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Duration
More than 90 minutes
Topic(s)
  • Current Events
  • Journalism
  • Women's Rights
Grade(s)
  • 7-12

(Note: For more support, see expanded procedure in downloadable lesson plan.)

  1. In advance, you may want to review the worksheet examples in the downloadable lesson plan.
  2. Tell students that they are going to apply their knowledge about the women’s suffrage campaign to modern social and political debates.
  3. As a class, review the concepts of fact and opinion, perspective, author, audience, purpose and persuasion techniques.
  4. Brainstorm current social and political issues that generate widespread debate. Keep track of students’ ideas on the board.
  5. Divide your class into small groups and let them select one of the topics to research. Distribute the directions handout and analysis worksheet.
  6. Remind students to find examples of messages representing different viewpoints about their issue.
  7. Individually or in a team, students write a short report summarizing their findings, including the perspective, arguments and evidence of both sides of the debate.

  • Persuasion Portfolios Directions handout (download), at least one per group
  • Persuasion Artifact Analysis worksheet (download), at least 10 per group

Have students present their portfolios to the class and discuss their findings. Prompts include:

  • What did you already know about the issue that you chose?
  • What did you learn that surprised you?
  • Which side of the debate were you on when you began this project? Did you change your mind after completing your research? Why or why not?
  • Which of the messages that you found do you think is the most persuasive? Why?
  • Compare and contrast these messages and visual techniques with those the artifacts on the women’s suffrage media map. How are they similar/different?

   

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