Asking Questions ~ What Is Fame?

Overview
Students discuss and define fame as a preface to creating a Women's History Trail. To discover who is considered famous, they distribute questionnaires to family and friends. Data results reveal an enormous gender gap, so students prepare ways to
learn about women in their community.

For more about this special from
Walk Her Way Along a
Women's History Trail

e-mail Maria D'Itria, author and AT&T Teacher Disseminator.
Learning Standards
  • Identify central questions, events, and issues to address.
  • Collect, report, sort, graph, compare data.
  • Identify different people's perspectives on an identified issue.
Classroom Activities
Students contribute questions to a Who Is Famous? Survey. When they design, format, and word process this instrument, they receive two questionnaire forms, one to be completed by a student, the other by an adult. The class reads returned forms and lists responses about famous people on a chart.

Sorting and graphing data into categories of gender, age, occupation, contribution, era, and residence, students recognize how few neighborhood women are represented. They conclude there is a need to include local women in the story of their community.
Community Activities
Questionnaire results motivate students to create a Neighborhood Women's History Trail and tell about women in their community.
Careers
Students observe how data handling lends itself to historical, literary, and consumer research.
Materials
Writing materials for questionnaire, chart, and graphs.
Technology
Students create questionnaire and record data with Microsoft Word and use Microsoft Excel for graphs.
Assessment
Students and teacher use questionnaire, chart, and graph results to evaluate student understandings of information processing and the characteristics of famous people.

Web Sites
More famous women can be found at
the Boston Women's Heritage Trail