Hello Teachers! As you know, March is Women’s History Month! If you are looking for ways to incorporate Women’s History in your lesson plans, you have come to the right place. Today, I am going to talk about how to use biographies to celebrate Women’s History in your elementary classrooms!
Biography Instruction
Firstly, before we start, if this is your first biography unit for the year, you will want to introduce biographies and their elements. Introducing students to the overall idea of biographies and autobiographies will help them understand the genre before their Women’s History Month study. This biography anchor chart header is FREE with a link at the bottom of this blog!
Women’s History Mentor Texts & Read Alouds
You will definitely want to grab a selection of women’s history books and mentor texts from your library or purchase them for your own collection. These can be used as read-alouds in your lessons, partner or independent reading materials, research books for writing activities, and so much more!
Here are a few of my favorites: (These are affiliate links to Amazon’s website).
- 100 Women Who Made History
- Lives of Extraordinary Women
- A is for Abigail
- DK Amazing Women
- Women Who Launched the Computer Age
- Hidden Figures: Young Readers Edition
Digital Biographies
Additionally, you can incorporate digital research and interactive activities for Women’s History, too. These two websites are my go-to’s for science and social studies topics, and the biography selections are *perfect* for teaching Women’s History. Have you tried out Pebble Go or Brain Pop Jr.?
There are tons of videos on Brain Pop, BrainPop, Jr., and Pebble Go for Women’s History Month. These videos would be great to show one a day to showcase the many strong women in history. Additionally, you could even set this as the technology assignment for the month and have students explore and learn on their own during technology time.
Biography Units and Flip Books
Another way to incorporate biographies for Women’s History Month is to use no-prep biography units. These are simply print-and-go, and have everything you need to have reading and writing activities that are tied to an influential woman from history.
Each biography unit comes with a biography reading passage and comprehension questions, a timeline cut-and-paste activity, a research writing graphic organizer, and an informational writing page.
These units also come with reading and writing flip books. Students love these because they won’t only be learning about important women, but they will also be making a fun craft! All of the elements of the units come in both printable and digital formats, so you can decide which works best in your classroom!
Biographies and Standard Skills
It is important to remember that teaching biographies is an important part of our reading and writing curriculum. Biographies will help in student mastery of reading skills, research skills, and writing skills. So, whenever you teach the genre, students will become more well-rounded readers and writers.
This freebie will help students connect learning about strong women in historical and present times with women in their own lives. They will choose a strong woman that they know, whether it’s a teacher, tutor, friend, mother, sister, cousin, etc. Then, they will illustrate them, describe them, identify why they are strong, and identify what they would like to say to them.
No-Prep Biography Resources Highlighted in the Blog Post:
12 STRONG WOMEN’S BIOGRAPHIES: READING & RESEARCH
Would you like a free Strong Women writing activity?
FREE STRONG WOMAN ACTIVITY
Here is a writing activity that can help bring Women’s History to the present. Get this free activity by clicking the button below:
