Political Cartoon Resources

Source: Click here to find this cartoon

As an American government teacher, I use political cartoons regularly to explain different viewpoints on policies and politics. Many students often struggle in analyzing the meaning of a political cartoon. Nevertheless, political cartoons can be a great tool to help build higher order thinking skills (HOTS) of students in secondary schools.

As English and Social Studies curriculums adapt to Common Core changes, students will have more opportunities to analyze and evaluate different points of view on historic and modern issues. From my experience, I have found that a teacher needs to spend time building up student analysis skills of political cartoons. By repeating certain steps (listed in the worksheet below) regularly, students will become accustomed to the process of analyzing political cartoons.

My favorite two websites for political cartoons are the following:
- Politicalcartoons.com
- Cartoon Politics

The National Archives has a terrific worksheet that lists questions a student should be able to answer regarding any political cartoon. Besides this great worksheet, the National Archives provides a variety of primary sources and lesson plans.

This is the political cartoon analysis worksheet: