Unlearning and Relearning History: A Text Set on Women's Suffrage

After reading Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram Kendi realized how much I don't know about history. So, I set out to learn more. Early this summer I picked up the book Lifting as We Climb: Black Women's Battle for the Ballot Box by Evette Dionne thinking it would be a quick read. It is not long and meant for middle grade/middle school.

I thought I knew a lot about women's rights but realized immediately that this was not going to be a quick read.  I realized that what I knew was VERY limited and that there were so many women whose work I did not know.  

And then I started seeing so much about the 100th Anniversary of women's right to vote and so much of it left out the important fact that not all women were given the right to vote at that time. The fight for voting rights was not over.

I don't know enough about this but I know that there is a lot I have to learn. So, I decided I had to build my own text set and approach this a little differently. I needed a bit more background knowledge, some highlighters and lots of pieces to read and build understanding over time. 

One thing I have learned is that when I build a text set for myself, it also works well in the classroom and when I am working with teachers to plan. When I learn, I have better resources to share with students. And I must admit that so much of what I learn about history lately is from incredible books written for children. These are the kind of text sets we need to build--for ourselves AND for our students. 

There aren't a lot of books out there about people other than those we hear about often in the fight for women's right to vote. But there are several.

None of these books have all of the info or all of the voices so I will have to be a critical reader, asking myself these questions as I go. I need to really think about what is missing and who is included in each of these books. And I won't be finished learning when I finish this text set. It will be only the beginning but I am hoping it builds enough background knowledge for me to have a better sense of history.

Maybe if we build text sets like these, students today won't have to unlearn and relearn history the way that I have had to.

Here are the books I plan to read over the next several weeks or months. And then I'll go back to Lifting as We Climb.

Equality's Call: The Story of Voting Rights in America by Deborah Diesen

This picture book explains the sequence of the fight for voter's rights and that it is continued work. The simple text is great to show the events and battles fought for voter rights and there is information at the end of the book that adds more.

Finish the Fight: The Brave and Revolutionary Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote by Veronica Chambers and the Staff at the New York Times is a 100-page book that is told in narrative. The book begins with the words..."Here are some suffragists you may have learned about..." (above images of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other white women). "...but there are lots more you should know!" above images of a much larger number of women who were part of this fight. This book is filled with information, artifacts and photos and is written for middle grade/middle school readers.

History Smashers: Women's Right to Vote by Kate Messner

If you don't know this new series by Kate Messner, it is a great series for middle grade, middle school and anyone who is relearning so much history. This one on the Women's Right to Vote is an important one for this topic.  These books are chapter book length (about 200 pages) and filled with information that we may not have learned. There are also many great resources that can be explore independently after reading.  The tone of this series is conversational and accessible. 

Voice of Freedom: Frannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement by Carole Boston Weatherford is a picture book biography. I am truly alarmed at how few picture books are out there about BIPOC women civil rights activists. And even few specific to women's right to vote. This one is a great one and I hope we get more published about important BIPOC women.

Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told by Walter Dean Myers is a picture book biography that tells about Ida B. Wells' life as an activist.  Although this book doesn't focus solely on the women's right to vote, it does include many of the causes Wells fought for as well as events in her personal life. 

How Women Won the Vote by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

This book focuses on the part of the story we know best but it does include information on the discrimination women of color faced in this fight.  The way this is embedded in the story is helpful to understand the way the events played out.  This book includes photos from the events from history. 

There are several good online resources that have been published recently so I started a Padlet for myself (and whoever else is interested) with recent publications on the topic. Teen Vogue is a great source for relearning history so there are some articles from that publication. I have also found some podcasts, etc. that look promising. I'll keep adding resources. I am looking specifically for the pieces of this story that I don't know, people who I haven't learned about.

Newish Books That Have Fun With Words

During the first week of the school year, I read the book Animal Soup asking my kids if they liked words. They seemed confused. "What do you mean? Do we like words?"  I explained that I loved playing with words and the fun that writers had with words. I liked when writers did clever things with words. A few nodded while others tilted their heads not quite sure what I was getting at.

Some of the work we'll do in word study this year revolves around figurative language and using various parts of speech. The way I learned about figurative language and parts of speech was not joyful.  We learned about it in an isolated way and learned to recognize and name it but we didn't see the fun or joy in the clever ways people used words. Don't get me wrong,  I LOVED diagramming sentences (it was actually one of my biggest talents in middle and high school) BUT I never actually transferred any of that to using the language or to finding joy in the words and phrases that made up the sentences.

So I've been thinking hard about how to best move my students from not really thinking about words to finding joy in them to paying attention to the use of words in writing. So many days I find myself looking at my shelves of books, pulling collections of books based on some conversations we've had in class. These last few days I've pulled the following newish books to add to our conversations around words.

Words by Christopher Niemann

This small chunky book is mostly visual and is a great celebration of words of all kinds. This is one kids spend a lot of time with and one that they go back to again and again.

Nothing Rhymes with Orange by Adam Rex

Not only is this a fun book that explores fun fruit words but the character of Orange (who has no place in a rhyming story) is hilarious!

A Greyhound a Groundhog by Emily Jenkins

This book plays with just a few words to tell a story and is fun to read aloud.

Guess Who, Haiku by Deanna Caswell and Bob Shea

These are fun riddles written in Haiku. This one is fun to read and guess the answers to these riddles. After reading a few kids will want to try writing some of their own.

Yaks Yak: Animal Word Pairs by Linda Su Park

What a fun way to look at words that can be used as different parts of speech--lots of noun-verb combinations to create fun scenes.  

Blue Sky White Stars by Sarvinder Naberhaus and Kadir Nelson

The brilliance in the way the author uses words invites conversation. This book is powerful and gorgeous and gives readers so much to think about, even though there are so few words.

It's Not Jack and the Beanstalk by Josh Funk

Although this one does not focus on word play, kids definitely notice the fun in the author's use of words in several places.

This House Once by Deborah Freedman

The partnered language in this book may invite readers to try describing things in new ways. The author says a great deal in short, beautiful phrases.