Activities
Lesson 1 - "Event 1 - The First Women's Rights Convention"
This lesson is meant to build background. It will probably take at least three classes of 50 minutes each.
Activity one is Mind Streaming. Students will work with a partner for the mind streaming activity. You can decide how the partners will be selected. Once in partners, the two students will decide who is an "A" and who is a "B." The "A"s will talk first, for one minute about a topic assigned by the teacher while the "B"s are actively listening to and encouraging their partner, but they must remain silent. It is prudent to discuss with all students what silent active listening will look like. After the "A"s talk then students switch roles and the "B"s talk while the "A"s listen and encourage. The most important point is that all students who are talking talk for the entire designated time. They may repeat themselves if necessary and the "B"s can repeat anything that was said by the "A"s.
Ask the "A"s to talk about everything they know about woman's suffrage, women's rights and/or when or how women got the right to vote in the United States for one minute. Check to determine if all students know who will talk first, tell them to go and time them. Then repeat the process with the "B"s.
Debrief students' prior knowledge by asking for volunteers to tell you and the class what they know about this topic. Record their ideas on chart paper, the board, or an overhead projector. Record everything but remember to mark any inaccurate information with a question mark and come back to this later to either confirm or revise the idea. As you talk about this background, tell students that this unit will study the path to 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote in the United States, which was passed in 1920. However, the first women's right convention held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 marked the beginning of this path.
Introduce Remember the Ladies: The First Women's Rights Convention by Norma Johnston. If your students are not familiar with cooperative learning groups or picture notes, you will have to teach those strategies before proceeding to the next activity.
Activity two is Picture Notes. Students will work in six small groups, preferably in groups of three to five, for the picture notes activity. Each group of students will read a chapter in Part 1, The Road to Seneca Falls. After reading the short chapters, students, within their groups, will discuss the main ideas, key concepts, and important points of their chapter. Students will draw their own representations of meaning. Each group will decide who will draw which main ideas and will cooperatively create one visual of the chapter's ideas and important points, which will be shared with the rest of the class in an oral presentation using the picture notes as a visual aid to their presentation. Provide each group with colored markers and poster size paper. Point out to students that the quality of their artwork is not as important as the thinking process in which they engage while discussing the content and deciding how to organize it. Students must remember to indicate in their illustrations the main points and their interrelationships to each other as well as any supporting details. In addition to pictures, students can use words, phrases and captions if it helps to crystallize their analysis.
The groups will share their picture notes through oral presentations to the class for the purpose of building background knowledge leading to the Seneca Falls Convention. In order to help assure quality presentations distribute an oral presentation rubric to all students before they give their presentations. This activity may be used as an assessment for student understanding. Decorate your room with the posters.
Lesson 2 - "Event 1 - The First Women's Rights Convention"
This lesson continues to provide students with content about the actual convention. Have students read Part II and Part III of Remember the Ladies in a way of your choosing. Discuss the information in these sections as you deem appropriate. When that has been accomplished, give students a RAFT writing assignment to assess their understanding of the events and the impact of the events on the women's movement.
Activity Three is RAFT. The RAFT assignment may be used as an assessment of content knowledge for the first section of this unit, "Event 1 - The First Women's Rights Convention." After reading Remember the Ladies: The First Women's Right Convention, assign students a choice of RAFT assignments. (See appendices) Provide a writing rubric for the students consisting of your expectations of what and how much should be in the RAFT.
Lesson 3 - "Event 2 - The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments"
This lesson centers on the turmoil and difficulties that Stanton and Anthony faced after the Civil War with respect to woman suffrage. Use the information provided earlier in this unit to build background for the students. If you require more information Ellen Carol DuBois' Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848 - 1869 will be helpful. In addition, you can pull information and vocabulary from the excerpts provided in the appendices to help build background before students engage in the Intra-act strategy. You can use your teacher knowledge to develop vocabulary, but I have provided the concept of a movement as examples for using the Frayer model. (See appendices) Frayer models are great for discussion as student grapple with in-depth thinking, which contributes greatly to their vocabulary development.
Activity Four is Intra-Act. Students will participate in the Intra-act strategy using three separate excerpts from Feminism and Suffrage by Ellen Carol DuBois. (See appendices for the excerpts) From these three readings and the process of the intra-act, students will develop their own opinions concerning the tactics that the women' suffrage movement enacted after the civil war, in general and more specifically to Stanton and Anthony. The excerpts are labeled 1st read, 2nd read, and 3rd read respectively. You can decide if students should read the first excerpt and then discuss it or whether they are capable of reading all three and then discussing it before moving to the game sheet. It is important to remember that there were many accusations against Stanton and Anthony for their shift from embracing the freedman's cause before and during the Civil War to abandoning their cause during the period before the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Students might read the speech that Sojourner Truth gave at an Ohio convention to help further clarify the separation that existed between the women and race. Have the students use the Content/Process graphic organizer. Additionally, a search of other primary sources may provide more information as well. A discussion of the concept of ‘the ends justify the means' might be valuable here with respect to Stanton and Anthony's deliberate exclusion of the freed black women after the Civil War.
Lesson 4 - "Event 3 - The Nineteenth Amendment"
This lesson focuses on the new momentum that the women's movement was gaining in the beginning of the 20th century. Students will analyze primary sources in the form of political cartoons. The main text for this lesson will be Ann Bausum's With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman's Right to Vote. Read this text in a way you deem appropriate. In addition, the film Iron-jawed Angels will be used. If you cannot get enough copies of Bausum's book, the film may be a good substitute for content. Remember that while it is based on fact, it is still a film.
Activity Five involves Political Cartoons. [Allow an entire 50 minute period for this activity] Through the Think-Pair-Share strategy, students will study, for a few minutes, each political cartoon in the appendices and jot down any thoughts, comments, and/or questions that come into their mind as they look at the cartoons. Then have students share and discuss with their partner what they were thinking. Debrief with the entire class. Next, explain to students they will analyze the cartoons using the cartoon analysis worksheet. Print the worksheet from the following site: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/.
Activity Six is Teaching with Documents: Women Suffrage and the 19th Amendment.
Introduce student to research by using the following site,
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/woman-suffrage/resolution.html. Model for your students how to navigate through the site and access the worksheets. This activity is optional, but will be helpful for students when they must independently research as they make decisions concerning the transfer task, which asks them to become curators and docents to the museum dedicated to the Women's Rights Movement.
Activity Seven is viewing the film Iron-jawed Angels. Assign students to a video partner so that at predetermined times, which you decided upon ahead of viewing, you will stop the video for discussion. Utilizing a Think-Pair-Share strategy will work well for this activity. Students will jot notes on a two column Content/Process graphic organizer while viewing the video. When you pause the video have students discuss with their partner any of the brief notes they made. The purpose of this activity is to help students synthesize while accessing content. Discuss major points with the entire class. Continue in this manner for the rest of the film.
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