Description
This nonfiction speech analysis lesson focuses on Sojourner Truth, an African American abolitionist and women’s rights activist of the nineteenth century. Students closely analyze her most famous speech, Ain’t I a Woman?, in which she powerfully advocates for gender equality, racial justice, and women’s rights in America. This lesson is especially well suited for Women’s History Month or civil rights instruction.
Students begin with brief background information to build historical context before reading Ain’t I a Woman?, delivered at the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. Through guided instruction, students engage in close reading and apply critical thinking skills to better understand the speech’s message, purpose, and persuasive power.
This ELA nonfiction resource provides structured practice with tone, vocabulary using context clues, idioms, and metaphors, helping students interpret figurative language within an informational text. Students also respond to two-part questions that require direct textual evidence, strengthening their ability to support claims with accurate citations.
Extended analysis includes open-ended response questions that incorporate the RAFT strategy and the PIE and PIEE frameworks, guiding students to identify author’s purpose, main idea, and rhetorical strategies while examining text structure. Answer keys are included to support efficient grading and lesson implementation.
Both PDF and editable Word document versions are included, making this lesson easy to adapt for different classroom needs. This resource is ideal for middle school and high school ELA classrooms, speech analysis units, informational text study, and social justice lessons.