This lesson plan can be used with elementary students to integrate reading, social studies, and language arts. You Forgot Your Skirt, Amelia Bloomer is a humorous, yet accurate, account of the beginning of the Women’s Rights Movement. Students learn to make personal connections to women of today by comparing and contrasting past and present roles as well as predicting future roles. The needs of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners are addressed through hands-on activities and the use of technology, and primary sources are used to teach content. Students read other trade books on the lives of various women and make trading cards illustrating important contributions they made to history. Higher-order thinking questions are an integrative part of this lesson.

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Ruth Busby is an instructor at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. She currently teaches undergraduate social studies methods courses as well as coordinating field experiences for students in the semester before student teaching. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and is currently a doctoral student at the University of West Florida. Her research interests include collecting oral histories in elementary schools, brain research, reflective teaching practices, social studies education, teacher education, and social justice.  Email:  rbusby@usouthal.edu