This book highlights the empowerment of ALL women and how we can achieve goals when we work together for the greater good.

• March is Women’s History Month. Founded in 1987, this month recognizes all women for their contributions to history and society.
• March 24th: Equal Pay Day, dedicated to raising awareness of the gender pay gap. In the United States, this date symbolizes how far into the year the average woman must work in order to have earned what the average man had earned the entire previous year, regardless of experience or job type.
• August 26th: Women’s Equality Day, which commemorates the August 26, 1920, certification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that gave some women the right to vote.

As teachers implement curriculum with elements of social justice, more and more students will come to spaces with prior knowledge and/or connections to the text as they learn about the individuals who contributed towards social change. The women featured in this book include:

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Susan B. Anthony
• Sojourner Truth
• Harriet Tubman
• Jovita Idar
• Alice Paul
• Inez Milholland
• Ida B. Wells
• Lucy Burns
• Mary Church Terrell

Readers understand new ideas in text they are reading by thinking about how things are alike or different. This book features ten American heroes who your students may or may not already know. Students can compare and contrast the featured leaders to one another within this text, to an American hero they’ve learned about in the past, or to an advocate they would like to know more about who is actively doing the work to push for change. This could include a peer, family member, community leaders, or national change agents.

With regular practice, readers should identify why an author wrote a text. Is it to persuade, inform, or entertain the readers?

• Teachers can model this by examining the book closely under a document camera or with the class on the carpet, where everyone can see. Ask questions like:
• Is this book going to teach me something, make me laugh, or try to get me to do something?
• What clues can you find in the text that support what you think?
• Why do you think the author wrote this text?
• After reading the first three pages of the text, do you agree with your inference about why the author wrote this text? If not, what is your new thinking about the author’s purpose? 

Many of the unfamiliar or uncommon terms in this text are surrounded by hints about its meaning, others leave space for readers to activate prior knowledge. 

Terms in this text include: factory, equipment, urging, sportswriter, press box, aspired, unimaginable, century, senator, suffragists, uncommon, convention, opposed, slavery, rally, amendment, abolitionist, asserted, proclaiming, prevail, activist, journalist, tactics, protesting, procession, herald, injustice, persistence, sentinels, Congress, Nineteenth Amendment, equality, justice