20+ Ready-to-use classroom activities to celebrate Women’s History Month
Sheryl Place —
Updated for March 2024
Each year in March, we take time to honor Women’s History Month. What better way to honor “Women Who Advocate for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” than to create an entire month of activities you can use in your classroom.✔️
This blog post will provide you with an activity for each school day of the month. Use these activities as a stand alone activity, part of a larger classroom lesson, or as a themed project. This post will provide you with plenty of ideas to create your own lessons or you may use these ready-made activities from the calendar. Now, let’s celebrate the women who advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion.
👉 You can navigate directly to the Hotspot Image calendar by clicking on the button below to get started or continue reading for more information and how-tos.
Here’s a concise table of contents.. Click on the titles to jump anywhere in this post.
- Historical perspective of Women’s History Month
- This year’s Women’s History Month theme + Calendar
- What’s inside this calendar? Separate activities
- How to use the March Women’s History Month Calendar
- How to make changes and create your own Women’s History Month calendar
- What to do with activities students can submit to the teacher
Historical perspective of Women’s History Month
Every year, March is recognized as Women’s History Month. Did you know that Women’s History Month first began as International Women’s Day, to commemorate a meeting of socialists and suffragists in Manhattan, New York on February 28th, 1909? The meeting was held in honor of the 1908 garment workers strike to protest the horrible working conditions for women in New York City. This strike in 1908, was the largest strike by American women at the time.
Then, in Copenhagen, on March 8, 1910, Clara Zetkina, a German activist, suggested celebrating the first International Women’s Day during the Second International Women’s Conference. 17 Countries participated in the conference and all the participants thought that this was a good idea.
A year later, on March 8, 1911, the first International Women’s Day was officially celebrated in Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark, but it wasn’t until 1975, almost 65 years later, that the United Nations began recognizing International Women’s Day.
In 1977, with mounting political and social pressures from the passage of Title IX, Women’s History Week was created. In March 1980, President Jimmy Carter declared that March 8 was officially the beginning of celebrations for National Women’s History Week. Senator Orrin Hatch and Representative Barbara Mikulski co-sponsored a resolution declaring the week of March 8, 1981, as National Women’s History Week.
Finally, in 1987, the United States Congress decided that the entire month of March would be recognized as Women’s History Month. Since then, every president has declared March to be Women’s History Month in the United States.
Not only in the United States, but around the world, it is important to recognize the numerous, outstanding accomplishments of women. Join BookWidgets as we celebrate Women’s History Month and recognize some of the great accomplishments of women from around the world. To help you celebrate everything from famous women musicians, athletes, trailblazers and storytellers, we have created an interactive Women’s History Month calendar full with lesson activities about women’s empowerment, and notable women’s achievements.
This year’s Women’s History Month theme
This year, the National Women’s History Alliance (NWHA) selected “Women Who Advocate for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion” as the 2024 theme. Not only in March, but throughout the entire year NWHA will focus on and “recognize the example of women who are committed to embracing everyone and excluding no one in our common quest for freedom and opportunity”. You can learn more about NWHA and Women’s History Month on their website. Additional education resources and women’s stories can also be found at womenshistorymonth.gov.
Now let’s check out the BookWidgets Women’s History Month interactive calendar. ⬇️
What’s inside this calendar?
Using the calendar Hotspot Image, ⬆️ you will be able to select a date, open a widget activity, explore, and learn about famous leaders and women who have made an impact from all around the world. The BookWidgets team has created interactive learning activities that you can use each weekday in your classroom. These ready-made activities can be duplicated and customized for any age group to celebrate amazing women trailblazers.
Share the Women’s History Month calendar link with your students so, at the start of each school day, they can complete the surprise activity for that day. You can also choose to share separate activities and even change them before sharing with your students. You can find all the separate activities below, and if you want to make changes, make sure to navigate to this BookWidgets folder, create a free account if needed, duplicate the activity, make changes and share with your students through your LMS or a unique link. We will explain this process again below.
The activities include:
The Beginnings of Women’s History Month - Split Worksheet widget
Joséphine Baker - performer, activist, spy - Split Worksheet widget
Women’s History Month - Word Search widget
Women of the National Parks Service - Image Carousel widget
Maya Lin - Architect - Image Carousel widget
Eight Female Artists - Video Quiz widget
Wangari Maathai - Activist and Nobel Peace Prize Winner - Tip Tiles widget
Jeanne Baret - First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe - Video Quiz widget
Amanda Gorman - Poet Laureate - Split Whiteboard widget
Famous Female Mathematicians - Worksheet widget
Famous Irish Women - Flash Cards widget
The First Ladies of Hip-Hop - Quiz widget
Chief Justice Sonia Sotomayor - Hotspot Image widget
Women who Made a Splash - Pair Matching widget
Famous Women Throughout History - Pair Matching widget
World’s First Novelist - Jigsaw Puzzle widget
Yusra Mardini - Worksheet widget (podcast)
Sybil Ludington’s Famous Ride - Split Whiteboard widget
A Woman Is - Planner, Mind Map, Quiz, Word Search, and Split Worksheet widgets
Famous Women throughout the History of the United States - Timeline widget
Famous Females - Culminating project - Split worksheet and Randomness widgets
There are also two hidden widgets on the weekend. Can you find them?
Poetry - Randomness and Split Worksheet widgets
Hisako Koyama - The Woman who Stared at the Sun - Worksheet widget
How to use the March Women’s History Month Calendar
Here are step-by-step instructions so you can use this Women’s History Month calendar in your classroom.
- Share the Hotspot activity link with your students via your learning management system like Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Schoology, Canvas and more; or let them scan the QR-code below ⬇️ with their mobile device or any QR code scanner app.
- Starting from the first school day in March, try out a ready-made learning activity celebrating women’s activism.
- Students will click on a date in the Hotspot calendar widget - an interactive Women’s History Month activity will open.
- Students will complete the Women’s History Month activity. This can be done in any classroom environment: face-to-face, remote, hybrid, whole group, synchronously or asynchronously.
- To return to the Women’s History Month Calendar, click on the black arrow in the upper left corner of the widget activity.
- Repeat for the next day.
- Learn all about women’s contributions toward “a positive future…eliminating bias and discrimination entirely from our lives and institutions”.
If you’d like to work with a QR code, you can project it on an interactive board, print it, and even place the QR code on your classroom door. Or… post it around the school or playground so students can scan and learn anytime.
How to make changes and create your own Women’s History Month calendar
Do you love this interactive calendar idea championing women? Are you thinking of ways you can create your own customized classroom calendar We’ve got you covered! ✔️
Log in to your account (or create a free BookWidgets account), and duplicate the widget(s) you want to customize or adapt. You can find all the widgets in this public group folder.
⚠️ ! Important ! You must duplicate all the widgets before making any changes. Click on the arrow next to the far right of a widget 🔽 and choose “*duplicate*”. Once you have duplicated a widget, you will probably find it beneath the “My Widgets” tab. There, click on the pencil icon and choose “Edit”. You may also use the cog wheel at the top of the first widget in the group folder and select all the widgets to duplicate as well.
What to do with activities students can submit to the teacher
Students can submit some of these activities to their teacher. To make this possible there are two rules:
- You need a (free) account on bookwidgets.com
- When submitting, the students need to enter the email address you, the teacher, picked when creating your BookWidgets account.
As a teacher, you will be able to find all your students’ results in your BookWidgets account under “Grades & reporting” > “Student work” > Click on the title of the activity. From here you are able to view student submissions, add comments/feedback and return the work.
Have fun!
Wrap up
Enjoy our March Women’s History Month calendar throughout the entire month - and year. Find more resources on the Women’s History Month website. Make sure you let us know what you and your students learned about these empowered women. Share any widgets championing women in our Teaching with BookWidgets Facebook Group. If you are not a member, join now. 💡 We are looking forward to seeing your creative content. Now that you have ideas for making engaging, digital content, you are ready to think about the activities you want to start building for your classroom and students.
My hope is that you found some innovation, inspiration, and imagination from the women and their contributions highlighted in these widget activities. Which one is your favorite? 🤩
Let us know on Twitter @ibookwidgets. Continue to be awesome. 🎉 Let’s Learn Together! 👩🏽🏫~Sheryl
