Writing Prompts: Political Cartoons

from: Writing across the Social Studies Curriculum

Brief Description
Political cartoons serve as the material for prewriting and a group discussion on current or historical events.

Objectives To give students practice in focusing their perceptions, translating them into words, and organizing their interpretations prior to the first draft of an essay.

Procedures
Select a cartoon and present it to the class. Political cartoons from an earlier era are just as useful as what appears on your doorstep everyday. The cartoon can be transferred to an overhead, put n a slide, or copied for all students. Remember that not all cartoons will reproduce well in every medium.

  • Study the cartoon quietly for a few minutes.

  • Write down a list of 10-15 questions drawn from your examination of the cartoon. Focus on the details and interrelationships in the cartoon.

  • Write some of these questions on the board.

  • Break the class into small groups and have them answer the questions.

  • Report your group's answers to the class. Discuss the responses among the other groups. Write answers representing the consensus on the board next to the questions.

  • Change the questions into declarative statements.

Have the groups form the declarative statements into a logical order. They now have a series of statements that can serve as the source for a writing assignment.

Results/Benefits
Political cartoons are an easy source of materials to use as a prewriting strategy, developed to help students with the problem of having "nothing to write about." Source
Monahan, David P. "How to Stimulate Student Writing with Political Cartoons." Social Education, v47 n1 p62-65, Jan 1983.

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