History students create
       ‘exhibits’ for women’s rights museum

Jan 4, 2011

Susan B. Anthony worked tirelessly for women’s suffrage in the 19th century. To capture that hard work, Jordan Hastings, an eight grade student at Mayfield Jr. /Sr. High School built a voting booth. It took him about four hours, but Jordan said he learned a lot about Anthony and women’s rights as a whole.

Jordan is one of about 75 history students who participated in the Women’s Rights Webquest, a history project from teacher Rebecca Newkirk and librarian Megan Hallenbeck.

A Webquest is an inquiry-oriented lesson where most of the information students work with comes from the Web.

The object of the lesson was for students to create an exhibit for a women’s rights museum.

The students were charged with creating their projects on a tri-fold poster board with each exhibit including: a biography of their subject; photos from the women’s rights movement and analysis; quotes from the woman and an analysis; an “artifact,” from the woman; a letter to the President from the woman; and one quiz question based on the women for the class to answer.

“I love this project,” Dylan Lanza said. “We get to be very active. I learned so much about how Lucy Stone helped women’s rights.”

Along with Susan B. Anthony, students chose from women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Alice Stone Blackwell.

Mrs. Newkirk said the students seemed to love the project.

“It’s more hands-on,” she said. “They’ve really put together nice projects. They had to do all the research too.”

Mrs. Hallenbeck added that it’s good to present research in a different way.

“It reaches students that normally don’t get reached,” she said.