Teaching Suffrage Source
Lesson Plan: The Role of the Media in Women’s Suffrage Movements
The Role of the Media in Women’s Suffrage Movements. Erin Curtis, Mallary Orrison, and Caitlyn Bishop. Virginia Tech.
Era: Post-Suffrage Era | Media: Cartoons, Curated Photos/Ephemera, Illustration, Posters
This 19-page lesson plan is designed to help teachers introduce seventh graders to the history of the Progressive Era, with a particular focus on the US suffrage movement and the 19th Amendment. It uses primary sources like cartoons and propaganda posters to help students consider the media’s crucial role in the struggle for women’s enfranchisement.
The plan includes guiding questions, lesson objectives, assessment tools, instructions for how to get students’ attention and run the activities, accommodations for Diverse Learners, and teaching materials in the form of primary-source documents from the suffrage era.
The lesson is designed to meet National Council for the Social Studies standards and should take about 90 minutes to complete.
Note: The Virginia Tech website that used to host the plan has been closed down, but you can download its as a .pdf by clicking on the button below.