Mrs. Mooney's Teaching World: 19th Century Reform Movement Posters

Recently in social studies we've been looking at various reform movements of the 19th century. Our friend John Green from Crash Course gave us a really nice introduction to these reform movements before we dove into our chapter in History Alive! about the movements we would specifically look at.

We focused our lens on 5 particular reform movements of the 1800s: prison reform, education reform, women's rights, abolition movement, and the spirit of reform. After we spent some time in class reading about these and doing a few activities with them, the students picked out of a hat one of these five reform movement that they'd focus on for their poster research project.

Using the directions below (or here), students set out to create a detailed poster on their reform movement. We had spent some time looking at past posters that were advocating for a particular movement so students could get an idea of what a good poster looked like (although theirs would have more words and text on it, since I was requiring them to include more than most posters include :).

Directions: Using your Lesson 17 reading and notes, create a poster (using Pages, Google Drawing, Keynote, Prezi, Glogster, or another app) that includes ALL of the following requirements about the 19th century reform movement you’ve been given.

Your Poster MUST INCLUDE:

What your reform movement is (title)
When your reform movement took place (date)
What your reform movement did, and the impact it had
At least 2 people who supported your movement
At least 2 pictures
At least 2 things that your reform movement did well
At least 2 things that your reform movement could have improved upon
Your reform movement’s legacy (what impact did it leave on the US?)
How your reform movement has impacted TODAY’s society (you need a specific example for this one...you may need to do some outside research!)
CREATIVE, ENGAGING, and INFORMATIVE!

What I really liked about this project is that students got to choose from a variety of mediums in which they could use to create their poster. One of my own professional goals this year is to give more student choice when it comes to demonstrating their knowledge and what they know; so I felt that this project really opened up some freedom to create a poster in various different formats--Glogster, Prezi, google docs, Keynote, Pages, Murally, etc...

Below are a few examples and links to the posters students created. Once again, I am super impressed with what the students created! They are so creative and really embraced the medium they picked to highlight their reform movement and detail all of the important information about it and the impact that it has had on today's world as well. Enjoy!