The War at Home

Day 1
Review prior knowledge about major events leading up to and through the Civil War.  Discuss these events using detail from prior classes to support their answers.

Anticipatory: Show a short video clip reviewing political cartoons and how to analyze them. Political cartoons have been used for hundreds of years. Analysis of political cartoons is very rigorous and takes not only knowledge of history, but also inferring skills related to reading.  

Direct Instruction: Show a PowerPoint presentation describing techniques used to analyze political cartoons.  One strategy might be to use quadrants in order to pick out the details in the four regions of the political cartoon.  

• Make a plus sign on the political cartoon.  
• Complete a graphic organizer listing in the facts column everything that can be seen directly in the cartoon such as important people, items in their hands, and the setting.  Complete the inference section of the graphic organizer to list all predictions based on the cartoon such as why the people are in the setting.  Model how to do this with one of the attached political cartoons.  

Guided practice: The students will analyze a political cartoon from the Civil War period including white women, African American slaves, rich plantation owners, poor southerners, children, and freed African Americans.  Laminate the political cartoons and give the students a dry erase marker to draw the plus sign on the document.  Then circle with the marker people and items that can be seen in each of the quadrants.  List these items on their graphic organizer labeled facts.  Then on the inference side, list all the predictions that can be made about the political cartoon including the time period in history, Why were the people in the setting? What were they doing in that part of history?  What’s the author’s purpose for writing the cartoon?  How did the author’s perspective effect the cartoon?

Independent Practice: Making Political Cartoons

• Pass out white copy paper to each student and have them choose a different person from the guided practice lesson of the lesson during the Civil War period including white women, African American slaves, rich plantation owners, poor southerners, children, and freed African Americans.Then students need to determine the social class, race, and gender of the person/people in their cartoon. Using prior knowledge and the SC Support Documents, create a political cartoon depicting life for the person of their choice during the Civil War.  
• Ten specific facts and inferences should be able to be made about the cartoon.  This will only be a rough draft so focus more on the symbols instead of the drawing.
• After about 15 minutes, swap the student's’ rough draft with a partner in the class.  Pass out a fact/inference graphic organizer.  Students will complete the graphic organizer about their classmates’ political cartoon.  If the classmate can’t fill out the chart, then the designer knows that there must be more elements added during the final copy.  

For homework, the rough draft and fact/inference graphic organizer is taken home along with a new piece of copy paper.  The rough draft is modified and then brought into class the next day.  If students have iPads that they can take home or have access to at their house, they can use iPad app Strip Design, Comic Book, or Comics Head to help them create the final copy of their political cartoon.

Day 2
Final copy of political cartoon
Students will swap their final copy with a classmate and they will receive a fact/inference graphic organizer to complete.  Their partner should be a new partner with a fresh look at the cartoon.

The graphic organizer and the political cartoon should be stapled together and turned in for an informal assessment grade.    
 

Extensions/Differentiation:
High: Students who are higher can be given the opportunity to create additional inferences for their political cartoon.  
Low: Students can review all the political cartoon samples provided by the teacher if they are stumped on what to develop in their own cartoon.  

How will students share their work?
The students will collaborate with peers to edit each other’s political cartoon rough draft.  Then they will peer-evaluate each other’s political cartoon final copy using the fact/inference graphic organizer.  Evaluations/Assessments

You can use the fact/inference graphic organizer as an assessment of the political cartoon that was analyzed by the students on day one.  You can also use the fact/inference graphic organizer to evaluate the student's’ final copy of their political cartoon.  

Political Cartoon Analysis Sheet
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YPl5Hw0AyaaHL532qBfxI7kJT6k8kEJhqVNi...