me of a couple of political/ editorial cartoon resources that I've reviewed in the past. Those reviews are included below.

Cartoons for the Classroom is a service of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Cartoons in the Classroom offers more than one hundred lesson plans based on editorial cartoons created by the members of the AAEC. Each lesson plan is available as free pdf download. As you might expect, most of the lessons deal with current political and economic topics, but you will also find some lessons that are not time sensitive.

In addition to lesson plans Cartoons for the Classroom provides links to other cartoon resources. One of those resources is the Opper Project. The Opper Project provides lesson plans for teaching history through editorial cartoons.

If you use primary source documents in your classroom, the Library of Congress Teacher's Page is a site you should check out. A part of the Teacher's Page is the primary source center. The primary source center walks teachers through the process of locating documents on the Library of Congress' site. The primary source center also provides guides for using various types of primary sources including political cartoons, photographs, and oral histories.