NPR
This Isn't Right: A History of Women in Industry
Women were in the workplace long before Rosie the Riveter pushed up her sleeve. Learn about the working options available to women during the Industrial Revolution, the Progressive Era, and the Great Depression with a lesson that prompts...
Elizabeth Murray Project
The Education of Women in Colonial America
What educational opportunities were available to women during the colonial era in American history? How did the opportunities available to women differ from those for men? To answer this question, class members examine a series of...
Center for History Education
How Did the Public View Women’s Contributions to the Revolutionary War Effort?
Calling upon the legacies of Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I, and Catherine the Great, Esther Reed rallied Southern women to support the American Revolution. Using a broadside by Reed and other primary sources, such as poetry, young historians...
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
The Revolutionary Times as Seen Through the Eyes of Women
The role of women before and during the American Revolution changed dramatically. To gain an understanding of these changes, middle schoolers analyze primary source documents, including letters from women that supported the patriot cause...
Curated OER
Exploring Women's History Month
Explore and celebrate the contributions of women past and present.
NPR
Suffrage Lesson Plan
Has life changed for American women in the last century, or are there common themes between the lives of 21st century women and the struggle of suffragettes from the 1910s? Explore the ways media reflects the position of women in the...
DocsTeach
Why Did Women Want the Right to Vote?
No taxation without representation may have been the battle cry of the American Revolution, but women used the same argument when demanding their right to vote in the late 1800 and early 1900s. Young historians examine petitions from...
American Institute of Physics
The Black Scientific Renaissance of the 1970s-90s: African American Scientists at Bell Laboratories
A two-part lesson asks young scientists to research the contributions of African American scientists at Bell Laboratories. After presenting their findings, class members watch two demonstrations that introduce them to total internal...
National Woman's History Museum
Anne Hutchinson: Foremother of the American Women’s Movement
Many learners may be familiar with the legacy of figures such as Susan B. Anthony, but what about Anne Hutchinson? Hutchinson was a lesser-known woman who spoke up to patriarchal figures in colonial America, leading to her banishment....
Odell Education
Making Evidence-Based Claims: Grade 8
New ReviewAmerican women have been working toward equal rights since the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence. Focused on the words and actions of Sojourner Truth, Shirley Chisholm, and Venus Williams, a language arts lesson takes eighth...
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Women's Suffrage: 140 Years of Struggle
Students create PowerPoint presentations about women's suffrage. In this women's rights instructional activity, students use primary documents to study the women's suffrage movement. In pairs, students create a PowerPoint presentation...
Curated OER
Rediscovering Forgotten Women Writers
Women's voices are becoming more prominent in the world of literature, but for centuries, this wasn't the case. Young historians research a woman whose writings are considered to be lost, out of print, or forgotten. They develop an oral...
Arizona Department of Education
American History Impact of the Women’s Movement
Take a look at important images that depict the women's suffrage movement, the support for the Equal Rights Amendment, and wage equity for women over the last two centuries. As class members work through a lesson on primary source...
North Carolina Consortium for Middle East Studies
Missing Pieces of the Puzzle: African Americans in Revolutionary Times
What's missing from most studies of the American Revolutionary War is information about the role African Americans played in the conflict. To correct this oversight, middle schoolers research groups like the Black Loyalists and Black...
Center for History Education
Native American Gender Roles in Maryland
Toss gender roles out the window—some societies lived in a world where women not only possessed the family wealth but also were the farmers and butchers. Many Native American societies had more gender equity than European societies....
Curated OER
Women’s Suffrage Movement
Though the movement for Women's Suffrage stretched over several decades and across two centuries, the final few years were the most difficult hurdle in many ways. Use a document-based question writing exercise to make inferences about...
C-SPAN
Women's Suffrage and the 19th Amendment
The right to vote was hard-won after decades of organizing by women and their allies. Using a series of video clips featuring women's historians, class members consider the efforts behind the Nineteenth Amendment. Possible extension...
Carolina K-12
African Americans in the United States Congress During Reconstruction
The Civil Rights Act of 1866, which granted citizenship to all males in the U.S., resulted in the first African Americans to be elected to Congress. Class members research 11 of these men, the challenges they faced, and craft...
Curated OER
The National Women's Party and the Enfranchisement of Black Women
Students analyze the attitudes and hostility given to African-American women within the National Women's Party. They finish the lesson by examining another moment in the party's history and writing about it.
Curated OER
Women's History Week
Students investigate the contributions of women who influenced human rights in US history. They examine the influence Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton by participating in a jigsaw activity....
Curated OER
American Women Who Shaped the Civil Rights Movement Explored Through the Literature of Eloise Greenfield
Examine the women who contributed to the Civil Rights movement. In groups, children read excerpts of writings from Eloise Greenfield and research the women she mentions using the internet. To end the instructional activity, they create a...
C3 Teachers
Black Women Writers: What Gets Black Women Heard?
Zora Neal Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou are featured in a guided inquiry unit. High schoolers research the lives and works of these and other Black women writers and craft an argument, using evidence from their research, to...
Elizabeth Murray Project
Colonial Women During the Revolution
Young researchers use the Internet or books to find out about colonial women during the American Revolution. They organize information in a graphic to demonstrate their understanding of the research they gathered before writing a...
National Woman's History Museum
Women, Propaganda, and War
Governments rely on propaganda to build support for wars. Class members examine six propaganda posters, two each from the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II, and analyze how the way women were portrayed in the posters...