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

A comic showing a hill turning into a landfill and then into a monster. Caption reads: "Don't pollute. Recycle." Great for 4th Grade students to understand environmental issues through Editorial Cartoons.

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 cartoons shown here were created by my 4th-6th grade 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
Editorial cartoon showing an obese person saying they are hungry after 3 hours and a thin person saying they haven't eaten in 3 days.
A cartoon elephant says, "You darn humans, you are killing my friends for their tusks!" Another elephant adds, "Give me your nose."
Editorial cartoon of a person littering, throwing a soda can into a trash pile. Sign reads "Do Not Litter." Text below reads "Do not Litter!"

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2 Comments

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  1. These are excellent, Marcia. The most compelling to me is the the Obesity one; spot-on treatment of the subject. Very brave lesson!