"Next!" Puck Magazine, 1904. Source: Wikipedia

Thomas Nast Self-Portrait

Magazines such as Puck and Harper’s Weekly established themselves as signature publications of the Progressive Era through their opinion-making political cartoons and celebrity artists. A good political cartoon succeeds based on its combination of image design and concise information delivery. The two essential questions to ask students when interpreting a cartoon are:

1. What do we see in this image?
2. What do these symbols and words tell us about the artist's opinion? 

Online archives offer great tools to examine past events through primary sources. Cartoons today are also invaluable in comparing points of view about national news stories and teaching perspective and opinion to young learners.

Source: BusinessWeek

Political platforms, census data, and financial metrics all come to life with vivid colors and easy-to-read numbers that engage the eye. Creative graphics, just like editorial cartoons, emerge from long paragraphs of text to convey quick take-away messages that remain in readers’ and students’ minds.

For example, last month we used the Time storm tracker maps to make sense of the recent devastating natural disasters affecting the nation.

Infographics are good to share for a quick five-minute opener to a Monday lesson, or for layering into Prezi or SMARTboard presentations. Also, students get used to recognizing infographics and begin to include them in their own reports.

We’ll try often to share graphics in the news that we use in our classrooms.