pullout
Social Studies and the Young Learner 19(1), pp. P-P4
©2006 National Council for the Social Studies
Speaking in the First Person:
Notable Women in History
Tracy Rock and Barbara Levin
The purpose of this project, for the fourth or fifth grade,
is to identify and learn about women in our history who have
made contributions to our lives but have gone largely unrecognized. Each student selects a notable woman, researches her
biography, and then tells her story in the first person. After the
“first person” presentation, other students are encouraged to
ask questions of the character. Students might dress in uniforms, professional attire, or period clothing and supplement
their presentations with artifacts, primary sources, audiovisuals, or any simple props. Male students, who may not want to
present a female character in the first person, can partner with
a female student and perform the role of the interviewer or
present their research through a related character, such as the
coach of Wilma Rudolph. This strategy allows the performing
student(s) to explore another person’s life from that person’s
perspective. It challenges students in the audience to formulate
interesting questions. It is also an effective strategy for teachers
themselves to use when introducing students to the work of a
particular historical or contemporary woman.
Learning Goals
When preparing this project, we strove to align our learning
goals with two of the strands of the social studies curriculum
standards.1
1 Culture—In our democratic and multicultural society,
students need to understand that different cultural vantage
points lead to multiple perspectives among members within
and across cultural groups. As students study the lives of
women they may be directed to consider questions such as:
What is culture? What are characteristic of culture? How
is my daily living affected by my culture? How am I alike
and different from others? How does the culture change to
accommodate different ideas and beliefs? What role do
cultural beliefs, values, and traditions play in a particular
conflict between two groups of people? 2 Time, Continuity, and Change—Students need to
contemplate the connections between human decisions
and consequences as they analyze the past and present life
experiences of others. As students study how human beings
view themselves they should be asking questions such as: Who
am I? What happened in the past? How am I connected to
those in the past? How has the world changed and how might
it change in the future? How might our own life experiences
be viewed as part of the larger human story across time?
In addition, as students engage in this type of project they
can acquire strategies to access a variety of sources, using
appropriate research skills to gather, synthesize, and report
information.
Procedure
During a unit of study on a specific time period, i.e., the
Civil War era, provide students (grades 4 or 5) with a list
of notable people from this era for study, including women
such as Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Clara
Barton, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, etc. Following research
and presentations of historical characters from this era,
have students consider the impact that individuals who take
on leadership roles have on our history. (Depending on the
historical person selected, you might discuss why there seems
to be a shortage of information written about this person.)
Ideally, two weeks would be allowed to provide adequate
time for this unit of study.
Assist students in gathering multiple and varied resources.
Resources might include age-appropriate biographies,
autobiographies, Internet sites, actual letters, diaries, and
newspaper clippings or other contemporaneous reports that
tell about the woman’s life and accomplishments—and how
people reacted to her efforts at the time. (See Pullout pages 3
and 4, and bibliography of Internet sites, below.)
Assist students in constructing a concept map or other
graphic organizer to focus and organize their research.
Provide sufficient time, we suggest one week, for students
to prepare their presentations. Advise students to present
their information in a series of stories that tell about the
woman’s life. The use of stories works better than simple
memorization.
January/February 2006
P
Focus on props and costumes only after the research is
complete. Students may become distracted as they search for
costumes and props and omit the scholarly preparation of
their character. Also, the search for historically accurate props
and costumes becomes easier once the student is familiar with
his or her character and the related historical period. Props
and costumes do not need to be elaborate or expensive.
Develop a presentation rubric with your students so that
expectations are clearly defined. Students can refer to the
rubric as they prepare and practice for their oral presentation.
Immediately following the presentation, the student and
teacher can individually complete the assessment sheet and
compare opinions. This promotes self-reflection by students
as they consider what they have learned and how they can
improve their oral presentation skills. You will find that
students are often more critical of their performance than you
are. See the rubric in Figure 1.2.
Variations on the Activity
• If “women reformers in history” is itself a subject in
the curriculum, work with students to organize their
presentations in chronological order. Place in small
groups women from similar eras of history. Have students
identify additional information related to the time period
in which the woman lived. Analyzing the social, political,
and economic history will provide information regarding
occupations, the roles of men and women, inventions,
dress, the political climate, major industries, the standard
of living, and other important issues of the time. It is
important for the student to understand the character
in context and on the continuum of history. The book
Remember the Ladies: 100 Great American Women is a
valuable resource to help students select and organize their
characters into appropriate eras of American history.2
• Students can create biography billboards using tagboard
and markers to enhance their oral presentations. Students
draw a lifesize replica of their notable character’s clothing.
As they share their oral presentation they stand behind
their billboard. This eliminates the need for locating
appropriate costumes and clothing.3
• Students can share their work with parents or other classes
by setting up the classroom as a “wax museum.” The class
can decide how to organize this special museum exhibit.
Then, each student designs a display area where the
character will reside. As guests enter they can browse the
exhibit and push buttons that bring the “wax characters”
to life to share their oral narratives.
• Have your students give their presentations at a PTA
meeting or for an all-school assembly. They could do this
in the form of a tableau that “comes alive” one person
January/February 2006
P
at a time, similar to the wax museum idea. They might
also videotape their presentations, or even take their
presentations on the road (as a service-learning project) to
a residence for the elderly or for a civic organization
• Students could follow up such a lesson focusing on national
figures with a local history project, researching the work of
a notable woman from their own locale.
Extensions
• Have students record their feelings about the person they
researched in a journal. Do you admire her? Why or why
not? Would this person have been a good friend? Are you
inspired because of this person’s life? Why or why not?
• Have students identify the positive and negative character
traits of the people they are researching and discuss how
these traits affected the person’s life. Make sure to point out
that these were real people who sometimes made mistakes
and may have many challenges to overcome (which is an
opportunity to bring in some character education into this
social studies lesson).
• Have students discuss what they have learned about social
activism as they researched the notable women. Was the
public always open to these women’s efforts? What methods
did a historical figure use to get her concerns across to the
wider public and to policy makers?
• Have students express how they, as citizens of the nation and
of the world, might impact future events and public policy
(Individual/Citizenship Development/Goal Setting).
Notes
1. National Council for the Social Studies, Expectations of Excellence: Curriculum
Standards for Social Studies (Washington, DC: NCSS, 1994).
2. Cheryl Harness, Remember the Ladies: 100 Great American Women, (New York:
HarperTrophy, 2003).
3. For additional information and actual student pictures of this strategy see: Terri
Lindquist, Seeing the Whole through Social Studies, 2nd ed. (Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann, 2003).
Tracy Rock is a professor in the Department of Reading and Elementary Education
at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Barbara Levin is a professor in
the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of North Carolina
at Greensboro.
Handout
all photos courtesy the Library of Congress
Women Reformers
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Oh my daughter, I wish you were a boy!” Elizabeth’s father said,
grieving at the death of his only son. Young Elizabeth vowed to
prove him wrong. She worked hard to excel in Greek, Latin, and
mathematics, and obtained the finest education then available
to women at Troy Female Seminary. When she married Henry
Stanton, an activist in the anti-slavery cause, the word “obey”
was omitted from the ceremony at her insistence.
Their honeymoon journey was to the great World’s AntiSlavery Convention in London in 1840. After the women
delegates were not seated, Stanton was convinced that women
should hold a convention for their own rights. This decision was
delayed until her move to Seneca Falls, where she was isolated
and increasingly exhausted by a growing family. Finally in
July, 1848, she met with Lucretia Mott and three other Quaker
women in nearby Waterloo. Together they issued the call for the
first woman’s rights convention.
Stanton drafted the Seneca Falls Convention’s Declaration
of Sentiments and argued forcefully for the ballot, a radical
demand opposed by her husband and even Mrs. Mott. Soon
thereafter she met Susan B. Anthony and they formed what
would be a lifelong partnership devoted to the cause. Among
their earliest targets were the laws that discriminated against
married women, denying them the right to hold property, or
wages, or guardianship of their children.
Stanton was the founding genius of the women’s rights
movement, brilliant, insightful and eloquent. While Anthony
focused more and more on suffrage, Stanton continued to
range widely. She took a daring stand in favor of more liberal
divorce laws, for example. When her seven children were no
longer small, she toured the country repeatedly, calling for
voting rights, coeducation, dress reform, and other advances.
She never slackened nor grew cautions with age.
Sojourner Truth (ca. 1797–1883)
A slave named Isabella was born in Ulster County, New York, in
the late 1790s. After slavery was finally abolished in New York,
Isabella found refuge with a Quaker family named Van Wagener
and took their name. Isabella Van Wagener was caught up in the
Social Studies and the Young Learner 19(1), pp. P-P4
©2006 National Council for the Social Studies
atmosphere of religious excitement then sweeping American
Protestantism. She did missionary work among the poor of New
York City and was associated briefly with a Christian community
headed by a dynamic leader who turned out to be a scoundrel.
In 1843 she set out on her own as a traveling preacher. God, she
said, had given her a new name: Sojourner Truth.
As was common in that era, religious fervor led her into
association with reformers who hoped to create a better world.
Tall, gaunt, and commanding, she lent her powerful talents as
a speaker to the antislavery movement. When she happened
upon a women’s rights convention, she made that her cause as
well. Illiterate all her life, she spoke more often among whites
than her own people. Her homely eloquence and native wit
disarmed hostile crowds.
At the Civil War’s end she worked as counselor to the newly
freed slaves who gathered in Washington. Hoping to aid in their
transition to freedom, she circulated a petition for public lands to
be set aside in the West for a“Negro state.”She continued to speak,
proclaiming God’s love and the rights of the disadvantaged.
Harriet Tubman (ca. 1820–1913)
Born a slave, one of eleven children, on the eastern shore of
Maryland, Tubman fled north to freedom at the age of 29.
There she joined the secret network of free Blacks and white
sympathizers who helped runaways - the “underground
railroad.” She became a ‘conductor” who risked her life to lead
her people to freedom. Tubman returned time after time to her
native Maryland, bringing out her relatives and as many as 300
other slaves.
The shadowy figure of the conductor “Moses” became so
feared that a huge reward was put on “his” head, for slaveowners
did not at first believe a woman capable of such daring. Cool,
resourceful, skilled in the use of disguise and diversions, she is
said to have carried a pistol, telling the faint-hearted they must
go on or die. Apparently only illness prevented Harriet Tubman
from joining John Brown in the raid on Harper’s Ferry.
When the Civil War began, she worked among the slaves who
fled their masters and flocked to Union lines. She organized
many of them into spy and scout networks that operated be­hind
January/February 2006
P
Confederate lines from bases on islands off the coast of the
Carolinas.
After the war and having won a pension from the government,
she devoted herself to caring for orphaned and invalid Blacks,
and worked to promote the establishment of freedmen’s schools
in the South.
Mary Walker, M.D. (1832 - 1919)
Walker was one of six children. Her father, a farmer, taught
himself medicine. In 1855, she was one of the first women in
the U.S. to earn a medical degree. When the Civil War broke
out in 1861, Dr. Walker volunteered to work on the Civil War
battle­fields caring for the wounded. Denied a commission as
a medical officer because she was a woman, she volunteered
anyway and eventually was appointed assistant surgeon of the
52nd Ohio Infantry. Captured by the Confederates in 1864, she
was exchanged only after she spent four months in a Richmond,
Virginia prison.
Walker lectured throughout the country and abroad on
women’s rights, dress reform, health and temperance issues,
and sexual and political equality. She tried to vote, but was
turned away. She rejected corsets and hoop-skirted dresses for
the more practical pantsuits (trousers, jackets, top hats) and was
arrested in New York City for impersonating a man. She spoke
against imperialism, the Spanish-American War, and America’s
acqui­sition of colonies abroad. She worked for equal rights
in all facets of life, from love and marriage to the workplace.
She urged the reform of divorce laws that placed women in
Recommended Websites
National Women’s Hall of FameWomen of the Hall
www.greatwomen.org/women.php
More than 500 records of great
women in America. Search by last
name. With a picture, quick facts, and
a brief introduction.
Children’s Encyclopedia of Women
www2.lhric.org/pocantico/
womenenc/womenenc.htm
Created by grade 3-4 students at
Pocantico Hills School, Sleepy Hollow,
NY. Examples of student work.
January/February 2006
P
Distinguished Women of Past
and Present
www.distinguishedwomen.com/
Writers, educators, scientists, heads of
state, politicians, civil rights crusaders,
artists, entertainers, and others. Search
by subject or name.
Women In World History Curriculum
www.womeninworldhistory.com/
index.html
An interactive site useful for teachers,
teenagers, parents, and history buffs.
National First Ladies’ Library
www.firstladies.org/Bibliography.htm
Detailed biographies of 44 First Ladies.
deplorable situations. She advocated women retaining their
own surnames, predicting that some day women could keep
their own names when they married and that children might
then choose the family name they preferred. She also authored
two books devoted to her views on feminism.
Walker struggled on the brink of poverty as she lost work
because of her refusal to bow to the will of others or to
follow standard operating procedures. Her Medal of Honor
was revoked, but in 1977, the Army Board, admitting that Dr.
Walker had been a victim of sex discrimination, restored the
Medal of Honor to her, citing her for “distinguished gallantry,
self-sacrifice, patriotism, dedication and unflinching loyalty to
her country.”
As was common in that era, religious fervor led her into
association with reformers who hoped to create a better world.
Tall, gaunt, and commanding, she lent her powerful talents as
a speaker to the antislavery movement. When she happened
upon a women’s rights convention, she made that her cause
as well. Truth was illiterate all her life. She spoke more often
among whites than her own people. Her homely eloquence
and native wit disarmed hostile crowds.
At the Civil War’s end she worked as counselor to the
newly freed slaves who gathered in Washington. Hoping to
aid in their transition to freedom, she circulated a petition for
public lands to be set aside in the West for a “Negro state.” She
continued to speak, proclaiming God’s love and the rights of
the disadvantaged
Biographies courtesy of National Women’s Hall of Fame www.greatwomen.org/women.php
Reading Room, Women’s Studies
Database-University of Maryland
www.mith2.umd.edu/
WomensStudies/ReadingRoom/
History/Biographies/ Including 42
brief biographies of notable women.
Useful links to related pages. A quick,
factual source about selected women.
Gale-Free ResourcesWomen’s History Month
www.galegroup.com/free_resources/
whm/index.htm
Extensive biographies of significant
womenin history. More than 50
entries. Biographies are detailed.
Further readings are provided.
Women In American History by
Encyclopedia Britannica
search.eb.com/women/
Biographies arranged by historical
period: early America, the 19th
century, at the crossroads (1880-1920),
and modern.
Female Nobel Prize Laureates
www.almaz.com/nobel/women.html
Brief background, links to the books
and other links of all the women who
have won Nobel Prizes. .
Living Legacy Awards
www.wic.org/misc/llaward.htm