Happy Women's History Month!

Happy Women’s History Month! We last wrote about how we recognized Women’s History Month in the classroom in 2018 when we were co-teaching in 3rd grade with this post: Womyn's/ Womxn's/ Women's Herstory Month. All of those books are still wonderful and the general tie ins with other subjects, March Book Madness, and celebrating International Women’s Day are all things I would be bringing into my classroom if I was teaching this year.

I also am intrigued by the FairPlay Home (Eq)uity Tool Kit. I haven’t used this myself and still need to investigate more, but love the idea (and the tagline “Close the Chore Gap!”). Instead of stopping at acknowledging women’s invisible labor (or expressing gratitude to all the amazing women in our lives), let’s teach kids to be aware of it and think critically about it. You know kids will find a creative solution to the “chore gap” and be reflective and flexible while they think through solutions. 

Invisible labor is an important concept to teach students. We’ve always been big fans of explicit vocabulary instruction and applying new concepts to our lives and the world around us. Students could explore potential invisible labor at their school, in their homes, or in their community and who is doing this labor and why or how it is invisible, unrecognized, and unpaid. 

March can be a stressful month with the last push before standardized testing, so if you are under pressure to prioritize test prep or other subjects, you can still welcome students each day with a reminder of Women’s History Month. The Newsela article Artist honors remarkable women in history with a drawing every day shares artist Tiffany Wong’s project (you can see more of her paintings here). You could show students one painting a day and share Tiffany’s research about the woman depicted as well as asking students to share what they know or potentially do their own research. This could be a sign in, greeting, or dismissal activity depending on when you can fit it in.

Newsela has a number of text sets (collections of articles) about Women’s History Month. Some other articles we noted are: When women were told they would be paid starvation wages, they protested and "Black Rosies:" Forgotten Black women workers of World War II.

I’ve frequently had students ask me why we have a Women’s History Month and when Men’s History Month is (or why doesn’t it exist?). Usually, I turn that question back to my class and give them time to brainstorm and discuss in small groups and as a whole class. Sometimes, I tell them we will keep learning about Women’s History Month and collecting ideas about why we celebrate this month. Often, students are able to explain to each other that we learn about men in history all the time so they don’t need a special month and that women’s contributions to history are often forgotten or omitted. 

Some books that might help students think through these realities are:

Mary Wears What She Wants by Keith Negley (pictured above). It is truly shocking (and will enrage your students) that Mary got arrested for wearing pants! Students will understand her logic that pants aren’t “men’s clothes, they are my clothes.”

Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell will also be shocking to students who most likely know female doctors (or if they don’t, have them meet a few!). 

Marie Curie and the Power of Persistence by Karla Valenti shares about Marie Curie’s superpower! Students will love the superhero tie in (and aren’t many scientist real live superheroes?). You can also share with students that while Marie Curie was the first double Nobel Prize winner, her husband had to advocate for her to get her first Nobel prize because she was a woman.

I Dare! I Can! I Will!: The Day the Icelandic Women Walked Out and Inspired the World by Linda Ólafsdóttir has not been published yet, so I haven’t gotten a chance to read it, but I cannot wait to read it and share it with students!

These books are anthologies sharing about many different women and girls:

Lives of Extraordinary Women: Rulers, Rebels ~ and What the Neighbors Thought by Kathleen Krull is a nice counter argument to the “we aren’t ready for a female president” narrative, as women have been rulers and leaders for centuries.

Shaking Things Up: 14 Young Women Who Changed the World Kids love reading about other kids!

Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women The title says it all! Also, who doesn’t love reading stories of inventions?

You can find even more book ideas here: 30 Picture Books About World-Changing Women

Happy March and hope spring finds you soon!

International Women's Day & Women's History Month

Happy International Women’s Day! There are so many ways to celebrate! We love showing our students how this is an international holiday that has been celebrated for over 100 years (starting in 1911). It’s also fitting that this holiday takes place during Women’s History Month.

We wrote about different ways we recognized and celebrated Women’s History Month in our classroom a few years ago. Here are some new ideas we have either already started or hope to try soon:

• We attended a virtual event at Politics & Prose with Michelle Duster and Laura Freeman for the new book Ida B. Wells, Voice of Truth (pictured above). Michelle Duster, the author, is actually Ida B. Wells’s great-granddaughter which added an extra level of excitement for students as well as helped them understand the time frame for when Ida B. Wells was alive a bit better. I’m a huge fan of author and bookstore events! We are still only able to attend virtually, but my students were still excited about it, especially when we could submit their questions over chat. We also paired this event with reading a Newsela article about the new Ida B. Wells barbie, and one of my students actually owns that barbie, so she brought hers in to show everyone. There are so many things to admire about Ida B. Wells and this gorgeous picture book, but I especially appreciate how she is portrayed in a way that makes it clear how multifaceted (and talented) she was, instead of being reduced to one aspect of her life like a journalist or an activist.

• Why isn’t there a men’s history month? This is a question students have brought up in the past (less and less recently though, interestingly enough). We asked students what they thought and they came up with a lot of ideas! One idea they felt strongly about was that there has never been a female president and how that shows that women “don’t always get a turn.” Another student remarked about how you often hear about men and learn about men, but less about women because sometimes people forget “that women were helping too.” One student noted that in our class, we seemed to hear from more women (we only had female guest speakers that year), and we asked them why they thought their teachers made that choice. We felt that addressing this question directly helped make it clear we were focused on representation and equity instead of thinking about men vs. women. 

• Newsela is always a great resource so just a reminder to share articles with students! They have different text sets (a collection of articles) available for Women’s History Month. There are so many great articles and they are not just about famous women but also about kids and women who are doing inspiring work today. We’ve had students read Newsela articles individually so we can tailor articles to their interests and have them practice some nonfiction reading skills and in pairs or small groups to continue practicing those skills, build fluency by taking turns reading out loud, and discuss and share their reactions and questions.

• Brainpop and Brainpop Jr. also have some lots of informative and kid friendly videos that can help students establish some background knowledge before reading which boosts comprehension or just teach them about someone new and inspiring. They have an entire Women’s History Month unit.

• Student shares are always an excellent place to start. Our students loved writing letters to women who they admired or just sharing relevant news or updates. Sometimes they would read about someone and then want to tell the class just how amazing that person was/is and why as well as put in a plug for why others should read that book/article. It truly was an authentic use of literacy in action.

Below are some picture book biographies we love.

Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark Became the Ocean’s Most Fearless Scientist by Jess Keating. We saw the author at Politics and Prose (pre-COVID)! Also there is a movie about her (preview here).

Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston by Alicia D. Williams and Jacqueline Alcántara (illustrator). We virtually attended a Politics & Prose event for this book and Jacqueline Alcántara shared some of her sketches and preliminary plans with us.

Shirley Chisholm: two great books published recently (in 2020)! You can find them here and here. I couldn’t choose one so had to include them both. As we slowly gain more representation of women in government, it’s important to remember Shirley Chisholm who was a trailblazer in every way. We also shared how Kamala Harris wore a white suit in homage to Shirley Chisholm when she accepted the vice-presidential nomination and talked about what she might mean when she said, “I stand on their shoulders” to credit the women before her.

The Girl Who Thought in Pictures by Julia Finley Mosca. This book is about Temple Grandin and is always a favorite in our classroom.

Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer by Traci Sorell and Natasha Donovan (illustrator). This is a relatively new book that my co-teacher discovered at a bookstore. The author specifically addresses how Mary Golda Ross makes choices influenced by Cherokee values. 

Latinitas: Celebrating 40 Big Dreamers by Juliet Menendez. This is another relatively new book that I have not gotten to read yet, but I’ve heard great things and definitely hope to get my hands on a copy of it soon. Anthologies are always popular in the classroom and often when reading them I learn more about people or learn about people I hadn’t heard about before.

Also, my third graders love the Who Was series and that series seems to keep expanding to add more people for kids to learn about. Apparently, they have surpassed 250 titles at this point and plan to keep going.

Happy reading and learning!

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Womyn's/ Womxn's/ Women's Herstory Month!

It's Womyn's Herstory Month! Every day is women's day etc etc.. and yet, we are also loved celebrating women and putting women (besides ourselves!) even more at the forefront this month. Full disclosure we are both huge book people so the list of books could go on for a while. Below are a few fantastic anthologies that we turn to often in our classroom and have used for many different projects throughout the year. We put these in the front of our room and hype them up extra for this month (along with books from March Book Madness especially Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, I Dissent, The Water Princess, and Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark Became the Ocean's Most Fearless Scientist).

Through these read alouds (which the student's have been loving and asking for more of!), we've enjoyed the way we can tie this into conversations about maps in Social Studies!

In Reading, we've been working on "thick" and "thin" questions (thin questions you can look at text and simply identify the answer, whereas thick ones require some thinking and we especially loved some of their questions about Annette Kellerman (1886-1975) from Shaking Things Up, and why bathing suits even needed to be designed for women, or why women would be told wear corsets in the first place (this conversation became very fixated on corsets at one point)...

We love this multiple perspective narrative-- a lovable cast of characters and so much suspense! 

We also started a new read aloud, Hello, Universe! We got to a scene where the main character's dad scolds him and says, "Boys don't play piano!" and our room erupted in silent signals meaning "agree" or "disagree". Our students had a lot of opinions about this (especially a few of our boys who play piano!), and we had passionate reflections after that read aloud block as to how gender should never dictate what any human has access to.

In Writing, we have been wrapping up writing about people from history (most of them are women, although not all) and we are now writing about someone we love (many of which are women!), which has been such a great way for our students to see mirrors of themselves, or windows into someone else's life experiences.

On International Women’s Day, we started our day by writing letters to amazing women in our life and telling them why we appreciate them. Students wrote to teachers, babysitters, moms, aunts, grandmas, and even women we had read about (Dominique Dawes reppin' Silver Spring, Maryland got quite a detailed letter from one of our students! It included a very self-aware: "I know you are busy but please please reply! K, thanks!").

We also went to one of our favorite bookstores  (and places!) in DC, Politics and Prose! We loved getting to see Patricia Valdez, who is an amazing scientist and author (AND is also a woman!) who wrote the fantastic book, Joan Procter, Dragon Doctor: The Woman Who Loved Reptiles. We were all enraptured learning about Joan Procter (1897-1931), and the way in which she took such thoughtful care of reptiles, learned so much outside of college, and designed such intentional spaces for them to live. Her design of the London Zoo reptile house is something we all decided we must see! (and it is in a Harry Potter movie so of course we found that oh, so exciting).

All in all, it has been a blast to put an extra spotlight on womyn and we could go on forever, of course, with all of the endless ways a human could be an inspirational woman. As we wrap up this month, we take the energy that our students have about finding new role models and guideposts in their lives, and carry it with us as we strive to be the best we can be, too!

We feel so wonderfully saturated with inspirational women this month-- maybe we'll go to bed listening to Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls new podcast! And one more book we love below (we warned you)!