Informational writing

When you write a report for a teacher, you present information about a topic. You do this to show what you know or to show what you have learned. Here is a report that Cayden wrote for his American history class.

Rosie the Riveter

In 1943, the War manpower Commission and the Office of War Information began a campaign. Campaign posters showed a character called Rosie the Riveter, an attractive, yet alone brawny young woman posing to show off her arm muscles. The slogan We Can Do It! emphasized Rosies strength. The point of the campaign was to recruit women to work in factories. In other words, women were being asked to do mens work.

Prior to 1943, tens of thousands of men had flocked to recruiting centers to answer the call to war. Their departure left gaps on the home front. The all-important war industries, companies that made uniforms, weapons, ammunition, ships and planes, for example, lost workers daily as men enlisted or were drafted. At the same time, the factors needed to increase production to meet the wars needs.

American women answered the call. Between 1940 and 1945, six million women joined the workforce. That number is significant, but the types of jobs they were doing is even more noteworthy. Women unloaded freight, operated trains, and used heavy machinery in huge, dirty, noisy factories. Never before had women done those kinds of jobs, An inscription on a bench at the Rosie the Riveter Memorial in Richmond, California, summarized the importance of these women: You must tell you children, putting modesty aside, that without us, without women, there would have been no spring in 1945.