CLASSROOM ACTIVITES
IDEAS
For Teaching Women's History
While March each year is National Women’s History Month, an ideal time to highlight and focus on women’s accomplishments, it’s also a good idea to actively integrate the accomplishments of women into the curriculum throughout the year. This compensates for the cursory treatments of women’s accomplishments in many textbooks, and shows students that women have made important and lasting contributions in every field of endeavor.
1. Have your class develop a series of short “fast facts” about women’s accomplishments and in March, National Women’s History Month, have one read each morning over the public address system or in classrooms during morning announcements. Your students can do the research on women that interest them, and read the announcements. These should be brief – no more than one or two sentences.
2. Have your class work in small groups to develop simple information booklets on women of accomplishment in various fields – science, athletics, the arts, politics, etc. If finances permit, the booklets can be inexpensively copied and each student could receive a copy of each booklet. Several sets can be placed in the school library.
3. Have your students test their knowledge of women’s accomplishments. Have each student (or small work groups) develop a simple story about a well-known woman without giving away her name; after each story is read, see how many in the class can correctly identify the woman described.
4. Personal history is the thread that ties the human family together. Encourage students to learn the history of the women in their own families by asking questions and compiling a short written history. If possible students can tape their relatives talking about family members and compile an oral history as well. Encourage students to concentrate not only on what their relatives accomplished, but what their lives were like as well – where they lived, what they wore, what they enjoyed doing in their leisure time, and so on.
5. Create a “birthday chart” of well-known women somewhere in your classroom. Have students learn the birth dates of women in history and write short biographies of them. Display these by month of the women’s birth.
6. The world of art offers a wealth of opportunities for creative teaching and learning. Some ideas include:
creating collages of women of accomplishment in various fields
drawing or painting portraits of admired women
creating a coloring book for young children featuring women of accomplishment
studying the work of women artists of the past and present
7. Children love plays – especially participating in them! Have small work groups study the lives of some famous women and create short skits about them, for presentation to the entire class. Simple props and costumes add to such efforts.
8. In texts on literature, as in so many other fields, women’s contributions receive scant mention. Make a special effort to integrate women writers and their work in each phase/era of literature you cover, without treating their work as an “after-thought.” If possible, provide students with bibliographies of the work of selected women writers.