What was the most significant artefact in the push towards gender equality?

“My purpose is to engage students in dialogue so they can see other’s points of view – in a world that needs this more than ever. I do this by sharing lessons on this site which connect students with the past and inspire critical thinking.
Please read below to find details about this one.” Dan

The title of this lesson is “What was the most significant artefact in the push towards gender equality? Dragon’s Den Project.”

This is a great project-based lesson designed to promote the second-order concept of significance and includes graduated learning outcomes (all of you will/most of you will/some of you will).

The lesson begins with a Who Wants to be a Millionaire starter activity where students are asked to place four countries in the correct order in which women were granted the vote. There is some background knowledge to enable teacher exposition. The class are then introduced to the idea of how historians decide what makes an event or discovery significant and they explore the acronym GREAT: G = ground-breaking, R = remembered, E = extent of importance to people at the time, A = affected the future, and T = turning point. For the main task students are placed in groups and given a card with three different artefacts on with some background information (these range from Rosa Parks’ bus ticket to Malala’s bloodied uniform to Emily Davison’s Suffragette banner and many more). They need to choose one of their artefacts and explain in presentation form why they feel it is so significant. They can make models and sales pitches to accompany their explanations to the ‘dragons’ (get senior teachers to come in to act as these if they’re good sports). Students can use the internet, class texts, or library to help them research. The lesson concludes with a peer assessment class voting plenary on which they felt was the most important and why. This lesson has been designed for high school students.

I’d be so grateful if you can find time to add a positive review if you enjoyed this lesson.

And before you leave be sure to follow Dan’s History Highway for more info on hundreds of fully-resourced lessons for busy teachers!

Wishing you a terrific day.