What's So Funny about Climate Change? Editorial Cartoon Opinions

Grades3-APScience, English Language Arts, Visual and Performing Arts

Provided by Project Look Sharp

What it is

In this media literacy activity, students will analyze six climate change-related editorial cartoons and discuss how each cartoon conveys a different message.
This resource includes a lesson plan, a student activity, a student handout, and a video clip.

Positives

Additional Prerequisites

The video was made in 2015, so the narrator references an "upcoming" UN Climate Change Conference that took place in 2015, resulting in the Paris Agreement.
Teachers must create a free account to access the materials.
This handout will help students understand how to analyze media messages.

Differentiation

Visual arts classes can use this lesson and then have students create editorial cartoons.
English language arts classes can use this activity in a lesson on symbolism, irony, hyperbole, or metaphors.
Other resources on this topic include this video on using doubt to keep people from believing in climate change, this video on how to talk to climate change deniers, and this podcast episode on Americans' opinions on climate change.

There is no contradiction in the resource; the cartoons illustrate the human impact on climate change. This resource is recommended for teaching.

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Standards alignment · D3.3.6-8 + 10 more

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards

D3.3.6-8Identify evidence that draws information from multiple sources to support claims, noting evidentiary limitations.
D4.4.6-8Critique arguments for credibility.

Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.6.3Delineate a speaker's argument and specific claims, distinguishing claims that are supported by reasons and evidence from claims that are not.

Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

MS-ESS3-4.Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth's systems.

English Language Arts

SL.6-8.1Prepare for and participate in conversations across a range of topics, types, and forums, building on others' ideas and expressing their own.
R.9-12.8Analyze the structure of various texts, including how the features and components relate to each other and the whole.
R.9-12.10Evaluate the argument and specific claims in various texts.

Social Studies

Geography1 (D2): Students understand the geography of the community, Maine, the United States, and various regions of the world, and geographic influences on life in the past, present, and future by describing the impact of change on the physical and cultural environment.

Visual and Performing Arts

D.C1.6-8adv.bCompare and contrast the ways in which context and media influence the ideas, emotions and actions of the viewer.
D.C1.9-12prof.aHypothesize ways in which art influences perception and understanding of human experiences.
D.C2.3Interpret mood in artwork by analyzing subject matter and characteristics of form.