The students in Years 7, 8 and 9 thoroughly enjoyed their cross-curricular days designed to celebrate the 100year anniversary since women were first allowed to vote in the UK. Starting off on Monday 25 June 2018 with an assembly covering topics such as the British suffragettes and the status of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, the activities incorporated music, drama, fashion and textiles, history, English, art, maths and physical exercise.
The girls learned and energetically performed suffragette songs and re-enacted events surrounding the fatal protest of Emily Wilding Davison, including poignantly imagining what she might have been thinking on that fateful day. They investigated fashion from the period and through the following decades, creating outfits from black plastic and newspapers for an entertaining and informative fashion show. In History and English they practised debating and created campaigning posters, examined literature from the suffrage movement and explored contemporary issues including #MeToo. In the art room the girls researched and drew notable women and gathered their pictures into a collage, while in maths they constructed voting questionnaires for the school community and collated their results.
These cross curricular activities culminated with a military-style drill on the tennis courts to give them an understanding of how girls would have exercised in past times.Whilst these activities were based around our students having fun in a variety of capacities, they no doubt learned a great deal about both the history of the British suffragettes and more contemporary gender-associated issues around the world.
