The Life of Martha Hughes Cannon: Writing & Illustrating Short Historical Stories

English Language Arts

• Reading Informational Text Standard 2: Determine the main idea of a text
• Reading Informational Text Standard 3: Explain events in a historical text, including what happened and why, based on specific information in the text.
• Writing Standard 3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details and well-structured event sequences.

Social Studies

• Grade 4 Standard II, Objective 2: Describe ways that Utah has changed over time.
• Grade 5 Standard III, Objective 2: Assess how the US Constitution has been amended and interpreted over time, and the impact these amendments have had on the rights and responsibilities of citizens of the United States.

Art

Create: Students will generate artistic work by conceptualizing, organizing, and completing their artistic ideas.

• Students will be able to read and understand informational text.
• Students will gain a deeper understanding of the role women play in society, including politically, socially,and civically.
• Students will create an historical narrative with accompanying illustrations.

Activating and Building Background Knowledge

Note: Students who have participated in the lesson “Martha Goes to Washington: Equal Representation in National Statuary Hall” will already have background knowledge of National Statuary Hall. 

Show students PPT “Writing Stories for National Statuary Hall”. Explain what the National Statuary Hall Collection is and what statues Utah has contributed to the collection, making special note that in 2022, Utah will be sending a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon to replace Philo T. Farnsworth. Point out that of the 100 statues in the collection, only 9 of them are women. Explain that 2 of these women are Esther Hobbart Morris (WY) and Sarah Winnemucca (NV). 

Show the students the books, “I Could Do That: Esther Morris Gets Women the Vote” by Linda Arms White and “Paiute Princess: The Story of Sarah Winnemucca” by Deborah Kohan Ray. 

If you have extra time for the lesson, you could read these books to your class, or watch the read aloud video linked in the PPT. However, the focus of this exercise is to show students examples of illustrated books about women in history. If these books are not available in your school library, show slides from PPT. Talk about how these books use words and pictures to tell the story of a woman in the past and important events in her life. Point out the different artistic styles of the two illustrators as well as the different amount of text-per-page each author uses. 

Discuss that Martha Hughes Cannon deserves a book too, like Esther and Sarah, and the class is going to come up with ideas for how to write and illustrate one. In order to write a book and draw illustrations, students must first learn about the life of Martha Hughes Cannon and the significant role she played in Utah and US history.

Multimedia Viewing

• Students watch the video about Martha Hughes Cannon from the Better Days 2020 YouTube channel.
• Have students respond to the prompt on the “MHC historical significance worksheet”

Informational Text Reading

1. Read the trading card for MHC from the Utah Women Making History deck or PDF download.

Ask students if the events they wrote about on the worksheet were included in the trading card? Have them choose one event from their worksheet and add additional information about that event that they read on the trading card.

1. Have students read “Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon” from the book Champions of Change or PDF download.

Ask students what new details they learned about Martha’s life? Have students add new details about one of the events from the worksheet using the short biography.

Note: This is natural stopping point for part 1 of this lesson

Discussion of Literary Technique

As a class, discuss what components make a compelling story. Include the following in your discussion: effective technique, well-chosen details and well-structured event sequences. Have a brief discussion about historical fiction, and how authors and illustrators of this genre take actual events and create an engaging narrative from those events, using facts as well as their imagination.

Review the MHC historical significance worksheet from the previous lesson and ask students to choose one event for which they would like to write and illustrate a story.

Create a Storyboard

Have students come up with a storyboard for the event they chose from the life of Martha Hughes Cannon. Decide ahead of time the components you would like the students to include in their story (i.e. quotations, number of characters, 1 or more settings, etc). You may want to review the slides from the previous lesson PPT that show pages from “I Could Do That” or “Paiute Princess”. These will help students consider individual parts of the story they wish to create.

Encourage students to narrow their focus to just one event in the life of Martha Hughes Cannon. This will require them to think about and create details about the event that may not be mentioned in the informational video/texts.

Assessment

Have students choose one part of their storyboard to develop into a full story page with illustration. 

Show students the PPT “The Life and Times of Martha Hughes Cannon”. This PPT shares photos from the Library of Congress and the Utah State Historical Society. These photos help students picture the setting of their story and help spark creativity as they consider how to draw one of the pages from their story board. Encourage students to take on the role of historical fiction author and illustrator by taking factual details from the past and displaying them in a creative and engaging way.

Note: The purpose of this assessment is to encourage students to think creatively about events in the past and consider ways to express knowledge through visual art as well as through literature. The focus of this assessment is the thinking involved in creating a historical narrative, not the aesthetics of the final product.

Gallery Walk

Have students display their final work on their desks. Then have students walk around the room and look at/read each other’s pages.

All written components of this lesson can be adapted to verbal/oral components based on the needs of students.

Students may work in groups or as a class to create storyboards for this lesson. Similarly, if multiple students want to write about/illustrate the same event, have those students work together to create a storyboard.

Students may complete their entire storyboard with full page writing and illustrations.

Have students learn about more women from the early statehood era: Lucy Heppler, Lizzie Taylor, and Hannah Kaaepa. Have students create storyboards and illustrations for these women.

“I Could Do That: Esther Morris Gets Women the Vote” by Linda Arms White 

“Paiute Princess: The Story of Sarah Winnemucca” by Deborah Kohan Ray