Medium Post 2: Women’s Suffrage
In honor of international women’s day, it would be a good time to use an article on the suffrage movement. The article is titled The Night of Terror: When Suffragists Were Imprisoned and Tortured in 1917. This article is great for discussion because it presents a specific incident and its connection to larger events. The treatment of the suffragist in the article and their restriction of free speech can be compared to contemporary issues. Use the directed reading — thinking activity (DR-TA), to have students read this article.
Some questions students make ask are, “Why would the suffragist keep protesting during World War 1?”. “Why did other women see the suffragist as unpatriotic nuisances?”. “Why did the police torture and imprison these women who were United States citizens with out due process?”.
To start the activity first engage the student’s background knowledge, on the suffrage movement in the US and world, freedom of speech, and peaceful protest. Then have students make predictions about the article from the title, have them write them down or type them down. Read up to the cat and mouse game section in the article, let student make new predictions from this information. Have the students finish reading the article, then as a class go over their predictions, see if their predictions were right or wrong. After discussing their predictions, have the students research other examples of suffrage movements or women having the right to inform their government from around the world. With research done, the students can now prepare their findings in a presentation with a PowerPoint, a play of a important moment, a two page paper, or create a comic strip about the their findings. Students can choose to work in pairs or solo. Students are welcome to utilize tablets to read/listen to the article and take notes.
Through using this article in DR-TA, it would be working toward the social studies content standards one and two at the high school level. It would also help answer the Grand Challenges of understanding the American experience, and valuing world cultures. Using the example of leaders to understand the evolving nature of the American character. Deepen the understanding of significant global political and historic patterns and their effect on the world. By enabling students background knowledge, it will allow them to use their academic identity in this assignment.
