Heritage Fair Project

As part of your Social Studies course this term, you will be doing a Heritage Fair project for the Heritage Fair in mid March. (A Heritage Fair is a bit like a science fair, only with social studies types of projects.) The tentative date for the school fair is to be determined.

The project you do will be done in Socials class, but a sizable amount of it will need to be done at home or at the public library. You can safely assume that you will need to visit the public library more than once to get materials for your project. Plan for this in advance.

The project has three main parts.

  1. An essay will be written. It should be neatly typed. You may pick any topic in Canadian history that you like, but it will have to be approved by your social studies teacher before you begin.
    • For Grade 9 the essay should be from 5-10 pages.
    • This is assuming you use a 12 point font so that you’ll be getting about 250 words per page. If you use a bigger font, you’ll end up having more pages of material.
    • It is NOT a report but an essay. This means it has a thesis. This means you’re trying to make a point with your essay, and not merely reporting on things. You will need to keep track of you research, and be prepared to provide footnotes and a bibliography.
  2. A display will have to be made so that people at the Fair can easily see what you have done. While your essay will also be available for reading, the display should visually show what you’ve done and learned. It needs to be attractive, colorful, and as eye catching as reasonably possible. Sample projects are shown at the bottom of this page.
    • Your display may include
      • Power Point presentations
      • drama
      • posters
      • photos
      • songs
      • costumes
      • all kinds of other things.
  3. A presentation needs to be made at the fair. You must be ready to tell people about the project you did.
    • This can be done
      • with a short speech,
      • a song,
      • a monologue from a historical character,
      • or any other reasonable manner you can think of. Feel free to be creative.
Hopefully, the project will be judged on the day of the Heritage Fair by two judges drawn from the school’s supporting community and other places. The judges will likely be people you know, though we’ll try not to make them your relatives. The judges will each look at your project separately, and their marks will be averaged together. The top projects will go on to the Red River Regional Heritage Fair on May 6.
 
Try to make your project as original as possible. Topics like
  • Winnie the Pooh,
  • women’s suffrage (women getting the vote),
  • the Canadian flag,
  • or the Avro Arrow

get done over and over.

Avoid these topics.

Personal topics may be acceptable, such as

  • the history of Mennonites in Winnipeg,
  • or perhaps an immigrant relative’s experiences after the war.

Before researching a topic, check with your social studies teacher to see if it’s acceptable.

The combined mark you receive from the judges will be your mark for the Social Studies part of this project.


 

Sample Heritage Fair Projects

 
Comments