Teaching Activity 6: History
The initial discussion on why there are so few women heroes will have considered some of the issues which have affected the role of women in the past. This activity looks in more detail at the role of women in Victorian times, and how it changed in the first half of the twentieth century.
There is a factsheet for pupils and a factsheet for teachers.
- Download pupil factsheet - pdf
- Download pupil factsheet - rtf
- Download teacher factsheet - pdf
- Download teacher factsheet - rtf
Introduction: - discuss the role of women in Victorian times and the early twentieth century.
Groupwork: Divide the class into three groups. One group is assigned the role of Victorian children, at school at the end of the nineteenth century. Another will be a school class in the 1920s or '30s and the third will be a class in the 1950s or 1960s.
In pairs, the children are then assigned or choose a character (either boy or girl, and social class). Then they are asked to imagine that this child is in school, and has been set a task by their schoolteacher to write a 'what I will be when I grow up' essay. They are asked to make notes on the main points they will need to include in the essay - -what sort of job will they be able to have when they leave school?
Plenary: Each pair reports back to the rest of the class what their character is (social class, period, gender), and what they will be when they grow up, using the notes they have written.
The activity can end with a discussion/vote on which of the characters has the 'best' life ahead of them.
Extension to Activity 6
There are many ways in which this activity can be extended. For example:
- The notes compiled by the children can written up as a piece of factual writing.
- More detailed studies can be made of many of the points touched on in the factsheet, for example Victorian schools, the work and life of miners in south Wales and quarrymen in north Wales.
- A study could be made of the suffragettes and the winning of votes for women
- Female relatives (or members of school staff) can be interviewed for accounts of what it was like to be at school in the 1950s and 1960s (or in the case of grandmothers and great grandmothers, the 1920s and 1930s) and how they saw their future occupations when they were the same age as the children.
