Tag: Women’s Suffrage

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Women’s Suffrage Reflection Part II

Looking backward -Laura E. FosterWhen we first started working on this DBQ we knew that we wanted to educate students on how to best analyze propaganda, understanding what each piece is trying to say, being able to discover how each piece goes about conveying its message, and what historical events are transpiring to bring about such pieces of work. At the beginning of this DBQ lesson there was talk of only showing pro-women’s suffrage propaganda, but we discovered that if the students had only positive propaganda to view, then the lesson loses some of its strength. As a result we had to make a slight change my overall lesson. Instead of using only pro-suffrage pieces, we would also use anti-suffrage pieces and  the students would compare, contrast, and analyze these pieces as a whole as well instead of independently.

I personally believe that the final project achieved all of my learning goals. My partner had a large amount of excellent material that we used and as a result we were able to created a DBQ that pushes students to both compare and contrast multiple pictures, as well as analyze individual pictures at a deep level.

The biggest lesson that I learned while working on this DBQ is that you have to be careful with what photographic material you use. Pictures are one of the most important parts of a DBQ and if the DBQ has poorly chosen pictures than the overall quality of it will suffer greatly. I also learned that you need to be careful when choosing a topic. While something such as the women’s suffrage movement is well documented through images and propaganda, there are other events that are either lacking sufficient pictures or lack any diversity in their imagery.

This DBQ is part of our class-produced, multi-touch iBook. Available free at iTunes

You can find our DBQ at Learnist

Image credit:  Library of Congress:  LC-DIG-ppmsca-02940
Title: Looking backward / Laura E. Foster.
Creator(s): Foster, Laura E., artist
Date Created/Published: c1912 August 22.

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Women’s Suffrage DBQ Reflection

Torch BearerIn our DBQ on women’s suffrage, we wanted the students to learn how image propaganda is used to make an argument or portray a side. Our generative questions were:

  1. What is the role of image media in the suffrage movement?
  2. How are pro-and anti-suffrage movements depicted in media?
  3. What are the biases that are found in image media?
  4. How are political, social, and economic factors portrayed in image media?

After doing this unit, the students should be able to look at a women’s suffrage image and answer the following questions (which connect back to the generative questions):

  1. What side is this image from? (Pro-suffrage or anti-suffrage?)
  2. What argument is the image making? How do you know?
  3. What does this image say about the society at the time this image was printed?

Making the DBQ was a challenging assignment, mainly because we needed to find the best images that represented exactly the argument that we wanted. One of the problems was that, because there are so many images from the suffrage movement, there are often images that have different pictures but that make the same argument. We tried to be careful to choose images that did not just show a repeat of an argument, but that depicted a new suffrage position.

Our final project met all of the generative goals and objectives quite well. Each image asks the students to make a decision on the image’s argument and back up their answer with evidence, or it asks the students to compare the images to make a decision on how society had changed between the picture publications. The final DBQ is a great tool that can be used in conjunction with a social studies or communications class that is studying the suffrage movement in the United States. It can be found on the website Learnist, and soon in an iBook.

This DBQ is part of our class-produced, multi-touch iBook. Available free at iTunes

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Women’s Suffrage

Suffrage is one of the most important rights that an individual can obtain in a democratic society. Despite the importance of this right, the right to vote has been withheld from a vast majority of the population. This DBQ will focus on the the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United States from 1900-1920.

Our generative questions are:
– What is the role of image media in the suffrage movement?
– How are pro-and anti-suffrage movements depicted in media?
– What are the biases that are found in image media?
– How are political, social, and economic factors portrayed in image media?
These generative questions are worth answering due to the facts that they will give students a better understand not just of the struggles females (and to a lesser extent minorities) had to overcome in order to receive the ability to vote. These questions will also give students a look at certain aspects of American life and culture in the 20th century.
There is a massive amount of media devoted to either defending or defeating the women’ suffrage movement, and as a result finding pictures that both support or attack the movement will be no trouble. Some of the photos that we will use are below:
handicapped_vintage_suffrage_propaganda_print-r6cf18d8cbe5f4edf99e42d6105edb7a1_wvg_8byvr_512 Suffragette1

Students will use this DBQ to compare and contrast pictures from both pro-woman suffrage and anti- women suffrage, as well as understanding who the targeted audience was, and what argument each piece was making. This in depth analysis will allow students to better understand the media in their current lives as well as how that media affects them