Standard:

6.3 Progressivism and Reform Select and evaluate major public and social issues emerging
from the changes in industrial, urban, and global America during this period; analyze the
solutions or resolutions developed by Americans, and their consequences (positive/ negative –
anticipated/unanticipated) including, but not limited to, the following:
6.3.1 Social Issues – Describe at least three significant problems or issues created by America’s
industrial and urban transformation between 1895 and 1930 (e.g., urban and rural poverty and
blight, child labor, immigration, political corruption, public health, poor working conditions, and
monopolies).

Learning objective: SWBAT Understand and identify problems created by the political machine
depicted by political cartoons created by Thomas Nast.

Note: activity branches from continuing lesson about Boss Tweed and political corruption from
the rise of urbanization during the Gilded Age.

Lesson:
1. The slide transitions from the political cartoon creations of the republican elephant and
the democratic donkey by thomas nast.
2. Launch the activity with asking students “how many of you have looked at a political
cartoon and has had no Idea what was going on?” anticipate students will raise hands
(prior experience with political cartoons in the class shows they’ve had trouble) and
follow with “me too, even now I sometimes have trouble, here we will go over some
things to look for in political cartoons so you can better understand them and interpret
them for yourselves.
3. The next slide breaks down different aspects of a political cartoon that include and are
defined: symbolism, captions/labels, analogy, irony, and exaggeration. The slide should
‘fly up’ one by one to be broken down and explained individually.
4. Now that they have this information, they will take that and apply it to the political cartoon
on the next slide (I chose this because it was put into the slides earlier in the lesson and
shown by their teacher). They then will turn and talk to their table group and work
together to find the different pieces of the political cartoon that they should be looking for
(from the previous slide). Have groups share out loud what they found.
5. Activity: next they are going to do a notebook task where they make a chart listing the
aspects of a modern political cartoon. The chart is on the powerpoint and they will
create it in their notebook so they will write that down. They will write all components,
unless it is not present within the cartoon.
6. They will look at the cartoon and write the different aspects in the chart they did in their
notebook. Then go over as a class.
7. This is the beginning of their political cartoon activity, where they will continue to analyze
cartoons and even create one of their own cartoons using the components that make
them up (linked below). From there, I intro the activity, and they are allowed to work with
partners on the activity.
Materials: Model task
Powerpoint slides
After activity students did
Modifications: using the lesson from the model lesson (linked above), and piece out the
components for my powerpoint (located on page 3). Create the chart, from scratch, but the
ideas are from the analysis section on page 3-4 on the model. Students rely heavily on using
their notebook, my teacher wanted to keep the activity he made, so I thought this would be a
perfect intro/transition into the activity.