Although women make up more than 50% of humanity, only since the 20th century have they achieved full legal rights and privileges in the U.S.—and in some countries, they are still second-class citizens. Consequently, women’s role in history and contributions to culture have been woefully overlooked.

Designated as Women’s History Month, March is a great time to dive deeply into women’s struggle for equal rights and triumphs in every arena. The lessons, activities and resources here are an excellent way to investigate and understand women as changemakers, activists, and heroines—worthy of becoming an integral part of the curriculum all year long.

Best Women's History Month Lessons and Activities

Bill of Rights Institute Women’s History Playlist: 1844-1860
Eight outstanding standards-aligned multimedia lessons explore the lives of notable mid-19th century women, both famous (Sojourner Truth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman) and little-known ( Louise Smith Clappe). Each downloadable lesson includes a detailed narrative, primary sources, review questions, and suggestions for pairing with other lessons. Bonus: Download a single interactive PDF with all eight lessons included. Free account required to download.

American Experience: She Resisted
A highly creative, interactive audio/visual experience that delves into the wide range of strategies employed by suffragists in their quest for the right to vote. The opening sequence, featuring thrilling music and compelling film, will draw students into investigating the nine featured strategies. A riveting production that brings history and historical characters to life.

National Women’s Hall of Fame
A showcase for women’s achievement in every arena. Discover the Women of the Hall, then check out the online solitaire game, which combines the fun of solitaire with cards featuring fascinating women of achievement.

National Women’s History Alliance: This Month in Women’s History
Learn all about important dates of women's history throughout the year with this easy-to-use calendar, featuring birthdays of female trailblazers and important historical events from civil rights, politics, and culture.

Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote
Seven online exhibitions from the National Archives investigate topics such as “Who decides who votes?” and “What voting rights struggles persist?” Digitized original documents and photos featured.

Singing for Women’s Suffrage: A New Digital Collection from the Library of Congress
Add a musical note to your history lessons through the women’s suffrage songbook. Included are prompts and ideas for classroom and elearning lessons.

Women athletes who changed sports history
With female athletes starring in tennis, track and field, basketball, soccer, golf and other sports, students today may not realize how women of the past struggled to compete in the athletic realm. This round-up of notable female athletes includes many famous ones, like Serena Williams—and some little-known, like Toni Stone, the "female Jackie Robinson."

iCivics Women’s History Month Resources
A wealth of resources for teaching women’s history, including downloadable planners, videos spotlighting pioneering women, and standards-aligned lessons.

PBS Teaching Women's Suffrage
Women’s right to vote, and the struggle to achieve it, form the foundation for all successive rights. This extensive collection of multimedia lessons and activities is grouped according to topics such as the 19th Amendment, advocates and organizers, primary sources, and modern-day legacies. Each standards-based lesson includes downloadable support materials for teachers.

Unsung Women Who Changed America
26 short films and a one-hour documentary examine the lives of trailblazing women from the turn of the 20th century. Although most of these women are not widely known, their accomplishments call for recognition. Available in Spanish.

HMH: 10 National Women's History Month Activities for Students
A diverse collection of activities using research, writing, critical thinking, and art to analyze women’s history and the changing social mores about women’s role in society.

65 Famous Women in History Everyone Should Know
From astronauts to politicians to athletes to writers, these 65 women—some famous, others less so— have made their mark on the world. Read the brief biographies, then explore the links provided to learn more about Sally Ride, Shirley Chisholm, Soraya Jiménez, Empress Dowager Cixi, and many more.

Clio Visualizing History: Click! in the Classroom Lesson Plans
Organized by grade level, these lesson plans examine women's history through the lens of feminism, politics, careers, sports, and civil rights.

Scholastic Action: From Out of This World. . . To Under the Sea
What do the depths of Earth’s oceans have in common with outer space? Both are otherworldly realms, inhospitable to human life while captivating our imaginations. Meet a woman who has traveled to each place and find out why. A video and quiz round out the article. Integrated with Google drive.

Women's History Month: Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote
An online version of the Library of Congress exhibition "Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote" looks at the history of the struggle for suffrage via handwritten letters, speeches, photographs, and scrapbooks created by American suffragists.

National Women's History Museum Digital Classroom Resources
A wealth of digital resources for women's history featuring lesson plans, quizzes, primary source documents, videos, and more. Searchable by type, topic, and grade.

Alice Ball and 7 Female Scientists Whose Discoveries Were Credited to Men
Learn about women who broke barriers in science but who were, until recently, not credited properly for their achievements. Compare this to the list of women recognized with the Nobel Prize.

DocsTeach: Primary sources and Teaching Activities for Women's Rights
Explore a wealth of primary sources covering topics ranging across women's suffrage, political cartoons, the Equal Rights Amendment, and many others. Teaching activities include online interactives investigating all aspects of the fight for women's suffrage and the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Learning for Justice: Women's Suffrage Lesson
This Common Core-aligned lesson guides students in learning how women achieved voting rights and in evaluating the role of the federal government in the fight for suffrage.

National Museum of Women in the Arts Curriculum & Resources
On the website of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, find free resources to support teaching about women artists, including a complete curriculum, "Art, Books, and Creativity," and pre-K12 educator guides. Be sure to explore the extensive online exhibitions.

National Women's History Alliance: Women's History Quizzes
Seven quizzes on women's history cover topics including women in STEM, peace activists, Black women's history, and more.

Nobel Prizes Awarded to Women
Note how the rate of female Nobel laureates has changed dramatically in the 21st century.

Smithsonian Learning Lab Women's History
Sixty-three collections of digitized objects related to women's history add a rich context to the written word. The Learning Lab is a free, interactive platform allowing educators and other users to find digital resources and create content with online tools.

In 1870, Henrietta Wood Sued for Reparations—and Won
Ever heard of Henrietta Wood? Formerly enslaved, Wood successfully sued her enslaver for reparations in 1870. This Smithsonian magazine article details her amazing story, forgotten until very recently.

Last summer, Adam Phyall and I were engaged in an interesting conversation. This isn’t uncommon as anyone that knows us knows we can debate and discuss just about anything under the sun, but this time it was different. For one, we weren’t at a conference or a school building. We were “tubing” down a river in central Texas (a favorite past-time of ours down here). I throw that in not as a non sequitur, but to mention that we were both out of our normal “professional” environments which enabled some freedom in what turned into a highly engaging discussion around equity. During our 3 hours down the river we discussed our backgrounds. Where we came from. How we were raised. What we each had to overcome and what kind of supports we had. How we raise our children and how we find and cultivate “our crew” of friends.

We discussed race openly and honestly. This included conversations that might be uncomfortable for some, but with our years of friendship and genuine empathy, it was absolutely captivating.  We wondered – how do we help students understand the differences in race and culture in a way that is productive? Too often uncomfortable conversations are avoided or left to HR personnel that come in and talk to staff about equity in the hopes it makes its way into the classroom. Not knowing how to proceed on that front, we stuck a pin in the conversation until a later date.

That later date was a month later. I was about to take the stage at the GAMEIS conference in Savannah when Adam came in to chat. We sat in the front row and re-engaged in the conversation from a month before, albeit in a much more formal setting now. As we went back and forth, we weren’t aware that more and more people began to seat around us and listen in to our discussion. They were both “highly engaged and intellectually stimulated” (their quote, not mine) at not only our content but how we addressed what they admitted was a hard topic to tackle with honesty. At one point near the end of the conversation, Adam remarked, “We should just do this as a session.”

Our opportunity would arrive just a few weeks later. As we are both national advisors for Future Ready Schools, there was an opportunity to present our idea at the February TCEA conference in Austin. Future Ready Schools not only tackles the issues of technology, budget, privacy, and curriculum, but is also an organization that champions opportunities to solve issues of inequity in schools across the country. Adam and I had our opportunity to formalize what started as an informal discussion and turn it into an interactive conversation around equity.

On February 3rd, we walked into our session with both excitement and un-easiness as to how our conversation would be accepted. To ramp up the talk, we decided to wear coordinating t-shirts of “Ebony” for me and “Ivory” for him. As it was a Monday morning session in a week-long conference focused on technology tools, we weren’t sure how many people to expect around the topic. We were pleased to see so many show up ready to engage and discuss the truth about stereotypes we make regularly in our schools and how to use student backgrounds as a way to better inform our instruction rather than pass judgment on their character.

During one of the segments, we asked the audience to list what words we use in education that could lead unintended stereotypes. While Adam and I brainstormed a few, they came up with an overwhelming amount as you can see in the screen shot below:

We also discussed recent cases in Texas and New Jersey of students being asked to change their appearance and what other cultural assumptions we might be making in schools. Technology also has a part to play in this discussion. As was witnessed at the conference, eSports is making a HUGE splash across many high schools throughout the country. Those students on eSports teams can practice in school but many also practice at home on $3000+ computer gaming systems.  That immediately eliminates many of our lower-economic students from participating, a talking point many in the crowd hadn’t immediately considered.

While I won’t go through every point of the talk, our main goal was not to tell them how to solve every issue of inequity, but rather to make them think and reflect on their current situations. Neither of us represent an entire race. We only represent a viewpoint of two educators that have lived somewhat mirrored lives only from opposite identities when it comes to race. We listed the following three questions for audience members to reflect on:

At the end, we attempted to summarize our unique viewpoints with passion and emotion in 3 minute co-poetry slam titled “Ebony and Ivory”. After the talk ended, we were overwhelmed with the amount of support and interest from the audience. Many commented on the fact that these were the conversations we needed to be having regularly in schools. What kinds of conversations are you having at your school around equity and race? Too often times, these conversations are not conversations at all. They are a set of bullet points on a powerpoint at the beginning of the year staff orientation or a required video that staff watch along with blood-born pathogens so that schools can “check the box” on equity training.

We had definitely touched on a nerve while at the same time stretching both of us out of comfort zones when it comes to presenting. We’re not sure where this goes next but we do have some plans on how to engage students more in this conversation at the classroom level (stay tuned). We also hope to expand this session to more events in the future, as we feel this is a conversation that needs to take place in district offices and classrooms across the country.

cross-posted at https://hookedoninnovation.com

Carl Hooker has been a part of a strong educational shift with technology integration since becoming an educator. As Director of Innovation & Digital Learning at Eanes ISD, he has helped spearhead the LEAP program, which put one-to-one iPads in the hands of all K-12 students in his 8000-student district. He is also the founder of “iPadpalooza”- a three-day “learning festival” held in Austin annually. He's also the author of the six-book series titled Mobile Learning Mindset, a guide for teachers, administrators, parents and others to support and embrace mobile learning in our schools. Read more at Hooked on Innovation.

12/31 is the day to say goodbye to 2019. Why? Discover the importance of time and the calendar, and how they each bring order to life. Understand the passage of time, how to keep time, time zones, and more.

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Fear of the number 13, knocking on wood, stepping on a crack. Where did these superstitions come from? Why do we still believe in them? Find out by watching this TED Ed video and then taking a quiz, digging deeper with web links, and writing an answer to a discussion question. Better hurry, though. This Friday is the 13th!

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It took all of human history until 1802 for the human population to reach its first billion. It took just 12 years for it to acquire its most recent billion. A recent estimate by the United Nations estimates that 10.1 billion people will be here by the end of the century. For World Population Day (7/11) examine charts on the rate of growth and watch a National Geographic video titled 7 billion.

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Critical Media Project

Relevant media clips get students examining identity, culture

Pros: The curated, high-interest, and identity-focused clips makes media literacy relevant and personal.

Cons: The basic lesson plans mean teachers must take the time to build an effectively scaffolded, differentiated, and tailored lesson.

Bottom Line: Teachers will need to take time to build effective lessons, but if they do, this is a useful, relevant, high-interest resource for deconstructing identity and building critical thinking and empathy skills.

[Create Courses, Lessons, Websites and More with Today's Top Pick]

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App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly.

By Common Sense Education