All week I've been debating how I would approach International Women's Day, with my class. At first I thought that I would read them a book about an inspiring women. But then last night on Facebook I saw a video from Rebel Girls on The Ugly Truth of Children's Books www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Jbd4-fPOE&app=desktop I'm sure a lot of you have seen this video before. A short summary is that this video shows a mom and her daughter doing an experiment at a bookstore. Removing all books that had zero female characters, female characters that don't speak, and books about princesses. While watching the video, I read the headings out loud to my students and paused for clarification and to read the statistics that were captioned at the bottom of the screen. There were a lot of sighs and shocking sounds coming from my kids. After the video I asked them, how the video made them feel? One of my male students' hands shot up right away, he stated in disbelief that it made him feel "weird." Other students remarked, "not fair to girls," "rude that people think girls cannot do the same things as boys," "sad," "strange because there are more girls then boys in the world." The conversation & discussions that followed were passioned and valuable. Many students added onto other students points, questions were raised. Even thought I didn't get to read the book I intended to follow the video with nor did my students have a chance to write about their thoughts, questions or ideas. We had a powerful day! So proud to do what I do on a daily basis! What did you do today for International Women's Day? Join me on this 31 day journey for the month of March with twowritingteachers.org and their 10th Annual Slice of Life Story Challenge. #sol17
2 Comments
Adrienne
3/8/2017 05:41:24 pm
What a great lesson. We did a lesson about looking for diversity in books a few weeks ago, but I will steal this one for another day.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI am a grade 3/4 teacher in Calgary, AB, Canada. This is a space for my reflections as an educator. ArchivesCategories |