Editorial Cartoons for 4th, 5th and 6th Grade

Teaching about editorial cartoons is a great way to bring current events into the classroom.

Every year our students in grades 4th-8th participate in a local editorial cartoon contest.  The students watch a video about editorial cartoons and they discuss, analyze and interpret current editorial cartoons.  Cartoons for the Classroom is an excellent resource for lesson plans about editorial cartoons.  If you are going to teach about editorial cartoons, this website is a must-see.  The cartoon templates we used are at the Yahara contest website.  The cartoons shown here were created by my 4th-6th grade students.  This sheet from the Mindsparks Editorial Cartoon contest is also very helpful to use when teaching with students.

These concepts were introduced and discussed in this unit:

• current issues
• symbols
• exaggeration and distortion
• stereotypes
• captions
• caricatures
• humor and irony
• point of view